500 Words A Day-Day 6

I’ve been working on a screenplay for about 5 or 6 months now about an alcoholic who gets diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, his brother dies and he sells his business all in a span of about a week. As a result of all of that turmoil he decides to go to Arizona and see the Grand Canyon with his brother’s ashes in tow because he’s “never seen anything worth forgetting.” On his way to the Grand Canyon, through a strange twist of fate, he ends up stranded in Flagstaff with no car and he decides to walk to the Grand Canyon to complete the journey with his brother’s ashes.

I am stuck, writer’s block style, in writing this screenplay as my protagonist is currently about 15 miles north of Flagstaff on highway 180. I have a love interest for the guy who has come up with a pretty cool way to keep the spark ignited (at least I think so, and I should since I wrote it): every day she puts her bike in the car, drives a few miles past him on 180 as he walks to the Canyon and she rides her bike back to where he is and she walks with him, pushing her bike, until she gets back to her car. Then she goes home and he walks. And he walks some more to the canyon, camping at night along the way.

So this bit of writer’s block has got me thinking that the only way to get through it is to actually attempt the walk that my protagonist is undertaking. I would consider myself a “method writer” in that I have to be in the mood of the person talking in order for it to come out right. I’m sure I make some CRAZY faces while I’m writing because I basically act everything out in my head as I write it. I have trouble writing about things I don’t really know about, though I am pretty decent at doing research for characters I have no way of using my prior experiences to write (for example, the other script I am writing is about a bunch of Navy SEALs who form a barbershop quartet and I have never done either of those things).

I tried out being an alcoholic once when I was about 24 years old (I forced myself to drink until I was drunk for 31 days in a row just to see what it felt like) and I think that has helped me get into the mind of the alcoholic. Believe me, being an alcoholic is a lot less fun than I thought it would be. The good news about that whole experiment is that I now know I DON’T want to be an alcoholic so I have not become one. Hey, sometimes you have to try stuff out just to find out what you don’t want to do, right?

Anyway, the whole point of this is that sometime either in the next 4 weeks or next May I am going to make the walk from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon, just to see what it feels like. It’s a little less than 76 miles and I am confident I can do that in 4 days barring any injuries or accidents. The smart move will be to do some training and do this walk next May, though that kind of defeats the purpose of the walk, which is to see what it is like to do it on the spur of the moment. Still, I will most likely do the walk next May when the temps aren’t too hot during the day or too cold at night.

Anybody feel like taking a stroll with me?