Day One

Hi. I am a writer in Los Angeles. One of many. One of thousands. Just in Los Angeles. This doesn't include the myriad writers in every other corner of the world who truly believe that they have something worthwhile, no, worth value, to contribute to the masses. It's a sickness, I think. A complete lack of rational pragmatism. It's similar to the concept of buying lottery tickets day in and day out, except writing requires effort beyond a trip to the 7-11. It requires discipline, oodles of time, ample amounts of arrogance, and, most importantly, the will to sit down in front of a computer or a pad of paper and actually write. My mother once said, and I'm sure she stole this quote from somewhere, that "a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people."

(To give you an example of how impossible this can be, I had the strongest compulsion just now to look up the genealogy of "7-11" to learn why, exactly, it's called "7-11" for no reason beyond curiosity. I also want to go to ESPN and find out what college basketball games are coming up. And for that matter, I haven't checked the Huffington Post in almost 15 minutes. In other words, the internet is the devil and I am a weak weak man.)

The irony of this, of course, is that I should be working on a short screenplay. (Yes, I am a screenwriter. And now a blogger. I feel more and more like a cliche every day.) So while we analyze the reasons for my lack of success, well, this blog provides just the kind of ironic twist I do so enjoy.

I'm going to try to keep this running daily. I've only once ever been able to approximate that kind of consistency, and only for a month. I'd like to detail the course my life takes for a while. For instance, I am currently unemployed, writing this in a room in a house I found on craigslist, a house which is old and has no heat, and worse still, no insulation, and so I am sitting in a winter coat with knit cap at my desk while, in the background, one of my roommates, a 30 something video game tester, proceeds to clear his throat over and over again at an obscene volume with what can only be described as the sound of tearing paper. Lovely.

I didn't write a single word yesterday. Want to know why? I watched an episode of Friday Night Lights, played a round of disc golf, went to dinner, went to a party, came home and fell asleep.

Most of the time I feel like a waste of space. My hope is that this blog will at least get me to sit at my computer and get those writing juices flowing.

And just to let you know. I am currently at different stages in the production of three projects. One is a short screenplay, the other a feature length, and the third is a short story.

So - I'm off to write. Fingers crossed.