Huh?
Yes, it is true. I'm getting a lot of practice at it - I spent most of Friday throwing out 9-10 years worth of work files. Ah, padlocked blue security bin how I love thee!
Giddy from this bout of corporate cleansing, I have spent the first few days of my post retrenchment freedom ridding my humble abode of:
- old hard copies of script drafts
- notes pertaining to the above
- notepads full of notes pertaining to the above pertaining to the above that
- newspaper clippings that inspired notes pertaining to... [fill in the rest at your leisure]
- old scripts and manuscripts from people, some of whom I don't even know
- programmes for amateur and professional theatre some of which I didn't like
- material from writing seminars, lectures and courses most of which I can't remember
- generic old crap ie everything else
Thank goodness it was bin day Tuesday as this has consumed the equivalent of two green wheelie bins. Not blue, not padlocked, not destined for shredding... but still, um, lovable?
The flip side to this is finding little gems I forgot I had stashed away under three inches of dust - namely other people's scripts, some of which I do want to re-read (I say re-read as I'm sure I read them all the first time... didn't I?).
Perhaps more excitingly, some of my old scripts that might help chart my progress as a writer. You know the feeling - some of it's pretty good, some's goddamn awful, nice idea here, overwritten up the wazoo there... but what it does do is rekindle the passion and enthusiasm for visual storytelling.
It's spring - brave the dust, toss the junk, relive the tentative first steps into a brave new screenwriting world! Once you've done coughing your lungs up (okay, there was a LOT of dust) you can move on to bigger and better things refreshed... and with more elbow room and shelf space!
