A Toast to Employment... but only one

Well, I got my wish.  I have been hired to write a screenplay.  It's been a very long time since I was under employ as a writer, and I am pleased to say that I think I have benefited from the length of time.  Two kids and lots more time writing for say, only self-imposed deadlines, really shapes you.  That and I decided I was scholastically under educated in writing, writers and the literary form as a whole so I took a few night classes and nothing motivates you more than a whole generation of writers who have read more books than you, write more than you and frankly have all that time you used to have to dick around and that's exactly what most of them are doing... dicking around.  Although to them, life is a major strain, man, the j-o-b at the Super Sub, babysitting and the class load.  And would their parents stop buying that food they don't like, geez, the indecency.  I decided currently, with my scant time, I need to rocket through the lost years, and make a major play for the next half of my life.  


The screenplay is a hot topic.  As my lovely new Berkeley friend Val said, "So you are writing a screenplay from scratch about France, Muslims, Jews, anti-Semitism and torture, in 6 weeks... do you know about any of these subject matters?"  This was a cruel question coming from a woman who would be my drinking partner through all this grueling balls to the wall work except she had to go get knocked up with her 3rd kid and cease drinking for 10 months.  False promises, Val!  


Sobriety is the best state for writing.  I don't care about what frame of mind Hemingway wrote in, or Hunter S. Thompson.  It's fine to blather on about how weed can open the mind, make it funnier, more observant more poignant.  Anything I have written stoned and then read later is just a bunch of self-satisfying glop.  The drugs and the alcohol are to deal with the intensity and the anxiety an artist will feel when they are trying to assure themselves they are in fact writer material.  They know in their heart they are, they sit down to do it, words end up on the page, but is it just a bunch of self-indulgent shit?  This is where alcohol and drugs come into play to make the artist feel like they can have that release from the stress that weighs on them every day they sit down to write.  They are able to chill out, although I find that I just get paranoid that I didn't do enough and I am just wasting time away.  It could be a form of PTSD from when I used to actually waste a lot of time worrying about everything and nothing, because I surely know with confidence right now in my life, I have little time to do anything including trim my cuticles or buy healthier food to eat besides tubular pasta with vodka sauce (gotta get some alcohol in there somewhere).


I am very excited about this screenplay.  It is noble and daring, and bravo to the producers who decided to pony up the cash to engage me to do it.  I am so thrilled to have a job, they are getting more bang for their buck than they know.  But none of that matters if the script is shit.  Really, no one cares if you worked every night and weekends to produce lines of doo doo.  So light a candle for me, say prayers of sobriety and illumination.  Karmically, your support of me could get some good karma for you back.


I am aware that I have made numerous references to parts of the male member in this post.  I am not sure why.  I have spent a lot of time researching a very male-dominated suburban Paris, and perhaps the proverbial cock is on the mind.