Oooh… I like it!

After silencing my whiny cat by feeding him, then cleaning out the poop box, I really start my morning with a cup of coffee and thirty minutes of checking out my favorite blogs and websites.

One I always hit up is Go Into The Story by Scott Myers. I don’t think he’s every gone a day without posting something, and it’s never filler, but useful or inspirational information to help his readers become better screenwriters.

Today he made a post about the effectiveness of transcribing something to learn it better, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald did with his favorite novelists, and Felix Mendelssohn did while trying to understand Bach’s music. Instead of just reading or watching a film, you actually copy the script.

It’s genius! In school, I was a note-taking whore, copying down anything and everything an instructor would say, because even if I never looked at the words again, the act of writing it would embed it into my mind.

So this week, instead of reading As Good As It Gets like I was planning, I’m going to retype it. And hopefully I won’t just inflame my wrists and cause carpal tunnel, or simply memorize the film, but pick up some of screenwriter Mark Andrus‘ storytelling abilities as well.