Why Writers are Loners

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:34 AM

Can I pause here to mention how deeply I wish I could just stay here at Norm’s, hour after hour, writing, researching on the internet, and being a writer – rather than scurrying off to the vortex of distraction that is my paid employment?

Can I pause here to mention how much this strange, difficult, and expensive exercise has reminded me that I actually enjoy coming up with stories? As it turns out, I just don’t enjoy doing so in competition with the demands of the world, with everything vying for my attention.

I Am Exhaustion

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:39 AM

I’m not a morning person. I’m not even an afternoon person. Getting up at 6 AM these last three days has slowly replaced my blood with thick, bitter syrup.

The problem is, being a night owl, even if I’ve been up since 6 AM, I can’t find my way to Sleepytown until well after midnight. And Sleepytown is a dump now, full of industrial pollution, strip malls, and like three Applebee’s. And, you know what, everyone? Strip malls? They’d be much less reviled if they actually had strippers.

Last night, as I drifted off, I could feel how terribly tired I’d be today, and some part of my brain floated the idea of skipping a day of writing to sleep in. I’ll call the part of my brain who floated that idea “Tommy.”

Tommy was promptly taunted, tackled, and beaten within an inch of his life by every other part of my brain. The rest of my brain is composed of a 20-man team of really angry mixed martial artists.

I don’t know why I rejected the idea so completely, but I did. So I had better figure out a way to make use of this time.

I’m a bit concerned that Tommy may have been the writing part of my brain, though…

Splitting Posts

I like to imagine that people read this blog, and I like to imagine that they have two different reasons for doing so.

Screenwriting Journal

One group is interested in watching stories take shape. They’re interested in the creative process. They want to contribute, offer support, provide thoughtful criticism. Unfortunately, these readers have not figured out how to use the comment function yet, and instead, are speaking directly to their computer screens. Nonetheless, I have faith that they exist, and that they will eventually overcome this confusion, and we will all be enriched by it.

Personal Blog

Another group wants to keep up with me, Wilder. They want to read anecdotes, personal reflections, and the odd flotsam of opinion that constitutes the majority party in the Blogosphere Congress. These people are sick of picking through mountains of impenetrable screenwriting stone to find a few personal gems. For a while, I’ve been cross-posting the traditional-blog elements to misplacedwilder.livejournal.com, to keep the declassified information free and available to the world. But the number of posts available for that venue were reduced by flagrant cross-breeding between personal and professional talk.

Be It Resolved!

From here on out, I’m going to clearly separate my traditional-blog entries from my screenwriter-journal entries. They will likely be written in concert, as they have always been, and then separated into two posts, published in sequence.

Furthermore, you can find all the traditional-blog entries by clicking on the topic Personal, at the right. And you can find all of the screenwriting-journal entries by clicking on the project title in question, such as Cold War.

I hope this helps everyone focus in on whatever they enjoy most.

I like to imagine that someone is enjoying something.

Dying Battery Metaphor

Left 7:11 AM | Arrived 7:54 AM

Heavy traffic today on the 405 south; taking the Burbank on-ramp was a mistake. In any case, even leaving an hour earlier, it’s still the same dreary picture out there.

My mind spins imagining 3+ hours of this same endless gridlock, lane after lane, packed solid and crawling, every morning, every evening, day after day after day. How can it be permitted?

I’m frustrated this morning because my laptop battery is about to die.

This is not a metaphor, dammit.

Somehow, after plugging this sucker in at my bedside last night, the plug managed to pull completely out of the socket again. I would like to blame the earthquake, but had come unplugged at 4AM, it would have some life in it, instead of the 7% it charged while I got ready this morning.

I am disappointed.

As I mentioned, there was an earthquake last night at around 4AM, around 4.5 on the relevent scale. It set off the usual rolling wave of posts on Facebook, but I slept right through it – as I always do. Most earthquakes are indistinguishable from the dog scratching at the foot of the bed (or a fat person walking by you, or a big truck passing near the building), so I’ve learned to filter that sort of motion out of my consciousness. I’m puzzled by LA natives who are awoken by a tremble. It seems … maladaptive.

Too Expensive . . .

I had two eggs, scrambled. She offered cheese, and I took it. I was disappointed to discover, it cost me extra. I had some cantaloupe and honeydew. And some sourdough toast. This was all part of a package, and it cost me exactly as much as my meal yesterday. Not okay.

Tomorrow: just fruit and coffee.

The Wrong Eggs . . .

Left home: 7:05 AM | Arrived at Norm’s: 7:40 AM

My first day at Norm’s, writing before work.

I just screwed up my waitress by taking my eggs over-easy, despite having ordered them scrambled. These were someone else’s eggs. I’m eating the eggs of a girl with curly damp hair.

The short-order cook and the waitress are bickering loudly, now, and it’s all my fault. I may not be able to follow my scheme and stay here a full hour…

They pressured me into getting the full bargain breakfast, which is two of everything, and is like seven bucks, all said. That was not the plan.

I’m gonna nibble on my hash-browns. They are my wall against needing to vacate this booth. They’re my ASTRO-SMASH energy-shield, and I’m slowly shooting it from the underside.

For this metaphor to play out, the staff of NORM’S would need to be periodically eating my hash-browns from the other side.

The sign says they have free wifi here, but it appears to be password locked. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll ask for the password; certainly not today, when I’ve caused the waitress and the cook to bicker.

One Colorful Collar-full . . .

There’s a wifi access point called “Free Public Wifi,” but it doesn’t work. The likelihood of me asking for the password has decreased to approximately 15%.

The waitress just said to another customer, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the cook today.” She took away my pancake plate and filled my bitter coffee. Tomorrow, I will order just two scrambled eggs.

It’s 8:12 AM, the day after clocks jumped ahead one hour, and I feel like they want me to leave. This is crazy talk. Head down. Keep typing on your little powder-blue Muppet-baby laptop, friend.

“Free Public Wifi” has vanished again, leaving only “Norms Westwood.” The chances of me asking for a password have increased to approximately 35%.

If the cashier smiles, I will ask.

The cook has a round face and in wearing a chef’s hat and a white plastic bib apron. I can see the colorful collar of a Hawaiian shirt.

Hawaiiian has an amazing run of vowels. Especially when you add too many i’s.

Feeling Unwelcome . . .

It’s 8:30. I’m thinking, I get up at 8:45. I pay my bill. I go.

They’ve stopped topping off my coffee.

Am I ballsy enough to do this day after day?

Coffee Refill . . .

They refilled my coffee and inexplicably said, “Thank you.” It seemed like they couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The Time Hath Come . . .

Okay. I’m going to finish this cup of coffee, pay my bill, and go home.

And by home, I mean, to work.

P.S.

I got the password.

So Very New, All Over Again

I haven’t written because I’ve been waning.

And you’d better believe, when I’m waning, I’m whining, if I’m writing at all. And thus, I thought I’d spare myself the sight of myself being so sloppy and dire. I’m in partial recovery now, but I warn you, I’m not symptom-free.

After all these years, you might wonder why I haven’t found some way to avoid the seasons of mope. Similarly, you might wonder why, after all these years, humans haven’t found some way to make it constantly daylight all over Earth. 

Well, it’s because shit doesn’t work that way. Shit is a force of nature. The moon slips into shadow, and lunacy dims. Then, there comes a period of sanity – dismal, doubtful, shining, stark sanity – a cold, porcelain sanity – a sanity that, it never fails, I fear may never break.

Yes, each time, I wonder if I’ll write again. And yes, similarly, each night, I wonder if the sun will rise again. So, okay, fine. Clearly, everybody’s got some flaws in their understanding of the solar system. But, according to a thing I heard this one time, the skies are like clockwork; they  keep doing the same things, over and over, for better or worse, and my creative cycle is basically like that.

When the moon is in shadow, it’s easy to see things like a sane person would. 

It’s easy to see that my arbitrary deadlines are arbitrary.

It’s easy to see that I have no real audience waiting for my writing.

It’s easy to see that this whole expedition is a tactical disaster, that it’s time to cut my losses and save what little is salvageable.

It’s easy to see that this writing-and-movies bullshit snake-oil-show has been an embarrassing waste of the only lifetime I’m likely to receive.

It’s easy to go out to dinner, it’s easy to sit in bed and read, it’s easy to watch a movie on streaming, it’s easy to drive somewhere I’ve never been, it’s easy to play a game on my phone, it’s easy to enjoy TV on DVD, to walk the dog, to clean the kitchen.

When the moon is in shadow, it’s hard to find the urgency I felt when I was an idiot child.

It’s hard to imagine myself like I once imagined I would become, as the head of a production team, as the master of a creative machine, as an award-winner, as a trend setter, as someone to study and admire.

It’s hard to dream stupid dreams and be unashamed of them.

It’s hard to keep doing what I’ve done a thousand, thousand, thousand times before, and still continue expecting different results.

When the moon is in shadow, it’s hard to be crazy enough to do all this.

I suspect that everyone who struggles to prove themselves needs a healthy dose of lunacy.

How can a comedian, or a musician, or an actor, how can anyone, face a half-empty, disinterested house, and still perform?

They need madness.

How can a writer lay awake in bed, or sit alone at the keyboard, struggling to find a better idea, struggling to find a better phrase, struggling to make a better scene, when no one will read it or see it performed?

The only answer readily available – is madness.

I suspect that everyone who struggles to prove themselves wishes, in some small corner of their heart, that they were mad. If they were mad, they too could believe six impossible things before breakfast, even when the moon is tediously failing to be as full as it should.

And now I’m thinking –

Isn’t it interesting, when the moon is called new, it’s so very new – that it’s not there at all?

Marketing Pitch

Chase has posted one of the below advertisements on Pico Blvd, where I am pleased to view it daily, first-thing in the morning, on my approach to the Fox gate:

It says – CHASE: Almost as many ATMs as unsold screenplays! (exclamation point mine)

Teehee.

Well, that tickled me so much that a whole bunch of other, similar slogans came to me. I wonder if some of them are already part of the campaign.

Anyway, here are a few of the slogan ideas I came up with, following the same general theme!
 
CHASE: Almost as many ATMs as still-born babies! 

CHASE: Almost as many ATMs as elderly widowers, quietly contemplating suicide! 

CHASE: Almost as many ATMs as abandoned family pets, wandering the streets alone tonight, wondering what happened, what happened, what did I do wrong? 

CHASE: Almost as many ATMS as things you never took the time to tell him. 

CHASE: Almost as many ATMs as middle-aged women who, sighing softly, have finally accepted the hard truth – he’s the best she will ever do – and so, she settles for this man, this man who always greets her – with a wedgie. 

CHASE: Your money was not enough. Give us your dreams. GIVE US YOUR DREAMS.

PS: I actually do think the advertisement is mildly funny – in exactly the same way that mine are substantially funnier.

Taking Stock 2010 [part 2]

It is now February, 2010. For about 5 years, this coming December 31st has been my deadline for securing representation as a screenwriter or filmmaker. If I don’t meet the deadline, the plan is to throw out the typewriter and find something else to do, someplace else. I imagine, someplace else would be cheaper and prettier, somewhere I can have new carpets and a yard. I imagine, something else would be in healthcare or education, something that’d allow me to wear lab coats or tweed jackets.

But, we aren’t there yet. Here’s where we are, and how we got here.

Small Talker

In January of 2007, I optioned my feature screenplay, Small Talker, to Fredric King, in New York. It was a ridiculously long option; it was three years in exchange for a small sum. I used that sum to film a short-film-version of Small Talker, and then, later, to film the entirety of Hell Froze Over, the web-series.

The short-film-version of Small Talker was shelved by King for the duration of the option.During those three years, King’s search for investors lead him to Mark Holdem, who lives in Rome, who brought Small Talker to Sarah Black and Ed Elbert, who live in Los Angeles.

After some disagreements and delays, King walked away Black and Elbert. In the meantime, I had written a full spec script based on one of Black’s concepts, a script called Voodoo. It was a terrible concept, but an okay script. I did it for free, and it went nowhere. Black said she might put me in touch with agents or managers, but she didn’t. Perhaps because the script wasn’t getting the response she wanted.

In any case, Small Talker never went anywhere promising with King, and I couldn’t do anything with the script or with the short, because they were under option by King. So, for three years, it was a dead property for me. Agents and managers have no interest in a writer whose only commercial script is locked up in an interminable, low-hope option.

Hell Froze Over

I invested almost the entirety of 2008 in the writing and filming Hell Froze Over, our web-series. We created 10 episodes.While this was happening, I floundered around, trying to figure out how to rewrite Storybook Park, or maybe A Darkling Plane, or something, anything, to have another mainstream comedy to pair with Small Talker. (I was also writing Voodoo, mentioned above, doing revisions on Small Talker for King).

In February 2009, we premiered Hell Froze Over. It never caught on. It won the Outside the Box Award at the New York TV Festival, amongst many other independent pilots, but nothing further came of that win. We also licensed it to FLM, to distribute on cellular networks, but nothing further came of that.

On a personal level, it was an incredibly tumultuous year, but despite that, I managed to write Cheating Death (a completely re-imagined version of Storybook Park, and the fifth attempt to do so) and Unpredictable (an idea I’d tried to get Misplaced Planet to film in 2006, back when we were considering doing a feature film).

Cheating Death

When it became clear that Elbert and Black could not get their hands on Small Talker while it was tied up with the King option, and that they couldn’t go anywhere with Voodoo as it was, they asked if I had anything else. I sent them Cheating Death and Unpredictable.

The verdict came back: Cheating Death might fly with some rewrites, but Unpredictable didn’t have a strong enough hook. Unpredictable was dead on arrival, and probably will never be more than a mediocre writing sample.

I made changes to Cheating Death, round after round, and finally they were satisfied. They agreed to do a “one dollar” option for one year, and I currently await the final deal memo, to make it official.

 The option for Small Talker ran out in January. The option on Cheating Death will probably start in March.

What’s the Plan?

I don’t think King will renew the option, and I don’t think I want to renew the option anyway, unless (1) he offers more money; or (2) he has an exciting new person involved attachment (and I’ll need evidence of that).

Meanwhile, Black and Elbert still want to get their hands on Small Talker. The option is over. I could let them have it. They may be able to move it further along, but they certainly won’t be offering any money, and they certainly won’t go anywhere with it before I complete a series difficult revisions. Thus, I want to keep them away from it as long as possible, without losing their interest entirely by refusing their interest.

Ideally, I could use Small Talker as a bargaining chip: I could tell them, give my work to agents and managers, and we’ll see if we can work together on Small Talker. However, the receiving reps won’t be very interested unless I have more to show. Cheating Death is under option for a year, so it has no value to reps. On top of that, in this scenario, Small Talker would get snapped up by the same people. I have Unpredictable, but it’s not a powerhouse.

Worse yet – there are changes I’d like to make to Small Talker.  It could be a stronger, more mainstream script. And I’d like to own those changes, not owe them to a producer, so I need to do them before I start any of this.

That’s the rush to finish Cold War. That’s its purpose. It is to be another powerhouse to bundle with Small Talker and Unpredictable. If I can get it done before Elbert , Black, or King come calling, I can get it to people at WME through Jared, maybe get it to Niad through my own meager connections there, maybe even tug on Mel’s coattails just a little, see how much he barks.

At the same time, I wish I had a director’s reel ready. I’d love to have a nice DVD-R of my filmmaking work to slap on top, to sweeten the deal . Problem is, I may need to edit myself, since my editors are overworked at present. To edit myself, I need to get the graphics card on my desktop upgraded. And I need to find buckets of time and energy that I simply don’t seem to have.

What all this means is, I’m on borrowed time. I need to hurry. Things are aligning. I need to move.

I may have picked the wrong year to quit smoking.

Taking Stock 2010 [part 1]

Feature Screenplays

2002: wrote Intelligence and Ladies & Gentlemen
2003: wrote Blaring Static and Bad Blood (aka Occult Blood)
2004: wrote A Darkling Plane (aka Burying Amelia Waverly)
2005: wrote Storybook Park (moved to LA, January 15th)
2006: fail
2007: wrote Small Talker
2008: wrote Voodoo
2009: wrote Cheating Death and Unpredictable

Short Subject + Episodic Scripts

2002: fail
2003: Anniversary Dinner, Billy Bump
2004: Momentary Engineering, Antebellum, 20 Feet Less Dead, Tumble Dry
2005: Hit & Run, Brains!!, Signal Decay, Alien Ignorance
2006: Just Us League, Space Fax, Small Talker, Perversity & Wine, Zoe
2007: Security Deposit, Creative Comments, Business as Usual
2008: Batteries, Packages, Obama and the Red Phone, Hell Froze Over (8 episodes)
2009: Last Tank, Negative Space, Monstrous Mistress

Filmmaking

2002: Kingdom by the Sea, Darwin’s Kids Graduation Special, The Div III 
2003: Ladies & Gentlemen (failed)
2004: Anniversary Dinner, Momentary Engineering
2005: Antebellum, Brains!!
2006: Signal Decay, Just Us League, Space Fax
2007: Small Talker, Business as Usual, Security Deposit, Firejaw
2008: Batteries, Obama and the Red Phone, Hell Froze Over (10 episodes)
2009: Negative Space, Packages

Not Feeling It Lately

Here’s a shocker: quitting smoking is hard. Not so much because you must stop smoking. More because it sets off a chain reaction of other changes. Many of these unexpected changes – you may not care for.

I’ve broken the habit. But I’m not well-adjusted to the new ones.

Smoking suppresses appetite. Which means, my appetite is now completely unsuppressed. My body doesn’t remember how to make full feelings. Thus, I am hungry all the time. All the time. All. The. Time. While I’m eating, I wish I were eating. How many cheese-steaks could you eat? Eight? Nine? I bet I could eat a dozen. I’d like to try. I’d like to eat a whole head of lettuce with my hands. Right now.

This insatiable hunger means that I can’t eat the stuff I used to eat, because I’d become enormously unhealthy – and enormous. Thus, I am snacking on carrots and celery and crackers. I chain-snack for five hours a day. This daily fruit and vegetable binge adds more unfamiliar material to my system. My miserable digestive system is in non-stop freak-out mode, begging for its life of leisure back.

And that’s not the only dietary alteration. Without cigarettes, sugar and caffeine are amplified. To beat back the life-long specter of insomnia, I’ve had to switch to Sprite, I’ve reduced the sugar in my iced tea, I drink less coffee in the morning. Caffeine aids in focus, sugar aids in motivation and postponing gratification (believe it or not, sugar-rich bloodstreams are more patient, more apt to work toward future goals, because they’re confident they aren’t starving). This adds up to me being fuzzy and unmotivated at work. Work is too much work when I’m on-the-ball. Now I’m slipping behind. Which means I have to stay later. Which means I’m more exhausted when I get home.

Yet, I can’t smoke at the end of a day, so I can’t get that chemical kick-start, that rush of stored-fats released by a cigarette, that magic second-wind. I needed it when my days were shorter, I really need it now that they’re longer. Thus, to replace it, I am walking a mile every evening. Of course, this just dumps more mischief into the chemical cocktail that is my skull.

And on, and on, and on. Everything is shifting. My body chemistry resembles a hurricane. It’s a witches brew that keeps sucking in more ingredients by its own occult powers.

Is it any surprise that my concentration is blown? Or that I feel depressed and trapped? Or that I’m ready to start a whole new life in the field of Occupational Therapy, or as storyboard artist in Connecticut?

My left-brain is struggling for control, teetering around on uneven stilts, trying to keep pictures straight on walls that are crumbling. It won’t give up control, it won’t take a break. It won’t let the right-brain take over. It’s afraid if it steps away, nothing will be left when it comes back. After all, it hasn’t gotten a reward in almost a month. I don’t know how to convince it that we’ll all be okay. I don’t know how to convince it to let right-brain have the wheel a little more often.

I only seem able to write when I’ve exhausted the left-brain completely, late, late at night. Even then it’s a struggle. And it only makes the next time harder, since I’m too tired to enjoy it, and writing becomes associated with exhausted suffering and struggle, instead of right-brain release and peace.

I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting.

It has been 4 weeks, 5 days, 0 hours, 47 minutes since I quit.