Not Quite Done

I substituted for the first time in a couple of weeks this past Friday. While in class I managed to complete my screenplay. Well...sort of. I had decided that 74 pages would be acceptable. I had completed the script from the story as is. But it isn't enough.
What's driving me crazy is that I feel like I added so much to it today and yet it still isn't adding up to much.
And I was very careful to make the additions relevent and not filler. I wrote and wrote but it only added up to a couple more pages. But thankfully, they were significant additions that really mean a lot to me.

Good Mommy Cat(?)

The last blog I posted I mentioned how wonderful a mother my cat is, despite her youth. Well, today she tested my confidence in her motherhood. She and her babies sleep in my boys' room. Usually. Well, apparently she go the idea last night that she doesn't like it in there anymore. I think that it's because of their friends coming over often.
So this morning at some point she went outside because I know that she was in the house when I went to bed last night. Since I'm not the first one up in the morning, it didn't surprise me to see her outside. So I let her in.
When she came in, I realized that I hadn't checked on the babies yet. So I went into the boys' room and looked under the bed and they were not there. I turned to Thierry and asked her where her kids are. She just looked at me and meowed. We walked all over the house looking for the little 4 musketeers. What bothered me was that she kept calling to them. Even in the spot where they were when I went to bed last night.
Crazy cat didn't know where her kids were!
Granted, they do like to wonder, but I've never seen them wonder further than a couple of feet from their mother. Although, at least 2 of them are very adventurous and I wouldn't put it passed them to venture a little further out on their own. But we really couldn't find them.
Finally we found them in my daughter's bedroom on the otherside of her bed. Her bed isn't on a frame so we really had to look for them. But we found them. Happy and healthy.
So why have I wondered from my blog toppic again? These 4 little bundles and their crazy little "adventures" that never happen are inspiring the children's stories that I was talking about before. And my script is almost done!

Finally Done Except For Apendices

I just this morning completed the story of my screenplay. Erm... that is, I have finally completed the story that will be a screenplay. Well, it was a story that I wrote based on another story that someone else wrote. Then I turned it into a screenplay. Then I wrote the backstory, then I adapted my backstory into a screenplay. Then I rewrote the original screenplay into a story (which is what I just finished doing) and I will now turn this rewrite of the original screenplay into a new screenplay! And you wonder why it has taken me 4 years to write this! Well, I am now on the fast track to "complete screenplay under my belt" land. And hopefully soon after that I will be on a fast plane to "sold screenplay" country. And then maybe oneday there will be people actually interested in reading my blog.

My only fear is that when I am finally done with this, will I miss writing it? Will I think that there is something that I should have said? Nah, if someone buys it, I will be for certain that it is the way that it is supposed to be. But if no one does, I will just.... You know what? I need to just concentrate on getting it complete and shopped. I fear nothing.

The appendices can wait until I get to those moments in the script to worry about, I think. I don't even know if appendices is really what they are supposed to be called. It's just stuff that I thought about later that I needed to add and I was going to write them later and add them to the final script as I am writing it. Whatever. They'll come when they come.

Happy Mother's Day Thierry!

Today I decided to break away from the theme of my blog. Today is mother's day and I would like to acknowledge a very new mother today. She is my cat. Her babies were born on April 27th. I have heard of cats, and other animals rejecting their babies or not having a natural instinct to motherhood. But Thierry is very protective and aware of her babies. When it is time to eat she licks them gently to wake them and position them. There have even been times when I would ask her about her babies and she would look in the direction of the room where they sleep and meow. As if she knows what I am asking her.

It is not the fact that she is actually a good mother, but the fact that if you were to look at her, you'd think that she is a baby herself. We've had her for a year and she was about the same size as she is now, then. I believe that she is still a kitten, but I couldn't tell you how old she is exactly. But she seems so young, so small. And when her babies are asleep she plays and jumps around like a kitten.

I think that my fascination with my new mother cat is that she is much like me. When she is in mommy mode, she is MOMMY. But when she has time to herself she is still the kid that she really is inside.

This picture show only 3 of her kids. She still had one more that wasn't born until we all went to bed thinking that she was done. This one is black like his mom with white paws and belly. They all sleep under a bed so it is difficult to take a new picture with all five!

Man With His Head in a Box!

I am less than 3 pages from the end of the original script that I am rewriting. I am very excited because that means that I am almost done with it. When I am done with the rewrite of the story, I can work on converting it back into screenplay.

But knowing that I am almost done; seeing the end of the road, the other side of the rainbow, I managed to get myself distracted as usual. Fortunately, this time I got distracted with something that has to do with the story. And although I was sure that I would be done with the rewrite tonight I let another element distract. So now I will not be done until tomorrow. But let me tell you about what distracted me. Because I am very excited about it.
About a year ago, I guess. I'm sure that it was less than a year ago because I lived at the other place and I was only in that lease for a year. So, about a year ago when I was on revision #2 of my script's back story I decided that I would try my hand at conlanging. For those of you who may not know, conlanging is the art of "constructing a language." If you are familiar with movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy or tv shows like Star Trek, you may already have heard other writers' conlanging. It is the business of writing a language that does not already exist. Elfish, Ramulan, Klingon. You know, stuff that forty year old virgins are made of.
Anyway, I am not a forty year old virgin. Well, I haven't been a virgin in a while, and I'm not quite forty but writing is a passion and writing a language makes for a wonderful challenge. I at first wrote "made for a wonderful challenge" but it is an ongoing process. You will likely ever have a library of vocabulary that includes the entire scope of words in your mother language.
So, I wrote this language for 2 reasons. The first was that I had studied so many languages that all had their own positive points but many things about them make me crazy. For instance, German and its many cases and articles. Or Welsh and its crazy sentence structure. So I created a language that completely lacked those difficulties that have stumped me on each successive language I have studied.
The second reason that I wrote this language is to add a different dimension to the script that I am writing. The back story involves ancient folks, magic and other stuff that made me think that it would be wonderfully appropriate to have a constructed language as part of the script.
So, what distracted me was that got to a point in my script, the third or fourth point probably, where I would need to use the language. So I got a hold of the notebook in which I wrote the language and started translating dialogue. I did not intend on writing the whole script in this language. Just key dialogue. But most specifically, a song that is sung several times.
The song was originally a poem that I wrote for Writer's Digest.com's April's poem of the day, day 30. I took out a few lines out of it to make it shorter and I have started translating it. It's very exciting. But now I have to finish writing the story tomorrow.
And now I bet you're wondering what inspired this language. You're going to laugh. You know that geni from Pee Wee's playhouse? The one with his head in a box? You remember when he would say Mekalekhay mekahaineeho? I created a language based on that silly little phrase. It combines elements of Spanish, German, Japanese and Arabic. It borrows and adapts words from Spanish and German. It uses Arabic's word structure and a lot of Japanese pronunciation and concepts. It flows the way that I would like to hear a language and is easy to learn, I believe. And if any of you have ever read my myspace blog, you had to know that this one would eventually revert back to dialogue involving Pee Wee Herman. And I'm sure you know that it won't be the last.