The Spine's the Thing

I'm back from New York and driving from place to place, living the life of an itinerant writer. No office, no desk, no smartly-dressed assistant. Today my exploits took me from Mani's Bakery on Fairfax, to the Beverly Hills Library (where there was a most disruptive fire drill), to the Noura Cafe (where I saw tattoo enthusiast Fred Durst), to the relatively new coffee shop on Cahuenga and Sunset, Groundwork (in front of which a motorcyclist was injured in accident, though not badly enough to forgo a cigarette while awaiting medical attention). I feel like I really got a mouthful of Los Angeles today. At least the coffee shops.

Digression: sooner or later, I am going to write about the coffee shops. The "public spaces," too. Anyplace that's amenable to writers and their particular needs. I'll rate them in the detail I expect you would expect from a writer, and might even employ a scale. Something like 1-5, 1 being Hell, i.e. writing while sitting on the men's room toilet in Jumo's Clown Room, 5 being Heaven, i.e. writing at that pay-as-you-go place theOffice... if it were free and in Los Feliz.

ANYway,

My task for the next five weeks is to finish the script I've been nesting on for, oh, the last couple of years. Long ago, I decided to take the I'll-just-let-it-tell-itself approach after spending literally years grinding out the structure, structure, structure on Get Low. I was exhasausted of fucking structure. I just wanted the freedom to write, man. Well, a hell of a lot of good that did me, four years down the pike. There's kind of a *reason for structure. Go figure. So guess what? Back to plotting it out moment for moment until the spineless blob of a "story" I've puked up makes some sense. And so that's what I've done for the last two days (my first two days back at it since I dropped the ball in NY). I've scrapped all the stuff that was going nowhere and laid it all out. It's all about the outline, I don't care who says otherwise. I've tried it every other way and it doesn't work any other way. It just doesn't. And it sucks.

Indulgent Self-Pitying Bullshit

I have ideas. Things kicking around. Things I'd like to chase down, figure out, write about. TV scripts, film scripts; I still have the notion of trying my hand at a novel - but my priorities have recently been put in a new light. Right before I left L.A. for another round of freelance work in New York, three weeks ago, I was told about the projected start date for Get Low. Sept. 12, as I mentioned in the previous entry. Backtiming from then, it means the script that I'm currently writing has to be bagged, stuffed and mounted by the middle of June so that I have something to bring a producer or studio when the project is officially announced in the trade papers and I hopefully (nay, must) begin meeting people around town. And yet I feel stalled. I can't get any time to write here in New York, but I wonder if that's really the problem. I wonder if the script is begotten of a bad idea. I have been trying to write this story in some version or another since 2001. I wonder if I am a would-be one hit wonder. I am pretty sure I can bring it home, but I'm just as sure that it could languish in my mind forever.

It has been a difficult time for me lately, really for a while now. I guess I mean mentally or emotionally or whatever. I suppose us writers are prone to self-scrutiny and introspection and even neurosis since we lead lives of sensitivity and thoughtfulness and solitude. So maybe I've chosen a vocation that plays to my weaknesses just as strongly as my strengths. Or maybe it is nothing so conspiratorial as my profession's influence upon me. Maybe I was born melancholy and indecisive and destined to gravitate toward this oh so impeccibly tailored job. Or maybe, finally, I am in love with nothing more than the idea of being a sourpuss.

I do know that I suddenly feel under pressure to prove I can write, something I thought I had already done. I feel the urgency to write the right thing, thus proving my value as a commodity to Hollywood filmmakers. I also feel the need to be myself, write the kind of things I want to live with for years at a time; to develop ideas that I find interesting no matter the likelyhood of financial success; and to challenge myself to be not merely good, but excellent.

As I prepare to return to my home in L.A., I consider the choices I'm faced with in the coming weeks regarding my state of mental and emotional health, but also what work I devote myself to. There is weird static in the air and the sky is green. Something's coming.

The wonderful thing about writing is that it is an escape, a dream. By writing all day I escape the problems and decisions I, and we all, must make just as surely as though I were taking a narcotic. I live in a world of my own creation and while away the hours in a fantasy that ends only when I decide. Could that be why I can't finish my script?