faith. moxie. tequila.

Hi everyone!

I have some news. I got a call recently from a literary agent because she liked a post I had written here on the blog and wanted to know if I had ever considered developing it as a TV series. "Um, sure," I said, trying to appear real casual about the whole thing even though my heart was jumping around in my chest like a Lotto ball. "Great!" she said, "let's have lunch." So, we went to lunch and it turns out she's super smart and enthusiastic and a total badass and besides my obvious girl-crush, I've been feeling really fortunate ever since cause phone calls like hers are really rare. Most especially rare after you divorce your writing partner with the longer track record.

Peter and I sold a couple of TV shows and movies during our time together but I have yet to really step out on my own cause I've been scared that "Hollywood" only believes I've got the chops if I am aligned with Peter. I did write some stuff but I shoved it in a drawer and started thinking about career opportunities in the industrial food arts. That lack of confidence was like a dark little worm with a nasaly voice telling me I couldn't do it and I hated that worm but then, wonderfully and surprisingly, along came this blog.

Forcing myself to write regularly and reading all of your comments and e-mails has changed me for the better and given me the boost I needed to dust off my screenwriting software and begin to dream about new worlds, and the people who live in them, again. I left that lunch with the agent saying yes to the universe and fuck you to the worm but I will never be able to say thank you enough to all of you. Really.

So, I gotta go write this thing and, apparently, there is no time to lose. There are deadlines and grown ups involved and they are not charmed by my pathological focus issues so I have to make some changes in my day-to-day routine or this script will never get written. There have been a few "miscommunications" recently and I think it's because I should be "here" working but instead am "there" obsessing so I'm clearing the decks to work in a way I never have before. I told the new guy (yes, there was someone new for a millisecond) that I can't right now. I told my eyes that they can't stare out the window for hours on end. I told my hair to twirl itself. I am deactivating my Facebook page this morning (ack!!!) and most upsetting, I am walking away from the blog for a bit.

Yesterday as I was writing the script, everyone sounded like The Early Girl and while I was working on a new post, it all sounded like the script. Maybe there are people who can write both at the same time but I am not one of them so, I am taking a month off and am gonna write, like my manager David urged me to... "until your fingers bleed." He also reminded me that it's really about the process and not the outcome cause selling something in this town is, indeed, a lottery. Hopefully this will be a good lottery with just the regular, impossible odds and not a Shirley Jackson lottery with the ditch and the rocks being pelted at my head.

Either way, I'm off to get 'er done.

Last night I wrote the scene in the middle of the show where we realize that the heroine is ill equipped to handle what she has been given and will only get by on a diet of faith, moxie and tequila. I have had to put her up a tree and will throw sticks at her for awhile, metaphorically speaking, because that's the only way she'll learn to go forward but, God, it's hard to challenge your characters the way this one needs to be challenged. It's like yelling at your grandma. So, I paced around the room, totally unsure about either of our futures and whether I could pull this off and that's when I remembered something JFK said:

We choose to go... not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

I will be back on February 20th with a new post and I hope that you'll come back too. In the meantime, I wish you great strength when you need to slap your own worms around and great joy for the days when life totally shows off and gives you the best it has to offer.