Next Level.

I believe I have hit the next level, folk. The one folk who reads this. Who is me. Because no one reads this. Which is fine. ANYWAY, next level. DING! It's been an exciting week for me.

First, a couple nights ago, I worked out my last character who had to get cut. What's left stays. I was working on it, trying to straighten out some scenes that I knew weren't EXACTLY right, but I couldn't figure out how. So, I consulted my buddy and afterwards looked at them again. Not only did I tweak them and make them far better, I figured out exact things that needed to be altered or changed. Set-ups that make it make it clearer, twists that make it tighter, and I actually came up with a sort of overall riding subtext that I wanted to flow through this thing, front to back. In this light, it's a thing of beauty. To me. Infinitely better than it was initially, and that one wasn't BAD, per se. Just not GREAT. This is GREAT, and that's what they want.

Now I'm doing my second-to-last polish and sending it off. But the other night, when I looked at it in PDF, Celtx had some weird glitch, where it would garble the last line on several pages, so my characters would seductively coo "Doattbygoladoempila," or some similar shit, which is far from sexy. And it kills my ability to provide a quality product. I was dicey about Celtx anyway, since it also gets glitchy about the underline, and I use it to mark bits that need to be fixed later. So it's been an occasional ass-pain, but today I had it. There's no sense coming up with good dialogue if my punchlines are going to need a god damn cryptographer to get them. It makes me look like  stupid jackass, which isn't going to land me a career. I considered Final Draft, but it's so god damn expensive, and I'm on a budget. I went with a new one, Fade In. It was quick to learn, had the same tools I was used to (albeit in a different location), but ultimately fucking slick. I'm a big damn fan. I converted 42 pages of Celtx script to Fade In today. It's my second-to-last draft.

So, I'm busting my ass to get this thing done. I'm doing everything to make it happen. I started on it at 9 AM, and ended at 7 PM, because any more Redbull and Warduna, and my brain would leak from my ears. But I got a chunk of it going, editing it all the way. I'm really proud of this one. And I saw the new Ben Hur trailer. My hope is that this movie brings a lot of excitement, because it could very well reinvigorate the exact genre I'm selling. I mean, the shit in that movie is so close to what I'm bringing to the table. I only hope they skip the preachy shit at the end and focus on the cool shit, like boats and chariots. Shit I write about, because they're so much cooler than a random religious experience. Also, because I think people would react to it better, giving me a better chance of selling my shit and killing my student loans once and for all.

So, that's a thing. The stars are aligning and the portents look good. I hate saying this because I'm not superstitious, but I match my astrological symbol well enough, so perhaps it's a good call. But I've been busting my ass on this for years. More than two! I'm close to my Saturn return, and I've been diligent as fuck. Good times HAVE to be coming my way.