Inside the writing process

There’s something about seeing the work as it actually forms… the scratchings, crossings-out, the scribblings written before they even make sense. The physical marks of a thought arriving…

This entry is where I’ve decided to show that part of my own process. I’ve uploaded scans from my handwritten notebooks, fragments from the early stages of writing The Ogress of Fez. I keep dedicated notebooks for each of the projects I’m developing. They’re unpolished, out of order, sometimes barely legible. It feels almost like an act of bravery in sharing them here… But they’ve shaped the direction of the film. These are the parts I go back to and the bits that stick.

Some pages hold a single line or an image. Others are filled with questions, or notes that loop back on themselves. I circle things that resonate as an indication that they’re somehow compelling to me and might be worth developing into a scene. Later, I might copy them onto index cards and start testing how they fit together. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. I’ve been using Final Draft to map things out digitally, but my notebook is always nearby and I consider the paper and the digital to be working in symbiosis. I like being able to see it all laid out, to pick things up and move them around.

I’ve always been curious about how other writers work. My own process feels chaotic. I’m not working from a formula, and I don’t write in a straight line. I never studied screenwriting, but I have read many screenplays and I’ve watched enough films to have developed discerning tastes. But the truth is, I’m still figuring out how I work. It seems to change with every project. It feels like I’m relying more on my intuition than a structured approach. A lot of it is friction. Trying things. Getting it wrong. Returning to the same image three or four times before it opens up.

If I were just aiming to write something compelling, I’d probably be deep into a second or third draft by now. But this project means more to me than telling a story. This film needs to rest on something more solid… on actual histories, testimonies, structural knowledge. The research really matters in a fundamental way. It’s what holds the whole thing together. It’s also what’s slowing me down. And I’ve accepted this reality.

The Ogress of Fez is set in a world I don’t know from the inside… 1930s Morocco, under French rule, in and around colonial red-light districts. I come to it as someone removed from that time and place. That means I carry a responsibility to listen carefully, to build from the ground up. I’m not trying to recreate something perfectly. What I’m working towards is a film that holds up a mirror… not to flatter, but to reflect something real, even when it’s difficult.

The heart of it, for me, is the human… underneath the systems, underneath the language. Beneath the word prostitute, there was a person. A woman with a name, whose joints ached in the cold, who clung to routines that made the days manageable, who longed for a gentler life, even if she couldn’t picture its shape. Someone who carried her disappointments like something folded into the lining of her coat. Who worried the best parts of her life had already passed, but still checked the mirror before stepping outside.

This post is simply a glimpse of where things are… a scattering of early notes, the parts I’m still trying to figure out. Some of them are rough or unclear, and I went back and forth about whether to share them. But part of keeping this journal is about being open. I’m not established. I don’t have a clean methodology. Most of the time, I feel like I’m feeling my way through. Still, writing these entries helps me hold the shape of the work in my mind. It makes it feel real. I don’t know if this film will get made. That uncertainty is very present. But I believe in it deeply. And if it does come to life one day, I hope this will stand as a small record of how it grew. If not, maybe it still offers something… a reminder that not knowing is part of the work, and that showing up anyway counts for something.

This story matters to me. I’m giving it everything I can. And that, for now, is what keeps me going.