Muy Bueno

Holiday is over.

6 days time off and now I really have time off. Quit the job to focus on writing.

Except, it has been months since I've written anything.

Struggling to build the muscle up.

Thoughts going through my mind: was I right to quit my job? Do I need this, I have no source of income?

Scary. Scary, scary, scary.

I put a system in place in preparation and I haven't applied it funny. Productivity in itself is a huge time drain, much like trying to get motivated.


The journey is one of solitude, and I feel isolated. Falling into the issues I had when I was jobless before.

I knew quitting and writing wouldn't be easy. But at the moment, there is no carrot and there is no stick.

Even when I know what I need to do, I don't do it. Comformity is a onesie, it fits everyone and you all like stupid, but stupid together.

All the things I would use to make my day go faster are a huge distraction now. If you ever try getting off sugar, this is a bit like it. It's an addiction. I'm addicted to a lot of stuff.

I have thought about my screenplay so much, that it is so clear in my head that I rationalise that it doesn't need to be written, because I already have it. Considering that it will never be better than in my head. To ioslate myself even further. Procrastination is a sin.

I have tv, internet, everything I could ever want within 20 seconds from me.

Yet, like others I am not satisfied.

Fat people can eat all the food they want, but they still hate their body image. They are not satisfied.

Is it a lack of discipline?

The funny thing is the simple advice for my struggles is: Just do it.

...Just do it.

Yet, I can intellectually dilly dally over something for a very long time and still have no results.


When I had my job, I had simple targets, in a relaxing area. I also had money. What I wanted was time to develop myself to be a writer and filmmaker.

Now I have no job, no revenue streams and plenty of time to develop myself. Do I do this? No, I am in the head space of a wantreprenuer, someone who says they will do things, but never acts on these ideas.

I have the glory days of my read through for my dissertation, would I want to sully that with constant failure. Now as I type this...

Yes, I do. I do want to fail.

Thank fuck for this blog, because it is like therapy.

I want to write.

How the fuck did we become friends?

You would have thought I would have gotten over university. Apparently not, I still look on it fondly like it's a positive PTSD.

Just  a quick thought was the fact that how my Uni mates have grown in slightly different directions. We only really had a couple things in common, everything else was debateable. Our goals and who we wanted to be seem different.

It's just quite interesting seeing the routes that everyone has taken. I think to my friends, the biggest factor they take away from me, is how much I hate my job. Perhaps I'm the kind of person who needs something to moan about, perhaps it makes me happy.

Self inflicted schadenfreude.

It is blatantly easy to stay where you are, rather than climb up the ladder of your aspiration. The most surprising thing is the fact that some people closest to me, try to hold me down. It is one grand fucking lie, when people say they only want the best for you, let me rephrase what they really mean:

I only want the best for you, within reason to myself.

Go up a few rungs, but don't push to the top.

It does not take long for a blog post to become derailed.

I honestly thought all this shit would be easy when I was at University, and at the moment, it isn't even hard.

I no care

There will come a day in your life, where you will have got to the point where you are sick of "trying" to get motivated to do the passion you have. Highly probable that you don't get around to doing the passion, but you feel the fire.

That is enough, for now.

What happens when you burn out the sensation of feeling that passion what then?

Looks like you've finally ran out of distractions.

So what is it going to be, pal?

There are two paths, one leads to a culdesac. 

The second path is long and it is well worn by others. It begins wide and trampled, hilly, and muddy. You are not the first. As you progress you see people residing by the path, this is where they stop. You can halt, or you can keep pushing until the path gets thinner and thinner and you see less and less people.

Not stepping forth on the journey... Your body and mind slowly digests all the opportunity that lingers inside. No more smiles, cynical laughs, and to steal from a popular analogy... You become a crab, surrounded by many crabs in a bucket. As one of your equals tries to get out, you drag them back down. Happy that you destroyed someone else's opportunity. Happy for someone's misfortunes. Because you never tried.

Good job. I hope you get a decent pension.

Artistic delusion

I consider myself a screenwriter, yet I don't have much to show. However, I am working on something, and I could never imagine myself not wanting to write. I would have no meaning without thinking how to create stories.

A good friend of mine said to me recently "you talk a lot about your script, but I know nothing about it."

The reason is so that I do not create expectations prior to unveiling the work. This is good, but it can be tumultuous as it appears that I have nothing. It's there, it's just in my head.

If it is in my head, does that mean that the story doesn't exist yet? Nobody else has seen it, so that makes sense to me.

The whole thing about writing a script is that is action. Things happen. Things have to happen. Yet, through the months of prep, I have done nothing for anyone, but me. Almost selfishly, like a dragon with it's treasure, mentally having only my interpretation of the project. I love the project. What would happen if I showed it to be and people hated it?

"Hey, I have art. Look at my art!" I would say as people pass me on the street, ignoring me, not having time to stop. But, I put time into it, poured my soul (if I have one) into it. Yet nobody cares. 

The thing that makes me in a solipsistic way 'special' and everyone has more important things to do. How crushing that something you want to share. You think that maybe people will stop In their tracks, give you women and money for your so called creative solitude.

As long as I don't write or show. The fantasy of my greatness being realised thrives on. Procrastination + Masturbation = Procrasturbation.

Pathetic.

People hammer in nails, they don't go around and say "look what I did, everyone, stop and look. I have used this hammer to penetrate this wood with a nail."

What happens if people hate what I've made? Actually repulsed by it and me? The worst thing you have ever done?

Well, I just suppose you will not make anything else that bad anymore.

I consider myself a screenwriter. But I have nothing to show. I am in a league of thousands who think the same, and many others in pursuit of vocations that are only active in the mind.

Some days I know how to write this scene, sometimes I have no idea. It's still got to be written.

5 Hours

So I fucked my neck up sleeping weird, but today I grabbed my gym boss timer and set it for five hours of pomodoro style work (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off)

Did the work in less than 3 cycles instead of 10. The day has barely started.

So I have 8 more minutes to wrap this up.

Well, not sure what to do now.

Success!

No matter what, pen and paper must be the best tool for creating ideas. Typing can be a struggle, but a pen and paper just flows. It is fucking beautiful. An hour has gone by and you work out issues down on paper.

I need to try using a dictaphone later on, that could be another powerful force for fine tuning work once I get passed the sound of my voice on audio.

All in the aim of being a successful creator. Soon.


No matter how many times I go fuck myself, it's quite nice to have a side of me that likes making things from the mind.

Good stuff.

9 Years earlier

I wake up at 5am, and my brain is haywire. It is thinking through this scenario. I'm not sure what level of sleep I was in, but I must have been thinking about this in my subconcious prior to waking up.

What if I was the person I am now 9 years ago. Back at School, without the self esteem, acne and in consistently better shape. Able to talk to people, actually know what I want to do, have control, all those things.

How my life would have been better through college and then university, how I was holding myself back for a number of reasons and self doubt.

Oh my god, all the hot girls who took a liking and nothing happened, because-- because I had no idea what to do and all those excuses. Wasted time. Failed opportunities.

It is so clear now, things would have been similar, but different in a good way. I think?

But, I am in my bed thinking about this. It hasn't literally happened, and it won't. Because there is no magic. There is no rewind button. All those regrets or the times after something happened when I then knew what to do in those scenarios... just gone.

The brain won't stop. It wasn't nought to sixty in 7 seconds, it was sixty in 0.1 seconds.

However, I am awake early against my wishes. Thinking about what could have been. Too fucking late, it is all too late.

Move on, start now. Keep failing until you get it right.

Nothing I can do about the past. Nothing.

Spilled milk, pour yourself another glass.

What a waste of an hour.

Fountain

It's taking me a while to get used to the syntax (which Fountain is, I did not mention this before)

However, it is a learning curve and I will get it at some point.

I am trying out typing up a draft into the writing kit ios and it is working quite well.

Once I get the basic things out of the way, everything will become simpler.

Update - it is quite cool. This however has lead me to scrap my current draft and start from the beginning. The reason is that it is 37 pages in and the proper story has not happened yet. Not worried, it will be easier to write it all this time.

Death to screenwriting programs

Following my previous post, I thought fuck it and searched online for new screenwriting apps.

I ended up coming across (for the one hundredth time) Fountain.io. Anyone who listens to Scriptnotes may have heard of Fountain.

Basically, I am doing away with Final Draft and giving an app called Writing Kit a go, the more important point is that I can use any program that supports fountain as it is a text editor where ever I am, with what ever I have to work on it.

Not just my iPad and using Final Draft Reader. I should hopefully be able to access this work on laptop, ipad and phone.

I just had a go on the fountain.io website when it comes to formatting screenplays and it is quite simple. Unlike how time consuming I find final draft to be.

Please let this be a saviour in my life. Please.

Quotes Porn #3

Productivity

As I do things, I always seem to do things the hard way.

I remember writing a script on a laptop at unversity. I would write like a maniac and keep saving until the laptop would overheat and shut down. It slowed down my progress in writing, but I thought of it as helping me to rewrite the script, by going over the same scene sometimes ten times.

Major Ball Ache.

That killed writing for me. For a while, I stayed away from writing until I got the bug again.

Through all this time, I've been using finaldraft. Only now have I started working on using the extras of the program. I mean the basic stuff.

At the moment, I am doing something foolish by rewriting the script from the very beginning. This has got to be slowing me down.

There are easier ways to getting things done, you just have to look a little closer. I honestly wish I did this now. My entire process would have been streamlined.

Yet, I do not mentally feel I am achieving anything unless it is a struggle. Stopping and starting seems to be the basic OS in my head. There needs to be a change in my mental approach to this.The only person I am holding back is myself.

It is an auto-destruct code on my success.

Identify how you are fucking up and work on a patch. Something that overwrites the issue. I feel like I have caused extra work for myself. It is time to take a step back in order to move forward.

Ideally I want to be done with a new draft before my birthday, but in the usual approach, this won't be possible. I hate missing my deadlines as well. Something has to change. That change comes from within.

Quotes Porn #2

MotiSounds #1

Solutions

What do I dislike: my 40 hour a week job.

Solution: Build my own business, so I don't have to do monotonous, boring work.

I have some work ahead of me.

Stand up for yourself

I'll be honest, I hate work. No excuses for me still being there.


It is okay to get angry at people, and let them know it. Do not let it dwell inside you, because I am surrounded by people who hate their lives or are creating one to hate.

What do I owe

Nothing and it is going to stay that way.

Change is the central prerogative.

Quotes Porn #1

Stolen Picture. No reference.

What this is not

This is not a blog of latent teenage angst.

It does not care for the troubles of others.


It is about getting things done.

No excuses.

This is about building myself into the person I will be.

What I will be saying has been said before. Because for some reason, we have to be constantly remind ourselves what to do in our lives.


I have so many things I need to do. Why have I not done this? I have no idea.