wilderworks

I worked all weekend on the treatment for Sick Day , but I only made it slightly into the second act. Starting yesterday afternoon, after I made dinner, the exhaustive detail of the thing started to weigh on me. I took a nap and felt exhausted by the size of it. It will be a thirty-page scriptment at this rate, and I simply don't know whether that is for the best or not. Moving backward through time, Unpredictable had a full treatment, but it was so overlong, plot-wise, that it was vastly and explosively revised as I wrote the screenplay. By the end, the script and the treatment has diverged in very serious ways. That was okay. The only problem was, the script was also okay. Nothing more. I can't afford to do that again. With Gravedigger's Son , I'd written and re-written that treatment a hundred times, several times from scratch. I'd tried writing it as a novel. I'd started on the script as many as three times before realizing that I'd missed the boat ...

Left 7:13 AM | Arrived 7:38 AM This morning the 405 flew, and I arrived about the same time I always do. I can't explain either part of that statement. The ease of travel may have been due to a six-car pile-up, just north of my entrance, that choked back the usual overflow passing through the Galleria corridor. It may have been due to increasing amounts of spring break being observed by colleges in the area. It may have been because Passover begins tonight at sundown, according to my calendar, but not according to my Jewish friends. I'm not sure. As to how I arrived at the same time, despite traffic being non-existent? I can't even begin to guess. Like advanced branches of quantum theory, Los Angeles traffic will never make intuitive sense to the human mind. Our species simply wasn't evolved to interact with systems this foreign and complex. Even with mathematics and metaphors, we can barely bridge the gap. We can't predict it. We can't explain...

I am back at Grounded Cafe . It is 10:15 AM, and I just dropped my dog Bacon off at a new groomer, not too far from my apartment. It's called Mr. & Mrs. Dog . The woman there seemed very nice, but her accent was a rare form that I absolutely could not place or penetrate. I followed her almost entirely by making guesses about the meanings of her gestures and by constructing my replies such that they could have sprung entirely from personal inspiration, not strict response. When she said "vaccinations?" I asked her to repeat it three times, the third time by softly saying, "I don't understand what you're saying," because "vaccinations" started with an "O," and only had three syllables. "Ossendens" is the best transcription I can make. I'm not making fun; I'm simply describing how hopeless I felt. In any case, Bacon won't notice, and she seemed optimistic despite my warning: he won't let me clip ...

Left 7:09 | Arrived 7:39 It's overcast and silver-lit outside. It's the first time that the sun hasn't been rising, blazing in my window as I drove in, peering over my shoulder as I sit here. I rather like it. It brings a timeless quality to the morning. It could be anytime on a cloudy day. A slick-haired Hispanic businessman, wearing a goatee, a pink shirt, and a neck brace, just asked me if I was sitting here yesterday. I told him "Close. I was right up there. But yeah." He nodded silently and stepped away. I ordered only fruit and coffee. As usual, the fruit is cantaloupe and some sort of greenish-yellowish melon. I cut them into little pieces. This will cost me about $4 or $5, but I will tip at least $3. I want to establish the point that the staff gets the same, no matter what I order.

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:37 AM The angle of the sun is changing. Earlier everyday, the sun blazes through the windows of Norm's, laying itself across the whole restaurant. If I sit with my back to it, I can block its glare from my screen with my body, but it is orange-gold and blinding. Today I will have two eggs, over easy, with sourdough toast and a side of fruit rather than hashbrowns. Let's see how that makes me feel. Then again, I really prefer scrambled to over easy. . . EOE or ES. I'm wondering if the immense increase in morning coffee consumption is adding to the inflamed taste buds in my mouth, or to the sore growing on the inside of my cheek. Meanwhile, allergy season has amped up to 9 or 10 out of 12 on the daily pollen reports, and the inside of my nose is dry and bloody, stinging and burning. Pressing the tip of my nose can squeeze a tear from my eye, like a tear dispenser. Daily running and walking is making my legs, knees, and upper-ass ache. I'...

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:42 AM I was stupid and lazy last night and neglected to plug in my Asus Linux netbook, and so I'm on this vastly over-sized Apple laptop, which reduces my focus and - still, after almost a year of using it almost daily - feels like I'm typing with my thumbs tied to my wrist. Let's be honest here, folks, Apple spaces their keyboard keys too far apart, and their text navigation hot-keys are insufficient for intense writing and revision. There's no question that their keyboards look good. The question is, why don't they type good? Why must I suffer? My roommate has a new Apple laptop, and the keys are spaced so far apart that I can't rest my fingers comfortably on all the home-keys at once - and I have relatively longish fingers. I have similar feelings about the operating system itself. I find it clumsy in many complicated multitasking situations, particular with any software that utilizes multiple windows. In particular, it is vastly ove...

It's Sunday. It's almost 1 PM, and I'm out at Grounded Cafe , a coffee shop and internet cafe on Ventura Blvd. I found it with the Yelp application on my cell-a-ma-phone , and I decided to give it a try. There is another place with free wifi and pay coffee recommended by the program: it's called Crave . I drove past it. It looks very busy and bohemian, and there wasn't any street parking within five blocks. So, maybe next weekend. Maybe never. I am trying to reduce the cost of these writing expeditions by making them coffee-only, or snack-only, instead of full-meal. Perhaps I could do that at Norm's, but it feels wrong. It feels like I'm taking up a profitable booth. This is likely ridiculous, since the booths are rarely even close to filled. But coffee shops are places where you are supposed to do this sort of work. I guess this is who I've become. My binary opposite. Someone who writes in public. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows, even when we...

The term "space madness" keeps coming up while I'm working on  Sick day . It first appeared because, at 8 AM, I couldn't remember the phrase "cabin fever." And then I remembered the episode of Ren & Stimpy . And that's why I capitalized it. Space Madness . I don't know how universal an experience Ren & Stimpy was. I remember vividly watching the first seasons as they aired, sometimes with groups other boys at a friend's house. I was 11 or 12. A few years later, they were off the air. People younger than I was may have missed them entirely. Research , and the memory of a friend who was a few years older in 1991, and thus more savvy to how these things worked, reveals that Nickelodeon fired the creator John K after the second season. By coincidence, reviewing the episode summaries, I only recall episodes from seasons one and two, which are where all the classics reside. Anyone who saw seasons after those would've had a completely dif...

I am at the Lamplighter on Van Nuys blvd, about two or three miles from my house. It is Saturday, and it  is 11AM. That's about two hours before I usually get up on weekends, and 2 hours after my alarm clock started going off. In any case, I am here, and my laptop is open. I have one hour before I need to pick up Beezie at the airport. Then, I suspect I will be taking her to her place to take care of the cats, and then taking her to various dealerships to look at used cars, since hers was destroyed in an accident about two weeks ago. I'm not feeling nearly as motivated at this hour of the day. Perhaps I'm just feeling less mentally sharp. Perhaps it's because the text messages and emails and conversations with my people, my mother, my roommate, my girlfriend, have already begun, and my mind is unable to focus on fiction and storytelling. Once again, I have this nagging emotional tug telling me that people are needing my attention. Perhaps, on the weekends, this ...

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:34 AM Can I pause here to mention how deeply I wish I could just stay here at Norm's, hour after hour, writing, researching on the internet, and being a writer - rather than scurrying off to the vortex of distraction that is my paid employment? Can I pause here to mention how much this strange, difficult, and expensive exercise has reminded me that I actually enjoy coming up with stories? As it turns out, I just don't enjoy doing so in competition with the demands of the world, with everything vying for my attention.

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:39 AM I'm not a morning person. I'm not even an afternoon person. Getting up at 6 AM these last three days has slowly replaced my blood with thick, bitter syrup. The problem is, being a night owl, even if I've been up since 6 AM, I can't find my way to Sleepytown until well after midnight. And Sleepytown is a dump now, full of industrial pollution, strip malls, and like three Applebee's. And, you know what, everyone? Strip malls? They'd be much less reviled if they actually had strippers. Last night, as I drifted off, I could feel how terribly tired I'd be today, and some part of my brain floated the idea of skipping a day of writing to sleep in. I'll call the part of my brain who floated that idea "Tommy." Tommy was promptly taunted, tackled, and beaten within an inch of his life by every other part of my brain. The rest of my brain is composed of a 20-man team of really angry mixed martial artists. I don...

I like to imagine that people read this blog, and I like to imagine that they have two different reasons for doing so. Screenwriting Journal One group is interested in watching stories take shape. They're interested in the creative process. They want to contribute, offer support, provide thoughtful criticism. Unfortunately, these readers have not figured out how to use the comment function yet, and instead, are speaking directly to their computer screens. Nonetheless, I have faith that they exist, and that they will eventually overcome this confusion, and we will all be enriched by it. Personal Blog Another group wants to keep up with me, Wilder. They want to read anecdotes, personal reflections, and the odd flotsam of opinion that constitutes the majority party in the Blogosphere Congress. These people are sick of picking through mountains of impenetrable screenwriting stone to find a few personal gems. For a while, I've been cross-posting the traditional-blog eleme...

Left 7:11 AM | Arrived 7:54 AM Heavy traffic today on the 405 south; taking the Burbank on-ramp was a mistake. In any case, even leaving an hour earlier, it's still the same dreary picture out there. My mind spins imagining 3+ hours of this same endless gridlock, lane after lane, packed solid and crawling, every morning, every evening, day after day after day. How can it be permitted? I'm frustrated this morning because my laptop battery is about to die. This is not a metaphor, dammit. Somehow, after plugging this sucker in at my bedside last night, the plug managed to pull completely out of the socket again. I would like to blame the earthquake, but had come unplugged at 4AM, it would have some life in it, instead of the 7% it charged while I got ready this morning. I am disappointed. As I mentioned, there was an earthquake last night at around 4AM, around 4.5 on the relevent scale. It set off the usual rolling wave of posts on Facebook, but I slept right through...

Left home: 7:05 AM | Arrived at Norm's: 7:40 AM My first day at Norm's, writing before work. I just screwed up my waitress by taking my eggs over-easy, despite having ordered them scrambled. These were someone else's eggs. I'm eating the eggs of a girl with curly damp hair. The short-order cook and the waitress are bickering loudly, now, and it's all my fault. I may not be able to follow my scheme and stay here a full hour... They pressured me into getting the full bargain breakfast, which is two of everything, and is like seven bucks, all said. That was not the plan. I'm gonna nibble on my hash-browns. They are my wall against needing to vacate this booth. They're my ASTRO-SMASH energy-shield, and I'm slowly shooting it from the underside. For this metaphor to play out, the staff of NORM'S would need to be periodically eating my hash-browns from the other side. The sign says they have free wifi here, but it appears to be password loc...

I haven't written because I've been waning. And you'd better believe, when I'm waning, I'm whining, if I'm writing at all. And thus, I thought I'd spare myself the sight of myself being so sloppy and dire. I'm in partial recovery now, but I warn you, I'm not symptom-free. After all these years, you might wonder why I haven't found some way to avoid the seasons of mope. Similarly, you might wonder why, after all these years, humans haven't found some way to make it constantly daylight all over Earth.  Well, it's because shit doesn't work that way. Shit is a force of nature. The moon slips into shadow, and lunacy dims. Then, there comes a period of sanity - dismal, doubtful, shining, stark sanity - a cool, porcelain sanity – a sanity that, it never fails, I fear may never break. Yes, each time, I wonder if I'll write again. And yes, similarly, each night, I wonder if the sun will rise again. So, okay, fine. Clearly, everybody...