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?
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