HOLDING MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE PT. 2

Confession: Once I set my mind on something, I tend to take it to the extreme.

In my initial holding myself accountable post, I talked about the key reasons I joined the intense Black Film Space (BFS) writing group. As a refresher, they were:

1. To cultivate a more consistent writing schedule

2. To confine my writing schedule to the work week like a job (hello weekend freedom)

3. To get my scripts done (the implied part)

While the BFS group will help me accomplish all three, there's actually a fourth part I didn't include in my last post: getting something produced.

A few months back, I decided to update this very website. It's a task I'm not particularly fond of because of how limited my design skills are and how much I'd like to change but I digress. The real benefit of updating the site was to get a sense of where the holes are. The most glaring omission is my lack of produced written work. It's something I hadn't been stressing too much about, but this time around it feels like a big issue. It's one thing to have credits on other people's projects, but another to have the title you're striving for on projects of your own. With that in mind, the wheels started turning.

Around the same time I came across the BFS group, I set out to try and find a group that would serve as a way to workshop (and hopefully produce) a short film. It just so happened that months prior, I had in fact come across such a group called Filmshop. After scrubbing through the members on the site, I discovered that a friend and former colleague had recently been part of one of the New York groups. You better believe I got the 411 on her experience. The biggest thing I learned is that the group you're in dictates the experience so, I applied, thankfully got in, and so far I'm really enjoying the experience. On top of the 7-9 am BFS writing sessions from Monday to Friday through the end of November, I now also have the weekly Tuesday night Filmshop Zoom meeting through November as well.

It's about to be a very busy three months but as I said, I take things to the extreme when I want to get something done.

P.S. A quick update on how the 7-9 am writing schedule is going now that week one of the BFS group is complete. I successfully revamped an outline and finish a speed first draft of a new short film. Getting this done also means I'm ahead on my Filmshop goals (yay!). While I'm really happy about how this week went in terms of productivity, on the opposite end I learned something new about my sleeping patterns.

Because I'm so used to functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, going to bed at 10/10:30 every night has resulted in me waking up at about 3:30 every morning unable to fully fall back asleep before my alarm goes off. I'm hoping next week will be better, but brainstorming ways to tire myself out before bed so I can sleep straight through the night. Looks like I'm about to start exercising more consistently again.