Script Frenzy!

For the month of April, I put away the Create365 challenge to work on the Script Frenzy challenge. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's just like Nanowrimo, which challenges you to write a novel in 30 days. In script frenzy, you write a 100 page screenplay in 30 days. That's about 3 pages a day. Fairly simple, right?
There's a feature I've been dying to write and this was a good reason to do it. The feature is titled Plastic Saints and it's a religious satire about a guy who fakes religious apparitions and holds fake church ceremonies to raise money for his mother's cancer treatment.
I had a very basic outline and I just needed to flesh it out some more. I got really busy with God knows what at the end of March and didn't get a chance to complete my outline. That set me off to a bad start. With only the first act outlined, I set into the challenge. I figured I'd finish writing my outline the first weekend. April started off as a busy social month and I fell behind quickly. That first weekend was spent catching up and not completing the outline. My new plan was to outline in chunks as I caught up with writing.
Someone really needed to tell me this was a terrible idea. I'm also very much a structured outliner. I pretty much write treatments as outlines. Since I didn't devote enough time to it, I was working from a step outline, which sent me all sorts of crazy directions.
Aside from social obligations, I have to admit that part of the problem with writing became the state of my personal life. My relationship of almost 5 years began to fall apart, not because of my screenwriting, and the stress often made it difficult to focus on this world I was creating. All that ended the last week of April, where I had finally caught up and only needed to write 4 pages per day to complete the script on time. Unfortunately, I was in no emotional or mental state to continue.
It's terrible and I hate feeling like I'm blaming it on the break up, but it's definitely a factor. I was very sad to not be able to say I finished and "won" Script Frenzy. I'm definitely going to be trying again next year. And just because I didn't finish on time, doesn't mean the script won't get finished. I'm going to take some time and complete the outline. The good thing is, in writing the screenplay I began to notice things that needed to be fleshed out more and rewritten. If you were wondering, I got to page 75 so I'm not far off at all.
I'm really excited about continuing the screenplay and I hope I can set an end of August deadline. Be sure to watch this blog and follow me on Twitter to hear how that goes!