Zapped

I interviewed for a job last week. It's not a job in film, because I don't have that sort of commitment level in me, but it's a real, salaried job. (Ok, that comment about the film industry is a little untrue. I poked around the film jobs near me but decided I didn't want the hour-each-way-commute or the 10-12 hour days with no time to write. That is, of course, assuming I could even get one of those jobs.) I haven't heard back yet, but my sources on the inside tell me good things.

As it is, though, I currently don't have a job. I try to make my life meaningful by leaving the house at least once a day and baking various confections as quickly as we can eat them. I've recently discovered I can tolerate Starbucks macchiatos, for all the time I spend there staring listlessly at my computer screen. I try to write at least once a day because, like I said, I don't do anything else to be a contributing member of society, but the last couple days my creative juices have been completely zapped. I don't even consider it writer's block when I'm not even able to focus on any current projects.

The only thing I'm making any progress on is the screenplay D. and I thought up inside an elevator. And by progress, I mean I'm plunking out a page or two a day, cringing at how flat and uninspired my writing is. I'm still in Act I, no matter how desperately I'm crawling towards the act break. It's at times like these I'm glad I can type without looking at the screen, because then I can advert my eyes away from the train wreck.

This is when the whole writing as a career thing starts to look like a bad idea. Paranoid Writer Syndrome starts to encroach upon the logic of how mastering the craft takes time, the fact that I have improved, the fun I do have while writing, yada yada yah.

I did finally connect with Current Draft last night. Perhaps I am stunted as a writer, but I find that I write better and the story flows faster when the emotional core of the story is related to something going on in my life. And last night I figured out how Current Draft related to my life, and I skipped ahead and wrote a scene in Act II and made the characters pontificate to each other. A scene that's terribly on the nose. A scene that will most likely get completely reworked and rewritten, if not completely cut. But it's in the file, in its own little tab, so that when I get frustrated and confused and start thinking about how satisfying it would be to throw my computer against the wall I can glance back at this little scene and remind myself about the emotional core of the story. It's a lot easier to write when I remember how this story is just my story.

I never thought Act I was that much fun to write anyway.