Every writer has a process that is different. Each has a method that best nourishes a creative environment. Each has a process that works toward refined art. None is right, none is wrong – just different.
My process involves printing out the script single sided and taking time to write notes and other ideas throughout the page. I also enjoy writing full lyrics and musical ideas on the blank sides of the pages. I’m sure I am not the only one who likes the physical act of writing and crossing out and changing. You become comfortable with a document in it’s messiness and flawed organization. Typing a draft (as Meg Bell taught me) is far too final. It already looks polished and ready for print beaming at me from my computer screen when, in fact, I need to cross half of it out and rewrite.
I have been working on a new project and, as you can see in the photo, I took a step back recently. In a strange turn of events whose length of time to explain far outweighs it’s humor, someone else spilled coffee all over my script. Over the past weeks I had just been grabbing whatever pen or pencil I could get my hands on. Unfortunately the red pen didn’t make it.
The loss was tough but, as someone once said, if you can’t remember the lyrics they weren’t very good. So let this then be a lesson to you all: Use pencil. It will not be easily dissolved by the random coffee that is spilled on your script.