'I Love You' by Billie Eilish as the Soundtrack of My Debut Work ("Blackbird Whisper")

It would be a complete deception on my part to claim that I Love You was the only song that fed the storyline of Blackbird Whisper in both its English-language novel and screenplay forms. There were many other songs with which I cheated.

Back when I was eighteen and nineteen, while attempting to complete a full draft of the screenplay written in Russian, I would repeatedly find myself getting stuck somewhere between pages seventy-five and eighty-five. Inevitably, I would abandon that draft altogether, open a new file, stare at another blank page, and try to build the story all over again.

September 2020 was different, though. It marked the first time I ever embarked on the endeavor of creating something in a completely alien tongue.

It is not that I had been unfamiliar with English until the age of twenty. To claim that would be a shameless exaggeration. I was fortunate enough, or rather blessed, to receive both my school and university education through an English-medium curriculum. Nonetheless, saying, "I think in English," is not the same as saying, "I feel in English." At that time, I could not honestly claim either. Despite all the subject- and course-based knowledge I had absorbed through this third language of mine, English still remained something I knew rather than something I inhabited.

To say that the arrival of the pandemic and the spread of COVID merely affected people's lives would be a blatant understatement. It transformed countless lives into something entirely unfamiliar, where the past no longer served as a reliable indication of the future. Of course, none of us knew then that this was what awaited us.

So...

When I returned to my hometown in March 2020, following the instructions of my university administration, I did not come home with the intention of writing in English from then on.

On the contrary, throughout the spring I struggled to finish the final screenplay draft of Шепот Черного Дрозда, which translates from Russian as Blackbird Whisper. Almost every day, I would go outside and sit on swings, benches, playground slides, or inside sheltered alcoves, anywhere the sky above me remained unobstructed and present; anywhere the horizon stretched as far as my eyes could follow it into dusk; anywhere the rain could stop short of drenching me completely while still allowing a few drops to settle upon the top of my palm; anywhere the fresh air could serve as oxygen for the mental process that stubbornly refused to process any of the countless resolutions I kept offering my story.

One day in May 2020, just a couple of weeks before my twentieth birthday, I sat on one of those playground slides and decided to give the story one final chance, one last opportunity to prove that it deserved to be finished, that it was meant to be written.

I remained there for hours, yet nothing new came.

Everything I wrote that day, every thought that crossed my mind, turned out to be nothing more than another variation of something I had already written back in the autumn of 2019. I stayed there for as long as I could remain in that elusive state of flow. Eventually, someone who had apparently finished taking photographs of me from behind hurried over to warn me about the approaching downpour.

As foretold, the sky wasted no time in weeping.

The rain soaked both me and my notebook. There was still a chance to save it. All I had to do was tuck it beneath my denim jacket and keep it close to my heart, protected beneath the fabric.

But I could not bring myself to do it. It no longer felt meaningful. I no longer saw any purpose in preserving it.

On my way home, I threw the notebook into a rubbish bin and bid it my final farewell.

The following week, I came across a textbook in my university's digital library titled Blueprint for Screenwriting: A Complete Writer's Guide to Story Structure and Character Development by Rachel Ballon.

That discovery led me down an unexpected path. Throughout the summer, I read somewhere between fifteen and twenty books on screenwriting. Yet the more I read, the more I realised that their underlying principles were remarkably similar, often almost identical. Eventually, I stopped searching for new ones, allowing Save the Cat! to become the last screenwriting guide on my list.

Around that same time, while I had been practically "stalking" the WriterDuet website ever since learning about screenplay-formatting software, something entirely unexpected happened. I was offered a free one-year membership that allowed me to create and write an unlimited number of screenplays. Naturally, I accepted the offer without a second thought.

Throughout August 2020, I completed one Coursera course after another, all related to writing. Meanwhile, the third year of my university studies had begun, now taking place entirely online because of the pandemic. Gradually, my academic life started shaping itself around what had already become my primary pursuit. Looking back, I probably should never have allowed it to take the captain's seat in directing the course of my life.

Curiously, I had not consciously remembered either those screenwriting books or those online courses until I began writing this very article, retrieving those memories from a place where they had remained buried for years.

Looking back now, it is not that they were exceptionally important, nor did they play a defining role in making me who I am today. They remind me of first- or second-grade mathematics. Subjectively, you eventually grow so far beyond it that you can no longer feel proud of having mastered it. Nor was the emotional investment deep enough for nostalgia or bittersweet longing to remain attached to it.

Objectively, however, you understand that before someone can learn that two times two equals four, they must first learn that two plus two equals four.

Everything in life is built brick by brick. Yet before the very first visible brick can be be laid, there must already be a foundation beneath it. Foundations are built underground. They are meant to remain outside other people's sight and beyond their grasp.

"That's a beautiful house you've built here."

When people say that, they are never talking about the foundation lying beneath it all, buried, invisible, covered in dirt, and almost forgotten.

So...

With the title chosen, the soundtrack already locked in, the logline finalised back in August 2019, the screenwriting software ready, the formatting rules finally learned, and the discarded Russian drafts preserved mostly in memory, September 2020 arrived.

Magic. I am fully aware that perhaps I ought to call it creative labour, which it undoubtedly was in its essence. Or perhaps I should call it genuine innate talent, which, again, it undeniably was at its core. Yet I would rather choose to call it magic. For this absurdly immense inclination, I blame my stubborn belief in... magic.

So...

A miracle took place. By the middle of May 2022, just a week or two before my twenty-second birthday, I had written approximately ten feature-length screenplays, all in English. Together, they spanned genres such as humanitarian science fiction, psychological thriller, psychological suspense, horror, and drama.

In the space of those twenty-one months, each screenplay, together with the several drafts it demanded, required roughly two full months of my life, if not more. Most eventually reached a length of around twenty thousand words. Some remained slightly shorter, finishing at eighteen or nineteen thousand, while others grew to twenty-two or even twenty-three thousand.

And, of course, almost nothing in life comes without demanding its price. This transition, this change, this progress all demanded theirs. And I paid it in full, not a single penny short. I paid with my academic path. I paid with my choice of self-isolation. I paid with my confidence. Yet it demanded more. So I paid with failure and rejection, arriving with every screenplay draft I submitted. Still, it refused to reach a state of satiety. Hence, I agreed to pay in excess. But because there was nothing more I could offer, it extended me a loan. As collateral, I accepted humiliation, fear, embarrassment, anxiety, panic attacks, and more.

I gave all the best I could offer. I took all the worst it offered in return.

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