Step One

Write. I beat myself up about this one a lot. “Writer’s block” is a polite phrasing for my problem: A complete lack of focus. Charlie Kaufman writes all weird to keep himself from getting bored, I have to attempt something similar. “I haven’t worked on that manuscript in over a day — time for a giant plot twist.”

At first this one depressed me because I thought: If I really liked writing I wouldn’t have to trick myself into doing it. Except that I do write. I’m doing it right now. According to WordPress in the last three years I’ve written 900 posts, and at circa 300 words per post that’s 270,000 words — enough for three novels, or two with lots of throwaway. I don’t even want to think about how many 90-page screenplays that is. And this amount of writing isn’t that hard.

If I plugged away at manuscripts like I plug away at posts I’d be mid-career right now, or know that I’m no good at it. As it is I have like nine things I’m currently making no progress on. Classic ENFP — fuck! I need a PA. I should put an ad on the UVic job board: “Writer seeks assistant/intern. No pay.”

You can’t really get around this step either. Writers Market only lists people who buy things that you’ve already written, duh. I’m having trouble with that concept, and I blame school and the workforce. Usually you get an assignment and then start work. Of course, this leaves you totally inexperienced when it comes to the desirable careers. That, it seems, is how they get you.

I like to finger-wag in my stuff too, which is bad. We didn’t all grow up Catholic, some people like stories without torture and punishment. I start at the end but theme should come out in rewriting, not prewriting. Solution? Do a bunch of character sketches. Eventually I’ll meet some people I can tell a story with, who aren’t just thinly-veiled aspects of my own personality.

Breakfast today was a handful of multivitamins and echinacea supplements washed down with black coffee and white wine. Good characterization, sure, but the hard part in writing about yourself is that the character needs to learn something — and learning things about yourself is difficult. It’s much easier to fix other people’s problems, and doubly so when they’re of your own invention.

Step Two

Reapply for EI. Have PA reapply for EI.