No Time To Write (Maybe)

I dunno…maybe I should suspend the Enforced Secret Joy Friday posts. I can’t seem to find the time to write about them anymore. It’s hard to find the time to write about ANYTHING these days. All my big plans, my three outlines for three new scripts that I did back in August and September, they’re all just a hazy memory now. Not that I didn’t write them, and not that I couldn’t start work on them. But finding the time to write them, it’s just not there. And that means I’m like 80 percent of other writers out here. A lot of writers don’t get anywhere out here because they #1: don’t write or #2: give up. Neither one of which gets you what you want. Writers WRITE, and they don’t let anything stop them, lack of time notwithstanding.

Last year, when I was doing Writers Boot Camp and temping at the same time, I would roll out of bed at 6am in the morning, have a cup of hot chocolate and a Red Bull chaser and get two hours of writing done before going to work. So it’s not like I haven’t done it before. True, I wasn’t running a blog last year. Maybe that’s the difference. Or maybe too many Red Bull chasers warped my insides. Because those days last year seem like the optimistic behavior of a college kid. Yeah! Gimme the Red Bull and watch me knock out ten pages before work! WHOOOOO HOOOO!

Regardless, things are still pretty hectic at this temp gig, and running the Christmas show at the same time, and that’s a HUGE reason why I haven’t had time to write. Things might possibly get better by Friday, and since I’ve just publicly pondered over suspending the Friday posts, that most likely means I’ll squeeze out the minutes for an Enforced Secret Joy post somewhere, and make me look silly for considering suspending it in the first place. All I’m saying is…we might be doing Sunday posts only for awhile.

When I was walking up to the theater last Wednesday night for opening night of the Christmas monologue show, there was a knot of actors standing outside for a dinner break. When they saw me coming, they all elbowed each other until everyone was looking at me, and they all plastered shit eating grins on their faces. This normally means one of two things – there’s about to be a colossal practical joke played on me involving something like a rubber chicken or some sort of nasty rumor has been spread involving me AND a rubber chicken. So I square my shoulders in a Wary Stance as I approach, “What’s going on, guys?”

And one of them throws out his arm, beckons me in, and gives me a great big hug, looks me dead in the eye and says, “Your monologue is SO GREAT.”

Wha-huh? My monologue?

The other actors chime in about how much they love it, how my actress playing Gabriel the angel is so great, the monologue is “funny, it’s poignant, it’s wonderful.”

Oh, that’s right. I wrote a monologue, didn’t I. I’ve only seen it rehearsed once in the director’s living room because they were rehearsing during the day when I was working. And I’ve pretty much forgotten what I’ve written, since I’ve written so little these days. And all my waking moments are consumed with getting this, that, and the other project done. So my goal tonight was to produce the show. The fact that I actually had a monologue IN the show was far far behind me. Until the actors said something. It’s kinda like being so busy buying Christmas presents for others that you forget you’re gonna get stuff too.

And seeing the thing up on its feet, and seeing what my fabulous actress and what my fabulous director brought to the thing, and hearing the audience laugh at the jokes, and realizing how I managed to pull off something that has a very overt Christian bent (at one point, Gabriel says, “Trust me. Nothing is impossible with God.”) without being too obnoxious about it (‘cause if it was obnoxious, boy howdy would those actors have let me know), is just, well, pretty f’ing cool. And a huge saving grace for me, since I’ve been kicking myself for weeks for not writing anything.

But if I don’t write something new in the next two weeks, I’m really a loser. Ha ha ha.