The average attention span of a person who reads this blog has been scientifically calculated to be…OH MY GOD I saw Dan In Real Life this weekend. It’s a crier, so bring tissue. It would have been a great Bob Saget vehicle, but nooooo, Mr. “I’m a filthy mouthed comedian” decided he’d rather be a filthy mouthed comedian. Speaking of filthy mouthed, I got this new toothbrush, but the bristles are too soft and I don’t really feel like it’s removing all the plaque. Plaque. That’s a funny word. I’ll bet it would be funnier if that insurance duck said it. “Plaque-plaque.” lol.
Anyhoo. You may or may not remember or care that I sold something. Don’t worry, it’s very likely I’ll keep reminding you. But as any real writer will tell you, big whoop wanna fight about it? Because just selling something doesn’t automatically mean the industry is just going to start throwing gobs of money and begging me to please come write for Grey’s Anatomy, even though I would not only do it for free, but would probably be willing to do unseemly things just for the opportunity to huff the fan exhaust of the computer that is currently editing a line of dialog for Dr. Derek Shepherd, aka Dr. MacDreamy. (I can be your Meredith, Derek! I can be your Meredith!)
But no. It means that I keep toiling away at my day job, cramming in opportunities to write as they come, only to find that—now that I like to think of myself as a real writer—I spend most of that time avoiding the actual writing part.
You’d think weekends would be pretty productive writing times. 48 hours in a goddamned row of pure unadulterated face time with just me and my copy of Final Draft. Not even the ability to sneak in some LotRO, having performed the insanely stupid act of asking a friend to change the password. “Don’t give me the password, no matter what sounds you hear coming from behind that door, and no matter how often I threaten to death you in morbidly creative ways.” Fortunately Turbine has a really fast “lost password” recovery system. There’s nothing like a looming deadline to turn the crushing boredom of completing deeds into hours of intense happy joy joy fun times.
Some writers will try to tell you that the hardest part of writing is in the beginning. That blank white page, the cursor flashing regularly as if to say “Write. Don’t write. I could give a pulsating shit.” I won’t deny that filling that first page is indeed daunting as all git-out, but at least there’s nowhere to go but up. The task of “fixing” a screenplay that was carefully crafted with certain assumptions and carefully crafted prose. I mean…think of the goddamned symbolism for christ’s sake! You can’t just go mucking around with my whole deal about paralleling the hero’s love of horticulture with the heroine’s love of…well, heroin actually. It’s complicated. And apparently it’s in need of a little (these are “finger” quotes btw) “tweaking.”
Tweaking. That’s a funny word.
All of this just to say I’m in a whiny bitchy mood today. Also it gives me yet another excuse to not write.
Er…
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