Touching Base
Sorry. I just popped in, and noticed I'd only posted about 7 words in the last five days.
Sometimes I feel like my blog is a child, that occasionally I plop down in front of the TV and forget about for a little while (yeah, I'm going to be a great dad someday. Good thing there's no porn in the house).
Updates --
WRITING. In an encouraging bit of karma, work slowed down in the last few weeks just enough to give me a chance to give a solid polishing to my two good old scripts (the twins) and submit them to the Nicholl Fellowship. I actually mailed them in five days early too, which is shamefully early for someone whose gifts to his nieces and nephews always seem to get there late.
Then, literally, as soon as I mailed them off, I was swamped with work again. If I'd put off either script, it probably wouldn't have made the submission deadline.
Kismet.
By the way, did you ever pick up one of your scripts that you hadn't read for a year or two, and read through it, and not remember writing sections? Or read, it, and thought about how good of a writer you were "back then".
I had that in spades.
THE DIABETES. Aside from a trip to one of those Japanese teppan restaurants last weekend (love watching the cooks doing their thing in front of me, and hell, I had fish and chicken, so I wasn't that bad), I've been a very good boy with the diet and exercise, at least until I tweaked my hamstring the other day. So the treadmill is on hold for a few days, but I'm going to hit the pool later, and do some laps (even though the pool is so small that I could do 100 "laps" in about 3 minutes).
My blood sugar is way down, I've dropped at least 4 pounds in the past three weeks, I have more energy, and I'm sleeping better. So it's still all good.
Though I'm also going through the phase in which I read labels on everything, and I am constantly still appalled by things I ate as meals. I've also become hyper-sensitive to how other people are making pigs of themselves, which I hope I get over, because who wants to be THAT guy?
THE FUTURE. I still need to get more diligent about my writing. I need to shake out the rewrite of this supernatural thriller, I should knock out a draft of the sex-filled horror movie that I did 40 random pages of a few months ago, I need to do a definitive version of my fantasy/comedy, my teen sex comedy is still stuck on notecards, and me and my buddy Dave are still occasionally throwing ideas back and forth on ideas we may try to collaborate on even though we're 1000 miles apart.
So I'm not hurting for things to write. Just time.
Man, I'd love to see what I could turn out if I had the ability to do nothing but write for just a few months.
posted by Scott the Reader @ 10:37 AM
14 Comments:
Hoping for the best on the Nicholl.
No, I haven't read one of the older scripts and said that EVER! When I do that, I usually say: "Weh! What retard wrote this? Can't he see that this whole act is totally wrong?"
It's hard to settle down on writing...
I sometimes pick up old abandoned scripts (or starts of scripts) and suddenly get angry.
"Why did you give up on this? This is a cool idea, you moron..."
or
"Man, I wonder what this would look like if you'd really put an ounce of serious dedicated effort into it, you pathetic mewling piece of shit..."
or
"Jesus H Christ on a cracker but you are a lazy bastard!"
meanwhile, re: work-- I have this growing suspicion that "work" (in the form of competing real world activities which steal away our time and attention and energy) is, as often as not, just a convenient alibi we create for ourselves to prevent us from having to directly confront the difficulty in putting ourselves at real risk with potentially life-chaning projects. Somehow it's easier to swallow the line "I just never had the time to give the dream enough attanetion to make it real!" than it is to say 'You know what? I tried-- really damned hard -- and I just wasn't good enough."
Thing is, once you commit to making it happen -- no matter what -- the likelihood of the second scenario above goes down considerably. Failure usually finds the path of least resistance and takes place where it has the best chance of flourishing.
Write, reader-man. Write.
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B
I'm on Atkins. It's working.
And I love collaboration...and w/email, phone now so cheap, don't let 1000 miles stop you.
chris
Actually, I think for some people having enormous amounts of time doesn't equate with getting a lot done--on anything: writing, or whatever. Take me--for example--I've been "studying" a medical transcription course for the past year. For exactly half of that year I've been working part-time at an entertainment "superstore." In theory, with all that time, I could've knocked that course out inside six months (i.e. by last December); but, I didn't. Instead, here it is May 2006 and I'm just moseying my way toward 40% done. *sigh* So, no, don't assume that if you had all the time in the world you'd kick out mountains of writing. My guess is that most of us aren't like that. Most of us need less time to motivate us to do anything with it.
Ah, the luxury of time to work on writing? That'd totally rock!
Stay healthy.
Taking time off to write? I've seen people doing that before. What happened, you ask? Girlfriend's band needed help co-ordinating their tour. Actually, GF took over his time completely. Oh, wait. He bought a brand new Mac with whistles bells and all the software I can only dream of. He managed to unwrap it in my presence. I got to drool...
I like having weekends off. Completely. Not even grocery shopping gets in my way. That works quite well.
The ideal scenario for *right now* would be to waste 4-5 hours/day on a day job. No commute. Yeah, right. Dream on.
Whenever I hate my breadjob and feel sorry for myself, I think about Grisham. According to what he said in a great interview I heard on NPR a few years back, he wrote The Firm while still working as a lawyer.
It can be done. So let's do it.
jojagp = Joe and Jack pee. Pissing contest?
Sometimes I'll read something and smile. Sometimes I'll cringe. Well... most times.
But I suspect that having more time doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more done.
It's what we hope will happen, but rarely is.
Given nothing but time, are you the type of person who wants to work on projects gradually, or would you find your self on the short end of a deadline cursing yourself as to how you pissed all that time away? I know I'm the latter.
Sex-filled horror sounds totally my bag. Any chance of a snippet on the blog? prefereably a bit with a lot of sex in...
Ah, but it's not happy sex, or sexy sex. It might even put you off sex for about 30 years.
Why is that I think a corpse and a midget are involved?
"Good thing there's no porn in the house."
How on earth can that be a GOOD thing?
Scott - what a coincidence. I'm about a week overdue for having a baby, I'm gonna be off sex for about 30 years anyway. Go on!
I may have those few months coming up. Just got a letter in mail today I am being cut off from my materials supplier (the home based day job) so instead of a replacement I just may cry in my beer and write
You'll get the time sooner or later Scott. Seeing what you've managed to write in limited time, yeah...you'll get it sooner or later. (fingy's croseed)
Good luck with the submissions
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