Manic

Trying desperately not to be distracted by my play direction class...

Still without a personal computer

Fall term really stinks. The library is overloaded with people and the computer servers are slow. Plus I'm crippled by guilt when I see the engineers toiling over these complicated math problems and I'm just watching netflix and brainstorming.

Chemicals?

GODDAMN stupid Bigfishgames.com for having so many inane, whimsical games that are just engaging enough to distract me from getting anything productive done. I have found my vice, and it is Virtual Villagers 4: the tree of life.

I already know the story of my life- unfortunate choices that cannot be pitied or related to because they are so laughable.


Also, I've destroyed another laptop. This will be the fourth one since freshman year (granted, only one has been new, the rest were hand-me-downs). Anyway, I have everything backed up, so now I just have to get a new one and put all my shit on it.

Discipline?

I'm on vacation right now, and of course I'm finding it difficult to stay on a writing schedule. There is so much temptation to just waste away the days doing crossword puzzles and downloading game trials on Big Fish games.

The family and I were supposed to go to Ocean City, NJ this weekend, but Early derailed our plans, so that should open up some writing time for me.

Ha ha!

I'm writing this post just to prove Professor Kaufhold wrong on point one of his recent discussion about the end of the first term. I've been quite proud of the fact that I've been posting semi-regularly this term, because for my workshop I hardly posted at all.

As Murphy's Law would have it my laptop contracted a virus exactly when I needed it most to finish the first half of my script. Fortunately I'm at home visiting my family so I was able to download a five-day trial of MMSW on this desktop while my computer is debugged.

I'm within a few pages of my mid-point right now (I'm planning on it running about 90 minutes, so I'm aiming for 45 pages as a number-marker). It's been a very different process writing this as opposed to my last full-length: I'm not wracking my brain trying to come up with clever action sequences, I can just focus on the people and their eccentricities. But I don't want to make up wackadoo situations just for the sake of being weird (ie anything Wes Anderson does), I want my characters to be odd, but believable. Because as a rule, real people are so much weirder than movie characters. I want the amusement and interest on the audience's part to come from a kinship and familiarity as opposed to laughing at the absurdity of a man who breeds dalmatian mice.

Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favorite movies, coincidentally... but that doesn't mean I think it is well-written.

Helen Keller

I do think these blogs are very useful for our professor to keep track of our progress, but I feel weird writing about writing. I find its better for me to just dig into it and then talk about my results rather than rant about my many excuses for not finishing the work when I wanted to.

I also get anxious and want to write immediately after I make one of these posts. But it's Thursday, so I'm at the film office, and I'm answering phones, which makes me break into a cold sweat. Ask me to march into a room full of people and do a 15 minute presentation and I'm there, but Helen Keller could handle a telephone call better than me.


Ah, Helen Keller jokes...

Morton Smiley

The first time I am hit on in public and it's by an octogenarian. His name was Morton Smiley (I know it sounds fake, but he gave me a business card with his name on it and everything). He runs an embroidery company that is about to launch a website, and he has a granddaughter that apparently teaches at Drexel, but he doesn't remember her name.

Nonetheless I got an unopened bag of dove chocolate (Peanut Butter Toffee Flavor) out of it, and the best name ever to use for future writing.


P.S. Even though I know nobody reads this I want to say it anyway; the next time you're in a comic book store check the back of Amazing Spider-Man issue #639, I'm listed in the credits as one of the interns. An awesome moment for me, to say the least, I'm very grateful.


EDIT: Aaand as far as my screenplay goes, it's time to start fucking with my characters' senses of well-being.