Paranoid Writer Syndrome

I have very recently realized what a nervous writer I am. The thing is, writers are all a little bit mental. We all have our varied neurosises, which are, of course, endearing, and the one I will focus on today is our disinclination towards the Current Draft.

You see, the Current Draft proves what absolutely inadequate writers we are. Any previous successes can be admired and future ideas can be refined into idols, but the Current Draft, well, that's what matters. And if you can feel that with each key you press on your keyboard, your story becomes less inspired, more cliched, and flatter than the paper it will be printed on - well, that sort of dread doesn't just go away. The problem with the Current Draft is that it proves we are Talentless Hacks.

I wrote a screenplay last summer. I even sent it off to the Nicholl competition last week. And as I was working on it, I was happy to notice one thing. I Liked It. I really, truly enjoy the story of The 4:05. I would be happy to work on it for years, rewriting it incessently, grinding my teeth against unnecassry but enforced changes, watching it on the big screen. It's a story I am proud of. And even one of the shorts I've written since. It's been through two drafts and received some criticism from a screenwriting student more advanced than I, and I can see myself working on it until it's perfect and pursuing its production by All Means Necessary (there's a scene with an outdoor wedding that might be a little tricky). So past scripts, ok, I Like Them and future ideas, well, I'm all geared up and excited for Script Frenzy. I spend waaay too much time gabbing on the message boards and dreaming up ideas for my poster, because I'm afraid if I do any really planning, I'll get bored with my idea before we start (another neurosis, Pre-Writing Burn Out). So past and future scripts, I Feel Good about.

It's this crappy thing I'm working on right now that's killing me.

I needed something to write in between the Nicholl competition and Script Frenzy, and I was bored with shorts, so I just picked one of my three feature ideas and just determinedly plugged away at it. Since this week, I've gotten it up to 28 pages. Not bad at all. I'm done with Act I, I think. The Thing That Is Bad, though, is the fact that I pretty much feel nothing for this story at all. Maybe I'll get attached to Act II. I have some good ideas. But that's like the Idolization of Future Ideas syndrome. Of course they're Good Ideas! I haven't written them yet!

What if The 4:05... what if it was - a Fluke? Writers don't get very many indications of Talent. All we have are those people who we force our manuscripts upon, and if they aren't legally bound to give us the thumbs up, they probably don't want to hurt our feelings anyway. Even if they genuinely, truly liked it, a writer will go crazy from the words "It was good" because what does that indicate, really? "It was good" gives no idea about Talent. And that is what matters in this business. You have to be talented enough to craft a story that enough people connect with that a script reader will give a Pass on it, a development producer will meet with you for lunch, someone will sign you, executives won't sign another writer to replace you, stars will connect with the characters, a director won't mangle it (too much), an editor won't splice it, distributors will buy it, theatres will show it, and thousands of people will spend their hard earned 8 dollars on it, just to ensure that you will get another shot at conjuring the magic that worked once. I know I've missed a whole bunch of people along the way, forgive me.

The point is, with the Current Draft, you can't be too sure you have that Talent. It's like training to be an economist without being sure if your supply and demand theories are right, training for desert fighting when you could be at war in the mountains, practicing the harp without hearing other harpists, building airplanes without knowing if the fact that you put in square windows is a bad idea (it is, by the way). Cameron Crowe once said that making a movie is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Screenwriting is no different.

And I'm just praying that it will rain.

Green Eyes

Honey you are a rock
Upon which I stand
And I come here to talk
I hope you understand

That green eyes
Yeah the spotlight shines upon you
And how could
Anybody deny you

I came here with a load
And it feels so much lighter now I’ve met you
And honey you should know that I could never go on without you

Green eyes
Honey you are the sea
Upon which I float
And I came here to talk
I think you should know

That green eyes
You’re the one that I wanted to find
And anyone who
Tried to deny you must be out of their mind

Cause I came here with a load
And it feels so much lighter since I met you
Honey you should know that I could never go on without you

Green eyes
Green eyes

Ohohohohooooo
Ohohohohooooo

Ohohohohooooo
Ohohohohooooo

Honey you are a rock
Upon which I stand

- Coldplay

Maybe if I write about screenwriting, I'll become a screenwriter.

This week I mailed off a script to the Nicholl Fellowship competition, run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The guys who do the Oscars. This contest is *the* contest for amateur screenwriters. The $30,000 prize is nothing to sneeze at, but I think the thing that everyone really covets is the week-long trip to Hollywood where they introduce you to a lot of important people and let you go to lots of fancy dinners with your fellow star-struck and still dirt poor screenwriting winners.

Unfortunately, getting my script out in the mail was kind of a big hassle. I've decided I don't function well unless there's an abnormal amount of stress in my life. The night before I needed to mail out the screenplay I decided that Celtx formatting wasn't going to cut it for the Nicholl competition. Mind you, these people have accepted *handwritten* submissions before, and Celtx is only off by about half an inch with its dialogue margins and its type is a little too large, but I become a perfectionist in the worst of times. So that night I spent four hours reformatting into Word - and I didn't even finish. Transferring my script into Word also showed just how many typos my screenplay suffered from, though, so it wasn't a complete loss.

The next was May 1, the day it had to be post marked. I thought I would have enough time to perfect it and print it out to send it from our local post office by 5:00 pm. Imagine me, 3:30 on the bus back from New York City, stuck in traffic and frantically working on my laptop deleting superfluous returns, praying that my battery didn't die. Luckily, my aunt had tipped me off to a 24-hour post office back in New York in case I didn't make it in time for the Jersey post office. So when I had finally printed off my 78-page screenplay and squeezed it into the envelope at 7:30, it was back to the bus stop to go back into New York. A bus came pretty quickly, though I was almost denied entry because I had an open soda (I managed to hand it off to some nice man exiting the bus. Who says Jersey people aren't sweet?) but can you imagine letting something like that stop me? I wish it had, in retrospect, as I apparently boarded the local bus and was treated to an hour long scenic route into New York. On the plus side, now I know all the romantic spots to take my dates to impress them with the beauty of the New York skyline.

The 24-hour post office is only about ten blocks from the Port Authority. I must not walk downtown a lot at night (does 9:00 really count as night in the city that never sleeps?), but though I don't consider myself a girl who is easily unnerved, I'm not sure what I would have done if I had needed to take a side street off 8th Avenue. Creepy. Apparently, lots of people need the 24-hour service, because when I got there, the line almost stretched half the length of the building. I was in line for 45 minutes. On the plus side, I managed to engage the people around me in conversation. The guy behind me was about to graduate in film from the only other college I applied to along with Michigan. Crazy, I don't know big Hunter is or if we would have run into each other, but we could have been friends instead of random strangers in line at the post office.

Eventually, I managed to mail off my script. I think, though, that I could have just used the self service machines in the lobby to get the May 1st postmark. It's ok. I'd rather have my peace of mind.

My chances in this competition are slim. Around 5,000 people competed last year for 5 fellowships. But I still feel that even entering the competition was a big step. And it helped me finish The 4:05. I can completely put it aside now and start work on something new. I have a couple of features I'm tinkering with, but I'm most looking forward to June's Script Frenzy by the same people who do National Novel Writing Month. That's the month I leave for my summer job, though, so I'll only have 20 days to write a script instead of 30.

Like I said, I think stress is just a necessary part of my life...

"There are but two boons in life: The love of art, and the art of love."

- Michael Whelan

How iTunes really makes its money.

I like iTunes, a lot. It fulfills my musical instant gratification. I'm the type of person who instantly falls in love with a new song and listens to it on repeat for three days straight, and iTunes is very helpful towards that.

However, iTunes is also a constant source of frustration. When you go to look for a song, a specific song, you find that you are invariably faced with too many choices. I mean, this should be easy, right? You know what song you're looking for. And then, all of a sudden, there are covers, tributes, edits, the same song from different albums, etc. etc., and you can't even tell which *version* you're looking forward.

Invariably, I pick the wrong version.

This has happened to me twice recently. Two dollars for two songs, not a bad deal, true, but one version I will never listen to, as I've downloaded the wrong version of a song and had to, therefore, go back and get the right one. Shame on me. Instant gratification strikes back.

"Listen to this song - it will change your life, I swear."

I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago, about my major and what I'm going to do after college, and I said something to the effect that I wanted to make movies that changed people's lives. And his reaction, well, it was almost like disbelief. I know that not everyone holds the view that film can be art. Lots of people think that it's just entertainment (the most powerful entertainment industry right now, but...). But I felt a little shocked, not only that my friend had never been moved by a film to the point where it helped shape his life, but that he seemed to think I was naive for believing so.

I have my doubts about this career. It seems pretty selfish sometimes. I have friends who are going to be doctors and nurses and missionaries, and I'm going to go play around in pretend worlds. But then I remember reading something in Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, which is basically his spiritual autobiography. I don't remember what the exact passage is (even after trying to go back and find it several times), but he talks about how he was prepared for his conversion to Christian through all the books he had read, the ancient pagan myths and fairy tales alike, how his "imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer." One of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times was prepared for his faith through the stories he heard.

I'm in love with the movie Stranger than Fiction. I've seen it three times already and I'm planning on buying it once I have a chance to get a cheap copy. I was watching it last night with about ten other people, and I realized that a writer and a filmmaker, the movie resonates differently with me. Kay Eiffel is a writer, and she wants to write the most amazing masterpiece of a book ever. Every writer wants to write a masterpiece. But there comes a time when she has to choose between her finishing masterpiece and therefore killing someone or changing the end of her book to save a life. And in the end she has a beautiful quote when replying to a professor about her book:

"[I]t's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die. And then dies. But if a man does know he's about to die and dies anyway. Dies- dies willingly, knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn't that the type of man who you want to keep alive? "

If every movie I ever wrote was based on this core idea, I would be happy. If every movie I ever wrote was about love and sacrifice, the beauty in life inspite of the pain, the hope, friendship, family that redeems our lives, I would never regret picking this selfish career. If a movie can open a person's eyes up to the love in life and inspire them to actually live, isn't it worth three years of my life and eight of their dollars? Film has so much potential to show life as it is and as it should be. Imagine if the film industry became an industry that produced movies that had a real purpose. What if the industry could spread hope?

I know my life has been shaped by movies. Art restores my faith in people. When you get a chance to see truth, in no matter what form, you can't just ignore it. It would just be nice to know if other people felt the same way too.

Has anyone had a movie change their life?

I think you should

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven...I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California...I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean...I guess I should

- "A Long December" Counting Crows

Unknown

This doubt is screaming in my face
In this familiar place
Sheltered and concealed
And if this night won't let me rest
Don't let me second guess
What I know to be real
Put away all I know for tonight
And maybe I just might
Learn to let it go
Take my security from me
And maybe finally
I won't have to know everything

I am falling into grace
To the unknown to where you are
And faith makes everybody scared
It's the unknown, the don't-know
That keeps me hanging on and on and on to you

I got nothing left to defend
I cannot pretend
That everything makes sense
But does it really matter now
If I do not know how
To figure this thing out

I am falling into grace
To the unknown to where you are
And faith makes everybody scared
It's the unknown, the don't-know
That keeps me hanging on and on and on to you

I am against myself again
Trying to fit these pieces in
Walking on a cloud of dust to
Get to you

I am falling into grace
To the unknown to where you are
And faith makes everybody scared
It's the unknown, the don't-know
That keeps me hanging on
And I am falling into grace
To the unknown to where you are
And faith makes everybody scared
It's the unknown, the don't-know
That keeps me hanging on and on and on to you

- Lifehouse

Um --

Why is it that art renews my faith in people? Shouldn't life be doing that?

Sometimes I wish I'd get into trouble just so that someone could rescue me.

I was hanging out in Borders for a little while the other week, and I picked up this book randomly called Post Secret. Inside were photos of postcards hundreds of people had made. On it they wrote a secret. Some were funny, some were shocking, and some were eerily familiar.

A couple days later I stumbled across this blog via Facebook (one of the reasons I love Facebook...): http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ It's the Post Secret guy's blog, and every week he posts new post cards people have sent him. He even holds events, which I would totally go to if there were one in our area.

So, I started wondering about what my post secret post card would look like if I made one. What it would say on it. And I had to figure out why this was so fascinating for me. Everyone has secrets, and usually, even when you learn someone's secrets, it doesn't affect you the way that these post cards resonated with me. And I think I have figured out why I am so enchanted with the post secret idea besides the fact that I love finding out secrets and I'm trying to work on better honesty in my relationships and life. I think it's because that when someone tells you a secret, usually what they tell you is the facts. When I was little, I did this. When you were gone this happened. Sometimes I think this. But these postcards don't just tell you what happened. They tell you how these secrets have changed the people's lives. How they're part of a person's psyche. What a person thinks about. These secrets could change someone's life. One of my favorites is a post card with a receipt stapled to it, and all it says is "If I don't get rid of this receipt, I'll call the number on the back and regret it."

There's this extreme honesty in these post cards that I don't feel even when I'm talking to people about secrets. You can still feel yourself or them hanging back from telling you exactly what happened. And giving you the facts of what happened, that's an easy way out because you're saying your secret, but you're not revealing it. But to say how it's affected you, why you did it, to show how it's changed your life or, in some cases, hasn't, the ways it's wrecked or helped your dreams. I don't know. Maybe someone else can say why these post secrets are so different.

I think I'm going to start writing my secrets down the way these post cards are written. I picked up my journal again for the first time since the summer. We were watching a movie in Spanish, and there's a boy who's an aspiring writer who's killed in a car crash. And his mother starts to read his journal. Someone is a completely different person in what they write, sometimes. I looked back at a couple of things I wrote over the summer, but I didn't really read a lot. There was one thing I wrote down that I wrote that was so blatantly truthful, it surprised even me. Sometimes I wonder, when I'm gone and I've left them to whoever, my children maybe, what they'll think when they read them. I got to know someone through reading what they left behind. Will they be surprised? Will they wish they had known me better? Will I make them feel like it's ok to be as broken as ever is but no one ever says they are?

Do you think everyone wants to know the truth? I don't think so...