Once again, I’m being pulled apart by my own artistic wild horses. There’s so much I want to be doing and have only so much ability to focus—and I don’t even have ADD. Writer’s block comes in a lot of forms. The one I have is where I have a lot of ideas and I can write them, but I’ve beaten myself up before I commit them to paper so they never get there.
I still want to complete this novella I’ve started. The first chapter was easier because most of it was written 10 years ago. Now I’m trying to keep it going. This whole thing was to help jumpstart my writing and I’m flailing around now trying to get started on the second chapter. This is in addition to trying to figure out what to do with my screenwriting. I’ve finished revising one screenplay and sent it to my mentor for his review. I may need another pass at it but I like where it’s at now. I hope he likes it enough to actually help get this into the hands of people who can produce it.
A couple of things have brought me to feeling drawn and quartered. My tax refund is not going to be enough to fully cover what the IRS wants to take out with the audits. The refunds are a lot less than I’ve gotten the last couple of years, but that’s also what got me in trouble with the feds to begin with. And with the credit card debt growing, I see no way out of it. Of course selling a screenplay (or even optioning one) would solve a lot of those problems, but it’s become more desperate to do as the year goes on. The pull to get something sold is a little bit too consuming, but so is the abyss of debt.
Another problem was something that happened on a myspace group board. There was a guy who is connected in the film industry lamenting about what he called “poser screenwriters”—people who call themselves writers but no do everything to break into the industry, like taking assignments from Craigslist (apparently some producers and their assistants do solicit scripts from there). Craigslist seems sketchy to me but that’s what was this guy’s problem. So he was forming a “boot camp” for people to write a screenplay in 8 weeks, the best one to be submitted to Jerry Bruckheimer’s assistant/reader. I considered it but then I emailed him a question if I should target the writing to Bruckheimer’s style/sensibilities—my style is more in the independent film vein and not the Bruckheimer blockbusters. Needless to say he never wrote me back. That sort of made me feel like I’m in that poser screenwriter category. Of course I’m taking that to heart. I shouldn’t and just keep writing but I’m very critical of myself and it already plays into my own self-doubt. So yeah, I’m laying a lot of crap at my own door.
Still there are a couple of things I want to do. I’ve stopped entering screenwriting contests and am concentrating of selling a script. Having said that, there are two opportunities of chance that I am taking: I’m applying for the Natucket Film Festival screenplay competition and the Sundance screenwriting lab. Having been through a writing lab last year, I feel I have a chance to get that. While the Nantucket script is a bit riskier (getting rejected, adding to more self-doubt), I think I may have a shot with it. I don’t have much time for Nantucket, so I’m submitting a script from the year before. With Sundance, I’m trying to rewrite a script I wrote about three years ago that needs two-thirds of it completely rewritten and I have until May 1 to get that done (I think). I’m trying to focus on these two screenwriting items and hopefully break through on that end. Not sure how it will work out.
I need to focus and not be all over the map. I just ruins me, but not sure how to do it any other way.
March 3, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I know what ya mean about the writer’s block. I’ve been researching Plots for my web application, and I’ve found so many things that I don’t know where to start! This coming from a guy who suggested going to one’s research material whenever struck with writer’s block!
So now, the deadline has been shifted from a March release to –whenever. Don’t know. I have to figure out how much of the material will be used and how long it will take me to type it all out, prepare the web pages for it and plug it into the main system.
Plus, I’ve been assaulted with writing ideas. I blame the research for that as well. I hope to get one short story out of it all, but it’s a bit too much creativity in one fell swoop.
Stay frosty, mate. The main difference between life and writing is the denouement in life typically disappoints.