Hockey: Or Why There's Going to be Few Updates this Month

I know that I haven't been updating this blog as much as I want to, but that's mainly because of my having to worry about schoolwork as well as doing my own writing. But it's April, and that means one thing:

It's the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If there's one thing that's going to keep me from writing, it's going to be hockey. But this year, much like last, won't be too much of a problem.

My team, the Vancouver Canucks, can't seem to win against the Chicago Blackhawks in any series ever and even though the series stands at 3-2 in favour of the Canucks, I'm not holding my breath for a victory. We were blown out of the water two games in a row: 7-2 in game four and shut out 5-0 in game 5. And this is after securing a 3-0 lead in the series. Let's face it, gotta give it to the Blackhawks for having the skills to beat us despite the great purge last year where they traded 10 players in order to remain under their salary cap. Canucks added depth to the roster but it never seems like enough to beat the Blackhawks.

It's hard to watch the game when the team, in it's regular season, was the president's trophy winner and have them lose two games back to back in blowout fashion. It's hard to watch the game knowing that the team leads the league in power play, penalty kills, goals for and goals against and have them play that horribly against the Blackhawks to games in a row. It's hard to believe after watching this, that this teams still has a legitimate run at the cup, knowing full well that the teams we may be facing against will either be the San Jose Sharks or the Detroit Red Wings.

This may not be our year but hopefully, it will be soon. Hopefully in a few years from now, I will have a full stoppage in writing and watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs with my team in the finals and their shot of finally winning the Cup.

My Writing Style

If you ask 10 writers how they write, you're going to get 10 different answers. I had taken the advice to write a specific page quota. Stephen King writes 10 pages a day. Because I try to write scripts, I wrote 3 pages a day (so that I could have finish a draft in a month's time). The problem I found, was that I wasn't so concerned with the quality of the pages that I was writing, I was more concerned with how fast I could finish it.

Now, some will say that, for first drafts, that should be your only concern. But for me, it becomes a big roadblock because I lose interest in the draft. I don't want to continue writing something that I know is bad. That's not to say I expect gold from the first minute I write either. It's just a self defeating process when you plow away at 3 pages a day and not look back at the story thinking to yourself, "Don't worry about it, you'll fix in the next draft" only to go back and read that draft and think to yourself "There's nothing here I can use". It sucks the passion out of the project for me. Pretty soon, you look at the page count and kick yourself for not writing three pages a day and you pull up the Final Draft program.

You start writing only to lose passion in it because you start to think about what you wrote the night before and how shitty it is. You plow through another 3 pages of shitty writing and want nothing more than to start over again but you're too far into the draft to give up. Then you start finding excuses not to write, because 3 pages a night is too much damn work with school to worry about.

Suffice it to say, writing 3 pages a day may get the pages done, but it don't write a script.

Frustrated with my current process, I decided to write a short script a few weeks ago in order to take my mind off of this current behemoth of a script. The short concerned a coulrophobic businessman being stuck in an elevator with a clown. It's not any good, but it got me excited to write a new story. Because I knew it wouldn't be longer than 20 pages, I wasn't concerned with making a page quota so I was free to write as much as I could for as long as I could. I was free to experiment.

And strangely enough it worked.

Here were a few things I discovered about my own writing process as I was writing this short script. I found that I liked to edit things and reread what I wrote as I was writing. It certainly goes against the conventional wisdom people tell you about writing, "Just get the first draft done, don't edit and don't concern yourself with making it good". I guess it's just not me. I like the hybrid of editing while I write, I like being able to throw a scene out that I just wrote and completely restructure it. I like this way, my way.

So here I am with another process. Instead of a page quota, I'm setting aside a certain amount of time each night to write. It seems to be working fine for the moment, but it is an incredibly slow process. There are nights where I did nothing but editing what I wrote the night before and look at the page count only to see that I'm two pages shorter than I was last night. But the work is something that I can be proud enough to say that it's a work in progress.

But I guess my main concern right now should be consistency. I'll do whatever thing is necessary to keep me writing.

Strange Sight

It was a Saturday and I was out on one of the rare occasions where I was in Chinatown with my Mother and little sister. I just got my hair cut and my mom wanted to go and get some groceries for the night's dinner.

Because I didn't want to wait inside the grocery store, and neither did my sister, we elected to go out and wait by the street, directly in front of the store, right in front of the vegetables and newspapers and the seemingly always wet concrete. It was better than staying inside the perpetually dirty and fishy smelling grocery store (comes with the territory if you actually sell fish)

So this guy comes out of the grocery store with his dad. Now, the dude couldn't have been older than me, but he certainly was bigger (I'm 5 "5 in comparison -- short, but that shouldn't stop you, ladies). He had this real "Don't fuck with me" kinda attitude, the sorta person that doesn't take bullshit and bad news too well. His little brother was less like him and more "in the moment" and completely happy for being in it. The kid looked downright jovial in comparison to his ultra serious big bro. So the little kid goes in one direction play pretending like he was either an airplane or Superman (can't really tell what goes on in a little kid's mind). His big bro and their father were going in the other direction.

Now, at this point I was thinking that the little kid should be more mindful of his surroundings. Will the kid snap out of his daydream and follow his family? Will the kid's family even notice that this little kid was too busy playing in his pretend world that he's ? How pissed off will this bigger brother look if he found out his little brother went missing? Is there an even more pissed off face than the one he wears?

But I guess I didn't really have much to wonder about. It was like he had this sixth sense of where his brother is. Without turning his head, the big brother snapped his fingers, yelled "Phillip!" and like a little dog, his brother came scampering up to his sides.

My sister and I witnessed this and I remarked that I've never seen such a well trained sibling. We both laughed and felt sorry for this dude's little brother.

Then, my sister turned to me looked me in the eyes and said, "If you ever treated me like that, I would've cut your balls off".

Somehow I get the feeling I missed out on an opportunity when my parents looked to me to babysit my sister when we were younger.