When zombies attack

Five days until vacation and I am so tired and cranky. I just gave up in the middle of a discussion with a student because I was tired of thinking.

Sure. Bring your gun to class. Whatever.

Please get here, vacation.

There is another teacher in my classroom during my planning period so I usually go to the library to eat lunch with Best Friend and giggle for two hours. But Best Friend is gone now, although the whole school is in an uproar at her departure, so I have nowhere to go while I'm kicked out of my classroom.

Behind my room is a failed darkroom. It was built with a big revolving door (you don't want to try to teach a class with a big revolving door in it, every kid thinks it is the coolest thing they're ever seen and wants to play in it) and red ceiling lights and lots of space and black walls and electrical sockets. And no internet access, shelves, cabinets or sinks. Or equipment.

The art department has a pottery wheel but no kiln. The gym floor is being torn up because it was built uneven. We opened with not enough classrooms. We have no computer lab.

This is the school where I teach.

But I digress.

I put a table and chair in this fake darkroom, which was built in 2004 even though the rest of the world has gone digital, and I went in there yesterday with my laptop. There's only one thing to do in an empty darkroom with a laptop for your only companion and no internet.

Okay, maybe there's two things.

You know how they say the first ten pages of your screenplay had better hook the reader? Oh I just wrote the best first ten pages ever. I have a three-way zombie battle, a race against time, a grandma getting shot in the head, and two humans emotionally scarring each other as one puts the other in a chokehold, all in those first ten pages. Woohoo violence.

I love action movies. I've been trying to write action scripts ever since I discovered the screenplay form five years ago. But every time I've attempted it I've stumbled over logic and realism and have never been able to make the damn thing work. So I've redirected my efforts to television episodes or dramas or short films. I like what I've written, but they always felt like interesting side projects on the way to the perfect action film.

That's why I was so excited to write a boxing story as part of Bamboo Killers. I also had a character bite a guy's ear off.

It was one step closer and tons of fun and I love the script, but it's still not the action pic I was craving.

Then yesterday I just saw the whole zombie script, clear as day, laid out before me, and it was cool. I'll post a scene tomorrow.

This screenplay is just fun as hell. I like writing about zombies.