My Screenplay Already Exists

On my worst days, I construct my screenplay, engineer my screenplay, design my script, and birth it into existence.

On my best days, I know that my screenplay already exists. I just have to find a way to have it reveal itself to me. I feel like I’m searching in the dark with a flashlight – with parts of the work revealing themselves to me, first slowly, in flashes, one by one, and then suddenly all at once as if someone suddenly turned on the light.

It’s not like my observing it is bringing it into existence. No, it was always there in the dark, I just couldn’t see it. It’s not my creation. It’s an independent being.

I relate this to courses I’ve taken on meditation. You can’t try to be creative. You already are. You have just to let your creativity exist, you observe it, and it reveals itself to you.

I relate this also to how my characters begin to emerge. In the beginning, I’m telling my characters what to say. Eventually, though they should tell me what they should say, I’m just writing it down. It’s like magic. . Suddenly, they’re alive.

Or maybe they always were, and I just couldn’t see them? I like that idea. Sometimes I believe it.

On my worst days, I continue to tell them what to say. On my worst days, I keep feeling like I’m grinding this screenplay into existence using all my tricks.

On my best days, I’m just watching and laughing or crying, writing it all down as fast as I can.

So, control is good for revising, for understanding what’s not quite working.

But for a first draft, for the beginning:  There’s a time for mulling, thinking, and planning. And then there’s a time for taking long walks in the dark. . . with your flashlight.