Rewrite All Right

Your eyes are bleeding and you can't feel your legs. You've been sat at your computer for so long you've forgotten what 'outside' looks like. Rewrites are hell!!!!

Rewrites make you paranoid, as you're constantly questioning what you've written. "Is it good enough?" "Does this character work in this scene?" "Are my brains dribbling out of my nose?" You start to second guess yourself over the rewrite you're doing for a production company. You've read their notes several times and you worry even more that you're not quite getting it right. It seems to matter more when you're writing from someone else's notes. It matters when there's a chance it might get made, so instead of writing something and being happy with it you keep looking at it and asking yourself, "is it really good enough?"

Then you start to become paranoid about yourself, "am I really any good?" And that's when you become paralysed, your fingers poised on the keyboard but the connection between your creativity and your fingers broken. Amazingly the only thing that does work are your tear ducts.

You begin to realise you've been so tied up in your work you're neglecting other things. Your girlfriend pops her head around the door and asks, "I need some new shoes." "Fine," you say, "just don't bother me again, I'm busy." Before you know it she's bought two pairs of shoes, a pair of riding boots and a £45 dress from Debenhams. Now your wallet's paranoid too. And amazingly your tear ducts still work.

In the end you just give in. The newly rewritten script is shoved in an envelope, sealed and addressed. "Right, that's it," you say as you leave the flat for the first time in weeks to post your work of art, feeling dizzy on all that fresh air.

You get back to the flat and sit down in front of the computer again. You rip open the envelope and throw the script into the bin, "OK, just one more rewrite and then I'll post it." You're not surprised to find that your tear ducts still work.