Happy Valentine's Day

Due to circumstances out of my control, the car I normally drive is unavailable. I'm left with the monster truck van that I have to use a step stool to get into. I feel like a kid driving this car. The steering wheel literally comes to my chin.

I did have to drive, though, because I had a dinner party last night and I had to pick some things up. I had a dinner party for three married couples the day before Valentine's Day. Right, I know. It went really well, the food tasted great, and it was a lot of fun. One day people will ask my friends what they're doing Saturday night and they'll respond, "Oh, Amy's having one of her famous dinner parties." You can totally come.

Is it weird my favourite part of prep is setting the table?

I practiced making the dinner for the party on Wednesday when we had our first snow day. (Yes, you can practice cooking. Some of us should.) On Friday my mom turned to me and said, "Just an observation... You know what you did during our two snow days, right?" I spent like 12 hours baking and cooking and twenty minutes writing.

There are a lot of reasons. I needed to practice cooking. Sometimes, writing isn't always fun. I'm in between projects right now. But I think the problem is that I'm not in the habit of writing every day. It takes a lot of motivation to sit down and write in the first place, and if you're not in a habit, it's ten times more difficult. And I've been saying for the past few months that I'm going to get in a new routine. And I haven't. However, I have this visual reminder in my room of how much work I should be doing.

Between my corkboard collage of movie tickets and my Empire Strikes Back poster. That's right. I have a Star Wars poster in my bedroom.

The big screenwriting competitions, some film festivals. And their deadlines. Deadlines help. And it's not like they're six months away anymore. April, May. Just enough time to get a script cleaned up.

So I have a week off of work. A week free. A perfect time to pick up a habit.