I've just written a 15-minute screenplay over the past two days. It's for a film that a friend's fledgling production company is doing - a collection of seven shorts that will make up a full-length film that will go straight to DVD and be marketed to church youth groups.

At first, I thought the stories generally had to have the themes of grace and redemption, so I came up with a story idea and wrote part of a screenplay around those themes. Then I discovered that there was a specific logline on the distribution company's website that all the shorts have to interpret, and my story didn't quite fit the logline. So I came up with a second story and wrote part of a screenplay based on that logline. Then I discovered that the DVD's intended audience will be youth groups, and I thought that the story I was working on might not have much youth appeal. So I came up with my present story and wrote a screenplay based on the logline and intended for youth.

Now I just have to do some editing and submit the script. The good thing about all of this is that I now have two additional story ideas that I can turn into whatever I want to turn them into. One thing about creative writing: You can't have too many story ideas.

Over the past week, I've had ideas for scene revisions and for entirely new scenes for my screenplay developing and taking root in my head. Today, I actually got to sit down for some solid writing time - two-and-a-half hours at Starbucks! Interestingly, the scene I wrote today, which replaced the better part of another scene, came together as I was writing it and was not related to all the things that had been ruminating in my brain.

It amazes me how that happens. While all of the pre-writing stuff that we writers do is important, nothing beats getting in some solid writing time where you tune everything else out and seem to actually enter your story. The results can be exciting and surprising.

My first screenplay is not dead yet. I blogged previously about how some people in the industry had liked my basic story idea but had thought the screenplay needed a lot of work. As I wrote then, after several revisions, I had no idea how I could make any more changes. I liked it as is and thought maybe it was dead and that I should move on to something else. But then yesterday I picked up a copy of the latest Creative Screenwriter mag and read Billy Wilder's top ten rules for screenwriting (he is a 3-time Academy Award winner and writer of such classics as Some Like It Hot and The Apartment). And suddenly, as if by osmosis, I had a flurry of ideas for how to make the script better, including a much more dramatic and attention grabbing opening. And those ideas have been growing and developing over the past day. So hold everything. I'm getting a pulse. This script is not dead yet. And I must say, it feels darned exciting!

I am baffled.

My first screenplay has been read by three people in the biz. The first two readers liked some things about it but thought I needed to do more showing and less telling. So I wrote a couple of "showing" scenes to replace a couple of "telling" scenes and submitted the script to a group that was interested in my story idea and had requested the script. I then played the game that all writers and aspiring writers know: the waiting game.

Yesterday, I finally received the rejection email. I must admit that my heart sank a bit lower than I had thought it would. This time, the criticism said nothing about how I need to show more and tell less. Instead, it said that my beginning did not grab the reader. It is interesting that the opening scene was considered a strong point by the previous two people who had read the script. Go figure.

Another criticism was that, in spite of a story idea that they liked very much, the story itself never gained any traction. I don't know what that even means, but it obviously is not a good thing.

When I read this script, I really like it. It's no given that I'm going to like something I've written. I've a had a number of times when I've set a document aside and picked it up after awhile only to discover that I now hated it. Not so with this script. In fact, when I read this script, I can imagine it on the big screen. It looks like a movie I would want to see. Consequently, I don't know how to make any more major changes to it. And yet, it would seem that I need to do so.

And so I am baffled. But then I guess I'm not experiencing anything new to the world of writing, am I?

One of my friends posted this quote from Pearl Buck on her website. Can anybody else out there relate to this?

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive.  To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.  Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create-so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him.  He must create, just pour out creating.  By some strange, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."