My Life, Measured in Words
March 23, 2006

There are so many days I think I'm not doing any freaking work towards my future -- that life is just getting away from me. Then, I pop open this blog, scroll back through the entries, click on the "On Writing" category, and find recent entries showing what, indeed, I've done.

Since the entry linked to above, I've also completed the draft of yet one more screenplay, the only mention of which is a "Coming Soon" tag I added to this page. No blog entry to remind me -- or whine to y'all -- that I cranked out another 50 some-odd pages between Feb 18th and March 16th on another creation, plus a 15 page report on a multi-national cable company, read a half-dozen screenplays and television scripts, polished off two non-fiction books (read, before bed) plus interned 20 hours a week.

I'm not trying to brag here -- far from it. I'm just a little... amazed, that's all. It might be hard to believe, but in my head I have this vision of myself as "slacking." Since I haven't had a day job for almost two years (has it really been two years since I walked away from the Department of Children and Family Services? Wow!) it's just so easy to see this past time as having "goofed off."

Writing really is about daydreaming. I can teach anyone the mechanics of writing the way its been taught to me. I can tell you how to format a script, how to streamline a scene, how to create better drama, deepen characterization and sharpen themes. At the end of the day though that's just stitching a basket to hold a dream, to a daydream. Screenplays, stories, are really just daydreams, and I've been daydreaming for the past two years.

I think that's what feels so odd -- I've been lost in daydreams. I haven't spent this much time daydreaming since I was a kid. As a kid though, I also didn't churn out 2000 plus pages of product either. I've got a stack of reports out the ass that I wrote these past two years, coverage, notes on others screenplays, plus four, 100 plus page scripts that only existed as a wish in 2004. Damn.

No wonder I feel tired.

No wonder I came home tonight and said fuck writing, fuck reading, fuck playing Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth on my X-Box, and really fuck turning in one last assignment for this quarter for class. I just want to watch TV and zone-out.

And even now, even as I write all of this, I still feel as if I haven't been productive.

It's utterly and unbelievably insane.

I graduate from UCLA on June 16th. More or less I have 3 months, say 12 weeks give or take, before I'm back out in the world. In two weeks, the third and last quarter of the year starts. I'm scheduled to revise one screenplay (which means re-write 75 to 95% of a 110 page script), produce, direct and edit a 25 minute short film, continue my wonderful internship, and quite possibly teach a class. Plus I have to find a job for when I graduate so that I can continue paying my mortgage and making my car note. That's another wow.

That's also utterly and unbelievably insane.

No wonder I don't have boyfriend. Hell, no wonder I'm not getting laid regularly.

Ack. 12:54 AM.

Still have time to complete that journal thing for school and get to bed before my internship in the morning. I started this just to post yet another in my endless series of graphs, this one outlining my progress on polishing a totally-unrelated-to-anything-I-mentioned-before screenplay called "The Dark Place.". There are four or five writing contests that have due-dates starting next week and I have to get this baby done before Monday or Tuesday.

Yes, I'm insane.

Posted by Jody at March 23, 2006 12:08 AM

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