I haven't posted in a while, but that's only because there isn't much to say. Life has been bumping along pretty monotonously since the holidays wound down, which is mostly a good thing. I'm only working about 55 hours a week now, so I get a little more time to write than I'd had while Book Store was blazingly busy. Just a few things are worthy of mention:
1. It's cold. According to Michele's perusal of the internet this morning, it was -13. With wind chill? -34. I'm not one who generally takes note of the temperature, because it just doesn't impact what I do or how I do it, but this is crazy. The air, without movement, makes my cheeks sting. My eyes continue to water ten minutes after I've gotten inside. Days like this make me hope Michele gets a letter of acceptance from the University of Texas at Austin. And fast.
2. I'm a loser. American Zoetrope announced the winner of their screenplay contest, and it wasn't me. They also listed the top ten runners up. No me. The semifinalists and quarterfinalists included about a million names. But not mine. Lucky for me I have another screenplay in the works and it feels better than Running the Asylum did as I wrote it. It's more cinematic, funnier, and more commercial. I hate thinking of that as a benefit, but screenwriting is as much business as art. Maybe more.
3. I was sick. Yesterday I only lasted two hours at work before I had to go home, green and gasping with nausea. Just the day before we'd been exposed to others with the same bug, but I didn't worry--I never get that stuff. I have a stomach of iron. If either of us gets something, it's usually Michele. No consolation when I was facedown in the throne yesterday doing the technicolor yawn.
4. I'm interviewing. I sent my resume off to an online university, and while they're not hiring right now, they want to put my materials on file for future possibilities. I identified about ten courses they list that I'd be qualified to teach and they agree on four of them, so they sent me an e-mail interview. It feels weird interviewing without seeing the interviewer, for a job at which I may never see my supervisor or my students. Complete disconnect. But I have no way to predict our direction for the next six months or so, and I really want to teach. This might be the only way.
Hopefully we start hearing from grad schools soon. That will help a lot. This limbo crap sucks. On the bright side--I'm writing pretty well now, though I have creative ADD. I spend a week on my short story, then completely fail in the AZ contest and hit the screenplay hard. I should be taking some sort of drugs, I think. Prozac or Zoloft or crack*. Something.
*I am, of course, kidding. I would never take Zoloft.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Brrrr. Sounds cold. We're pretty cold here in Buffalo, too, but not as cold as you. We've been hanging around 0 and the teens for the last week. And for the last two days we've been pummeled by lake effect snow band after lake effect snow band. You know it's bad when it's the weekend and they're broadcasting school, bingo, blood drive, and church closings. I had a movie date with my best girls last night but had to turn around halfway into the half hour drive because I couldn't see two feet in front of me on the road, and the Justin Timberlake movie wasn't worth crashing over.
As for your creative ADD, that's a great thing. I had a outpouring of creativity over my Christmas break. Not having to worry about students' writing really gave me a gorgeous, sumptuous amount of time to worry about my own. I wrote a 47 page story that I now think might be Part One to a novel and another short story (almost wrote shorty story) that I like a whole lot.
Don't worry about the Zoetrope thing. It doesn't mean you're any less talented, worthy, or smart than those people. It doesn't mean you're not going to "make it" or sell a screenplay or anything like that. You're going to do fine. You're going to do great. Just keep going with the new things.
Post a Comment