I finished the first draft of my independent project this week. I'm keeping a copy of it for a binder. First, second, however many drafts I go through, they'll all be there. I'll add the video once it's filmed. I want to keep a memoir of this story so I can see how it evolves.

I love script writing. I love the process of getting to know the characters, finding elegant ways to blend from scene to scene, and struggling every inch of the way from FADE IN to FADE OUT.

It's like boxing. I take a boxing class twice a week. Real ring boxing, Ali style. (Hey, I'm thinking Muhammed, but if you want Leila go ahead.) My instructor was a boxer, trains and coaches many boxers (two very different things) and is a wonderful, wonderful person. So he teaches us how to box as though we were going to get into the ring one day and fight with the bell, the corners, and the crowds.

One of these days, I'll actually do it.

But I digress. In training to box, we do all kinds of exercises, sometimes with weights, sometimes with just the weight of our bodies, sometimes with the dreaded rubber bands. (Four-foot long rubber bands with handles on them, which we use for arm strengthening.) It hurts, most of the time. A delightful burn that tells us we're working, getting stronger and getting better. I welcome the pain and the challenge with a twisted delight. Really, I shouldn't be that happy about making myself hurt!

For me, first drafts are very much like my boxing class. It hurts, most of the time. There are starts and stops, self-doubts and nagging logic problems. Forty pages of script axed, only to be added again later. Ten pages that I love, only to find a fatal flaw that cannot be reconciled with the physical laws of the universe and so must go the way of the dodo.

I never know if anyone but me will be interested in the story. I never know if this one will be the one that sells or gets me a job. Faith is all I have sometimes, and it's not always easy believing that I will succeed if I persist, that I must succeed because otherwise I don't know what to do with the fifty or sixty years remaining to me.

So I slog through the first drafts, knowing (well, hoping at least) that I'm getting better with each story. With this independent story, I stretched my skills like I stretched those dang rubber bands today. I went for an atypical narrative, which I've never done. I used only one room for the set, which is a challenge that I recommend for everyone. I wrote forty pages of two people talking to one another. And now, I'll throw it into the ring. I sent it to the director.

I'll see if someone else is interested in the story.