It is me. It's me.

I have many faults.  As a writer, I can't even count them.

I have been living with the inability to but together "I am" into one word.  I can't abbreviate anymore.  I even have trouble with he's and she's.  Is it because I want people to be, "he/she is" or "I am"?

I don't have any problems with "he'd" and I don't have a second thought when I abbreviate the letter "I" and should or have.   

I am not one to work harder than I should at anything I do.  I would think it would be a no-brainer to, naturally, without a second thought, abbreviate words.  My brain hasn't been thinking in pairs these days.

The Hor's of Repetition

For all of those that do the same thing, each and every day, I salute you.

Those that say, "I do the same thing everyday," in response to this, does NOT understand what they just read.

Man, am I Conflicted

(You've read this before. This is why this is a blog - It's, continuously, on my mind. It's about me.)

I keep going back and forth. Blog this, blog that. I'll concentrate on being a screenwriter, but I love "novel writing". Short Stories.

Conflicted? Shit! I'm torn.

I started to edit a work in progress. I have many "work in progresses" (that's another blog, finishing an actual story). It may be a short story, it may turn out to be a novel. I even though it would be great as a fictional blog (a.k.a. Diablo Cody). Regardless, my red ink almost ran out on page number two, correcting errors.

Discouraged.

I understand writing, as a career, is hard. I also know I'm a neophyte when it comes to writing. Most writers spend several years, decades even, learning their craft, novel after novel, screenplay after screenplay, rejection after rejection. I know it won't be easy. The problem I'm experiencing is that those writers chose one craft over the other. I know I can do both, but I also know I can't do both until I choose one, and then commit to it.

With screenplays, I am so particular with the actual words. I'm not talking about structure or story. I'm talking about what it will take to distinguish myself from all the other screenwriters - the importance of the first 10 pages, characters that we haven't seen before, descriptions that bursts off the page (but not longer than 4 paragraphs), why I used the word burst when I should have chosen a different word, etc...

With "novel writing", there are so many G.D. words. I can write paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence. I can go to bed thinking that I made progress. Shit, I wrote three "strong" pages. Then I'm awoken at night because those fucking commas have come into my dreams, turning them into nightmares. (I rewrote that last sentence over five times. Should I have placed the comma after "Then" and/or after "night"? No comma?)

I don't think of crap like that when I write screenplays. There aren't any possessive singular nouns, parenthetical expressions, conjunctions, independent clauses, etc... There is a picture, a setting, characters pursuing something, and dialogue.

But....

I can't describe everything in detail in screenplays. Context becomes harder to write. Actions, even the smallest act, taking up one line on a page, tells more about character than a page, or more, in long hand. Maybe that sentence of dialogue shouldn't be in the screenplay? Maybe the character should say that later in the screenplay - maybe not at all. (is that okay to do the dash there?)


I'm going to try an analogy on you. Here we go...

We would all love to have someone clean up after ourselves. Life sure would be easier. It would be like staying at a hotel, each and every day. Who cares if you stain a wash cloth with red wine, leave a half empty pizza box over a day on the carpet, dribble your, overflowing, new cup of coffee on the carpet and never think twice about it, or leave a toilet bowl full of shit that didn't go down the toilet, because the, quote, housekeeper will get to it in the morning, etc...

Believe me, I have your ecterrera for you. Did I say I spend my day, away from writing, taking care of a housekeeping department at a hotel? You stupid slobs. Common cleanliness skills you acquired after third grade would sure help me (I'm thinking of myself) and my staff.

(comma after "skills" and "grade"?)

That ended up being a rant. Anyways, back to my point. Life is hard. Those careers you choose, especially at an older age, are not going to be easy. You may have to go back to square one to be a novel writer. That means going back to school, taking classes. I don't have enough time to write, how the hell am I going to take English classes on top of that?

Life's hard. An unpaid writer's life is hard. Whichever path I choose, I must choose one. I don't believe there is an option unless your earned that option.

Done spellchecking

A little Sorry

It's a bit of a crossroads for me. I have found a fondness for writing. I know screenwriting is writing. It's telling stories. I'm still up for telling great stories. (Great) stories is what holds culture together. I know this as I read "The Catcher in the Rye". It just seems easier to write in block - in thoughts - rather than in pictures. Pictures gives you more immediacy, but words, in paragraphs, gives you more insight than pictures.

Screenwriting is told in pictures. It is told in action. Action, for me, doesn't have to happen in less than two scenes; nor does it have to happen in as few words as possible. Writers must choose one, or the other. This doesn't mean either - or. That is why I am pushed deeper into each paragraph I write. The character tells me more in silence than it does in light - for everyone to see.

I could still see the light in the future. I may pull my fingers closer to my fists and think, rather than type. I may find a camera more fun than a typewriter. I may wake up in the morning and find action. I am not one for action though, at least not for now.

J.D. Salinger is singing to me.

Sophomore

I am, currently, writing a story about a high school student who is a sophomore. The story is far from autobiographical, but I started thinking about high school and, specifically, my sophomore year. This year also marks my 20th year anniversary from graduating high school (more about reunions later).



Sophomore year is such a strange time. You have passed the middle school test, and you got through that scary and stressful time called Freshman year. You don't have to worry too much about college, other than getting good grades. You still have the same friends from middle school and/or grade school. Whatever extra curricular activities you participate in, you meet people through those social interactions who become your friends. As a sophomore, you are, basically, gliding along. Having fun. Playing sports. Hanging around. Riding bikes.



For me, the one thing I remember about sophomore year is that this was the time where I developed my political ideology. I didn't think too much about politics, government, and how those two things influences our lives. I remember a couple friends of mine (apparently more astute than me) talking about how bad Ronald Reagan was as President. How he was stupid and would sleep during meetings, as well as sharing their other, negative opinions. I kept thinking that he was the President. Having a report due about a historical figure, I picked Reagan. A long story short, for the past 10+ years, I have had a portrait of Ronald Reagan hung up on my wall, over my bed. Enough said.

Back to my story.

With Sophomore year being a year of hanging out and, basically, taking a bunch of stuff in, I am trying to capture that with my character as he goes through this strange time.

In regards to reunions. My friend and I had a friendly argument about whose responsibility it is to find out about your high school reunion (my 20th this year). She said it was my responsibility to find out if, or when my high school reunion is taking place. I would agree if my reunion was during the 1980's or the 1990's. In this age of Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, blogging, texting, tweetering, and, I would hope, one of the main tasks of the organizers of the event, getting people to go, I would have zero responsibility to find out when and where the reunion would take place.

I don't know if I miss high school or if it had that much of an influence on my life. It was a weird time.