Green Minded Wallet

The organizers of National Novel Writing Month are hosting a ScriptFrenzy in June. All you have to do is (attempt to) write a 20,000 word screenplay. Simple, no? It’s free to sign-up (though donations are accepted) and you’ll have access to an amazing online community who will be happy to help you through it. You don’t even need to have internet access to write your novel, just to verify your word count from time to time. So if you’re looking for something to do, hop on over there. It’ll keep you busy, won’t cost you money, and you’ll have lifelong bragging rights. What more could you ask for? And if you’re hesitant to go it alone, you can pester some of your broke friends to sign-up, or badger someone you know into writing a screenplay with you.

Here are the basic rules (from ScriptFrenzy.org):

1) To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, you must write a script of at least 20,000 words and verify this word count on ScriptFrenzy.org.

2) You may write individually or in teams of two. Writer teams will have a 20,000 total word goal for their single co-written script.

3) Script writing may begin no earlier than 12:00:01 AM on June 1 and must cease no later than 11:59:59 PM on June 30, local time.

4) You may write either a screenplay or a stage play.

5) You must, at some point, have ridiculous amounts of fun.

Some of the highlights (from my experience):

• You can add other writers as your friends and praise (or taunt them) as their word counts progress.

• Word Wars: these are short writing sprints that you do with others, they’re great for writing really poorly really quickly, which is half the fun.

• Dares: add a random suggestion to your play if your looking for inspiration (you would be surprised how 15 chickens can come in handy. Seriously.)

And yes, it’s completely free. I did National Novel Writing Month last year and it was a blast. While this is the first year of ScriptFrenzy, I have no doubt that it will be just as much fun. Now’s a great time to get your ideas together and connect with others.

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This post is first in a series on suggestions of things to do when you’re bored but don’t have any recreational money or you’d just prefer not to spend your hard-earned cash on entertainment. I figured what better place to start than the middle of something you’ve already started, right? Nevermind.

Chances are (if you’re like me anyways) that you have at least a few projects that you’ve started, but haven’t quite finished yet. I’m guessing that if you wandered around your house, apartment, dorm room, or bunker you could find at least three potential projects to work on. The idea is to work on something fun, defrosting the frig doesn’t count, unless of course you enjoy that type of thing. Ideally the project should be something you can work on with what you have at home. If you find yourself saying, “I could put this puppy to bed, if only I had a mitre saw”, than that probably isn’t the best project (unless you know someone willing to lend your a mitre saw for a little while).

Personally I keep saying that I’m going to finish editing my NaNo novel (has it really been six months), work on the scrapbook I’m making for my mom (don’t think this one is going to be finished by Mother’s Day), and make some baby hats and blankets for a local charity (but it won’t be cold again for months).

So how about you? Any exciting projects to finish that won’t really cost you anything but time?

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