Baby steps

So I'm well enough to write. But I'm still cancelling anything that involves leaving the house. My pride pushes me out the door on occassion, but really work is the only guarantee.

I'm feeling like a writer again. I spent my lunch break working on a treatment and rewrite. The screenplay I started last night is filling out nicely into a fish out of water romantic comedy. There is something simple and challenging in its simplicity about the romantic comedy. You fight the cliches but you're wallowing in one large ocean of them. How does one get out? I wrote a cute act two scene where the protagonist glances at the love interest as they clean the house. It's so cute and in every film that has a famous blond. How can I not grin when I reread it? It's so in the final draft.

You may say three weeks without writing is not really what one would call a drought. But ohhhh did it feel like one. I love writers who say they hate writing. But they can't stop. I relate to that.

I hate writing. I can't stop. It's not like a drug because drugs feel good and are a short cut to a specific state of mind. Writing feels like birth. It's the opposite of drugs. There may be endorphins in the process, but it's only done so you keep going. And the result, the child, is the reward. The end is the high. Sadly, you may have an ugly baby. You may even be birthing a future killer. You don't know. You just know you're done and it's gonna go out into the world and do whatever it was meant to do. The Jesus or the Judas. You're out of the loop at that point. You're disowned. A writer is a person who births baby after baby but never gets to raise any of them. She just sweats on the table, pushes, watches the umbilical cord get cut, reaches out to hold the crying baby, but recoils with a new wave of contractions. And it starts again.

The last three weeks was me laying in bed, waiting for contractions.

Nothing.

And now they start again.

Ooh. There's one now.