I just finished a book by an old friend, Carson Mell. We were in a Ron workshop together at ASU, and since then he moved to LA, found an enthusiastic agent, and had this very strange book of his shopped around for a year. When there were no biters, he self-published, and sold out his entire run. An interactive animated short companion to the book appeared in Wholphin. It's a great, funny book. Now I'm looking around for things to mail back.
I guess that's neither here nor there, besides the fact that I hope I'll always find myself looking around for things to send back to each of you, in trade for our little and large successes.
It feels fantastic to quit a crappy job. Carmen got me thinking about this after I quit my crappy job at the fish house. So I figure, here is my advice to the world, whenever you're in a slump in your life, roll down to the HEB or the Blockbuster, fill out an application, wear an ironed shirt and talk about how much you really, really enjoy bagging groceries or stocking movies or whatever, stick around a week, make fifteen bucks, and then go in one day and say, you know what? Fuck this job. Fuck this job.
The key here is to make sure you don't like any of the people at the job, and you don't remotely like the work, and there's no health insurance or growth potential that might make you regret leaving the job. When I left Target, I did slightly regret leaving, because they have this great system set up in their registers that rewards you with the letter "G" if you completed the transaction very quickly. I genuinely liked that. That's all it takes, sometimes.
I cannot believe I am still writing this stupid screenplay. The problem is I love it so much.
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8 comments:
2 things here:
the word "fuck" is wonderful.
can I read your screen play? I'm with Abby, I miss reading the works. I don't miss the sit in a circle and let's behave in this programmed fashion but FUCK, I miss reading everyone's gold.
Rock on. There's plenty of room in my life for a screen play. Is it hilarious and sad?
I miss you.
Oh, it is not done. The concept of it is hilarious and sad. Little bits of it are funny, and I think the parts that are supposed to be sad are clunky. Surely I'll put it up somewhere once it's done. Maybe I will bury it under a playground.
I wonder, has anyone actually completed anything since grad? The best news over here is that I am finally inspired. I have two new ideas in my head for short stories. That in it of itself is a fucking grandslam.
Nope, haven't finished a thing. I'm working on a story that has a growing shape, and I oscillate between being one page in to three pages in. I'm back to the first paragraph. I feel hopeful.
i open this one story, like, twice a day. i'm ten pages into it and i'm still in love with it. i can't do anything but stare at it, though. twice a day.
i want to write a novel. that is what i truly want, but i haven't got a fucking clue how to write a novel. and this story is not a novel.
Finished?! I'm with others, tiring of trying to begin again.
Most of the time I feel hopeful and other times paralyzed. I did perhaps the worst thing ever and picked up a few stories from my thesis w/ the notion that I would do another revision and be proud of myself. Two days later, with nothing accomplished besides grammar clean-up, I just sent them out to some more places because that's so much easier than actual production.
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