The perfect place to rewrite

I’ve recently been traveling on business. Not showbiz I’m sorry to say, just business. But isn’t air travel just the best place to rewrite?

Talk about the putting your butt in the chair and your attention on the project at hand. In the air you can’t do your laundry. Or pay those bills. Or go outside to see if it’s going to rain. Or any number of other excuses that we all use to get out of rewriting that script.

And just in case we forget, the airline has provided a handy seat belt that’s supposed to be buckled at all times. Who knows, we might be tempted to get up and stuff a sock in the mouth of the that snoring guy two seats over or bounce pretzels* off the kid behind us that’s kicking the seat. Good thing we’ve got the seat belt to remind us to stay seated.

But seriously, plug in the earbuds and away we go. No distractions, no commitments, just rewrite the damn thing.

Now, I’m a big fan of the PRINT IT OUT school of thought. Nothing wrong with doing a rewrite in the computer. But I think you need both. You’ll see some problems in the computer but others won’t rear their ugly heads until you apply expensive ink** onto dead trees. Just a different way of looking at it.

Back when I did a lot of photography, there was a little trick I learned. The composition of photo was often done in the darkroom and that would make or break a good photo. The trick was to turn the photo upside down when you thought that you had finally perfected it. If it didn’t look balanced*** upside down, no matter how good it looked right side up, it wasn’t right. Same thing with scripts. They need to look good however you look at them.

Anyway, not to belabor a point. As much as I hate flying, I can always get some high quality rewriting done on a plane.

* I don’t want to endanger anyone but I really miss having peanuts on the plane.

** In my next life I’m going to piss printer ink and become an instant millionaire.

*** Don’t confuse balance with symmetry (courtesy Even Cowgirls Get The Blues).