Steady Employment

(Click to enlarge image)

From the "Reasons We Write" Series

Megan left for 10 days in Europe only yesterday, and already the old pangs of loneliness have crept in and left me reminiscing of times that are more than two years past. It's an emptiness in the gut, a meandering state of being, an old question of what now.

With the evening ticking away, I sit at this computer prepared for a few hours of uninterrupted composition but not out of convenience or some obligation to fill empty hours with fulfilling productivity. Instead, it's a way to abate the feelings of which I'm most frightened, to keep a light burning in an ever-encroaching dark.

To write is to fill a void with no name, even when it takes a specific shape, and with any luck, it can bring a sense of balance and clarity to what might otherwise degrade into melancholy. For writers, the gift can make one whole. Sometimes it's needed more. Other times, less. "Salvation," while melodramatic, is a label that is, more often than not, apt.

Write on...

The Silence is Deafening

Sorry for being MIA for so long. I got a promotion at my job and have since been quite busy during the day. Let's just say I used to post on my downtime.

A lot's happened since then, and I'll make a series of smaller posts with some thoughts about...hell, New York, life, working/writing, etc.

This past weekend The League finally got together and had its first workshopping session. It went incredibly well - the melding of these minds is productive, unique, perceptive, and beneficial. I submitted the first 22 pages of a screenplay I'm working on with a friend of mine. After sharing with him the notes I got from the meeting, we made the odd decision to immediately go back and rework the first act, incorporating those notes and other ideas that came up as a result. Normally, I would have been happy to just write an outline of a new first act and then come back to it after plowing through the first draft, but the product we were looking at after taking the notes into consideration was so much more interesting than it had been. It got me excited for this project again (it was starting to feel like a chore) and I couldn't wait to get to work on a revised act one.

It's a dream result, to be sure. I remember the feedback I've received that's left me completely stuck. I feel like the norm is somewhere between the two extremes, but for now, I'm certainly not complaining.

Write on...

P.S. Excuse our appearance. In order to make our site less inviting of a lawsuit, we've removed the Superman and Batman images. They will be replaced with some original content, but in the meantime, please be patient with our lack of color.

The next step should be getting over this feeling of being in-between everything. It's been long enough.

It's been a real struggle getting started on the next screenplay. I just finished a second draft of one about six weeks ago, which isn't a bad amount of time to take a break from writing - I just feel that the longer I'm not writing, the more I'm wasting my time. I've started a new job and moved to a new apartment within those six weeks, so there's been a lot of changeover. The big expenses of moving are nearly taken care of, and soon I will have a small but steady income. I just can't let myself get into the working rut... I can't get up, go to work, go to bed, and get up to go to work again if there's no writing in there somewhere.

There's no reason why I can't unpack that last box. There's really no reason why I can't start that next screenplay.

Scary Thought

I had an alarming thought the other day while I was riding on the train, either to a job I didn't like, an interview for a job I didn't particularly want, or just to kill time since my day is currently pretty empty.

If thirty, or forty, or one hundred years from now, I've come and gone, and not had a single thing I've written produced, then in the eyes of my writing self and my college degree, I will have been a failure.

Not to be unnecessarily gloomy --and one must accept the fact that probably forty-five percent of people, if not more, wind up working in a field that was not even remotely related to their degree-- but the thought hit me rather abruptly. I was gazing out the window at a gorgeous day, fortunate enough to still be above ground on the train so that I could appreciate the light hitting the trees at just the most stunning angle. And then it hit me. Just as I said. "If I don't wind up becoming a writer, then I will have failed in that area of my life."

Mind you, I am not equating failing to succeed as a screen or play writer as failing in life. But it was a shocking thought, one, which I'm not sure I really can disagree with either. My parents spent an exorbitant amount of money on my education so that I could become a screenwriter. So what happens if I don't do that? I know people who earned English degrees to go on an work in management of big non-profits. Not exactly English. Did they fail?

For me, though, it's not so much about deviating from what I've planned to do. It was the thought that "only I am to blame if I do not succeed" that really got me. Because, fundamentally, it's true. People can change the course of their lives. It happens all the time. But I don't foresee changing the fact that I want to write, or do something in film. But I had a glimpse of myself as a middle-aged man walking onto the train and sitting across from me, briefcase in hand, suit jacket flung over my back, long having distanced myself from any hope of making it as a writer.

That was what scared me.

Because immediately after I had that image, I had a counter-thought. "You can do it. Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you can be a successful writer. You just have to work at it." That thought was right. I do just have to work at it. If thirty years from now, I walk onto the subway on my way home from a long day behind the computer at my cubicle where the closest I get to Hollywood is watching DVD rentals, then I've let myself down. I've failed myself.

I guess, in the end, seeing myself walking onto that train, overweight and unhappy (or if not unhappy, not where I wanted to be), sparked me into action. Not necessarily that very second. Not necessarily even when I got home that day. But I knew, when the image faded, that I have all the power to prevent that from becoming a reality. All I have to do is work for it. I've had my training. I know I need to work more. Hard. But I shouldn't have to be that man on the train thirty years from now.

LoKor is AFK

Hey guys, FYI, I'm in Santa Fe until late Monday night, so expect thing to be awfully quiet around here for the rest of the week. Cake Man may put something up, and if so, check back on our Facebook page for notices of our updates.

Really quick though, RE: Lost

1. Nice beard, Jack. Maybe the fakest thing I've ever seen

2. 'Bout time someone (no pun intended) cheap-shot an "Other"

3. How exactly did Locke get control of his legs? And wasn't there a hole in his stomach?

4. Wow. That ending....yeah, I'll go into this more later, but if they end up structuring the show like they did The Nine from here on out, I'm going to be really, really angry.

Monday Afternoon Blogging - Shrek, Script Frenzy, and More!

The shock isn't that Shrek the Third came in first place this weekend, or even that it grossed over $100 million. I don't know about you, but given how strong Spider-Man 3 has been, I wasn't expecting Shrek the Third to reach $122 mil, breaking its predecessor's own animation record set three years ago. Wowza!

Needless to say, it did. My thoughts, see below, haven't changed one bit since seeing it on Saturday night, and given the fact that there really hasn't been anything resembling a kid's movie since Disney's Meet the Robinson's, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at all.

The top five rounded out with Spider-Man 3 ($28.5M), 28 Weeks Later ($5.2M), Disturbia (wtf?, $3.7M), and Georgia Rule ($3.5M).

Next week, of course, is Pirates 3. You know, honestly, aside from what it can do, it should top $100 million. That'll be three movies in the month of May that debuted with at least that much. How are all those naysayers who fear the end of the movie industry feeling now?

Also, apparently the Cannes Film Festival is going on. I'll be totally honest, I don't have a clue what's happening over there. Anyone know any good blogs or news sources (do you like how I differentiate the two?) that stay up to date with the info? You can check out the official (English) site here.

---

This is a fun one: someone on ink Canda's facebook page brought this up and I thought I'd share. Script Frenzy isn't so much a competition as it is an opportunity to write a 20,000 word screen or stageplay over the month of June. The site has the details, but I think this is a perfect opportunity to work through an idea that's been nagging at you and you haven't quite been able to crank out. Remember that play idea I mentioned last Monday? Expect to see me doing my best to make that a reality. If you're worried about copyright info and whatnot, I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps their FAQs have something that can help.

---

Lots of season finale's this week. 24, and Heroes are tonight. Lost is on Wednesday. I'll sound off on season 3 of Lost toward the end of the week - I have many opinions on the matter- but feel free to leave your comments about what you're watching. Have a great week everyone.

Write on...