What I'm Doing; or, 0 of 12

February 12 was pretty much a normal day. I did stuff. I didn't think too much about it. That is, until I went over to Heather's to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and she said, "Let me take a picture of you for 12 of 12!" and I said, "Wait, today's the 12th?" and she said, "Smile!" and I said, "Aaaaargh."

So. I have no pictures, today, of myself 1) waking up, or 2) writing, or 3) walking to Trader Joe's (via the yarn store), or 4) eating sweet potato bisque, Dubliner cheese on crackers, and a mineola for lunch, or 5) making the maiden tweet on Austenacious's brand-new, steeped-in-emotional-ambiguity Twitter feed, or 6) driving to Heather and Erik's for the Olympics, or 7) getting verklempt over stand-up comics falling in love on NPR, or 8) eating heavenly gingered eggplant and chickpeas over basmati rice for dinner, or 9) realizing that I now get two weeks of hunky Brian Williams on my TV without having to watch the news, or 10) eating heavenly rose water-buttermilk sherbet and cornmeal-orange shortbread, still warm from the oven, for dessert, or 11) coveting that flying-harness dude's job in much the way that I have previously coveted Tinkerbelle's job in the Disneyland fireworks show, or 12) coming home, feeding cats, and crawling into bed.


Nevertheless, it occurs to me that, in quitting my job and moving cross-country and then completely failing to post here, I may not be doing an excellent job of explaining what exactly I'm doing right now.


Well.


Fair enough.


I'm writing. I'm keeping up with Austenacious and trying to post to P.S. BTW like a normal person. I'm eyeing this blog guiltily and promising to post more. I've just turned the Act IV corner on an original TV pilot script, which I hope to use as a calling card so that I can get somebody to pay me to write more scripts.


I'm doing a bit of freelance work—writing short celebrity bio blurbs for a website about celebrity net worth, should anybody out there be wondering about the financial situation of, say, Zac Efron and/or Donald Trump—and looking for more. This involves much stalking of Craigslist, much writing of cover letters, and much pondering of the distinction between a writing gig and a writing job.


I'm taking a screenwriting class at the local community college, as my eighteen-year-old self says, "I thought I worked hard in high school so I wouldn't have to go to DVC?"


I'm singing with my old choir, because I simply haven't had enough Latin in my life lately.


I'm house-sitting an apartment and two cats in Albany.


I'm running.


I'm flossing my teeth regularly, because seriously, people who don't have jobs are not too busy to floss.


And that's the gist of it: working, trying to make writing my work, alternately hoping for and obsessing over the future, and trying to make the present workable. I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing, because it's a chance at something awesome, and because not doing what I'm doing is a terrifying prospect, long-term. In any case, it's not a bad gig. Job. Whatever.

Introducing Austenacious

I have a new website. Maybe we're not fully ensconced in the 21st century yet--there are no cards for this, no "it's a site!" banners, no candy cigars to hand out. Instead, we have frantic networking and checking of Google Analytics, which is plenty entertaining to a new website owner, but it somehow lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

Meet Austenacious, where the women are accomplished, the men are smoldering yet virtuous, and nobody ever gets mocked for being a great reader (or, for that matter, for taking pleasure in a great many things).

This is a labor of love--or, really, a labor of friendship. Brainstorming began with Christine and Heather before I moved to the East Coast, and our slogan, "Jane will keep us together," has proven true: we have the full inboxes and the hours logged on Skype to prove it. We think Jane would have liked what we're doing: reading and watching and thinking and talking and laughing and definitely, definitely eating, and looking at her works with the required sense of humor. We certainly like it.

So now you're invited to look around: check us out, join the discussion, leave a comment, tell a friend! (Especially that last one: the internet is a big place; getting the word out is tough.)

Welcome.

Ha, Universe. HA.

So, apparently emo-ing publicly and at length about writing (or the lack thereof) is enough to get the universe to take notice. In the sense that, in the face of my moaning and fist-shaking, the universe is all, "Fine! You wanna write? LET'S WRITE." And then gives me extra homework. Yay?

Aside from the things I've figured out about the pilot I'm writing, I also discovered--in clicking around for yesterday's post--that it's now open season on the Disney fellowship. Final deadline: July 1. Existing shows only; no original pilots allowed. This means two, two, two scripts at once!

My mission for this weekend, should I choose to accept it: pick a show to spec, and get on it. This could mean Friday Night Lights (but is it too old, and do I have anything to add?) or Mad Men (terrifying to even attempt) or possibly Chuck (which may or may not play to my strengths); it could also mean catching up on something else really fast--Fringe? Do we have a decision on a second season of Dollhouse? What about something more obscure? Time for a hot date with Hulu, I think.

So this is...exciting? A scary busy time crunch (says the girl who wrote last year's submission in six days), but a good scary busy time crunch, I think. After all, there's nothing like a deadline to light a fire under me, and I'm hoping that my two projects will ultimately make each other better--that writing an existing show will loosen me up for the pilot, and that the experience of creating the pilot will make me better at the existing show. Also, I should be more careful where and to whom I grump about my writing woes (thanks for that, by the way--truly, the only person who is less excited about my writers' block than you is...me). Heh.

Why I Write

It has been, if you couldn't tell, a rough couple of weeks for me and writing. If you ever wonder why writers are, on the whole, superstitious about the writing headspace--"mood" isn't right; it really is more like a place--this is why: without devaluing the (hugely important) plowing-through that happens on any long writing project, inspiration is not to be trifled with. Inspiration is moody. It likes to be catered to. It likes routine, except when it prefers spontaneity. You get to know its patterns, and if you do what it wants, it'll make it worth your while.

The spirit comes...and it goes.

Recently, for me, it went.

The logistics are hazy--busy, out of town, blah blah blah etc.--but suddenly, I had a holey outline and a bunch of characters that I couldn't quite hear anymore. The deadline for Scriptapalooza came and went, and although I did submit a script--the 30 Rock spec I wrote for the Disney Fellowship last year, which is still eligible, if not exactly new news--the pilot I had hoped to submit hadn't seen the light of day. It still hasn't. It won't for a while yet. I've tried to be nice to myself about it, to wait it out, to fill up on other people's writers'-block stories. I've scheduled myself time to write, and shown up (and then packed it in early and played around on iTunes instead). There's something to be said for routine, but everybody knows that torture is bad.

And then, today, the whole thing came flooding back, half-new.

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: as long as I live, I don't think I'll ever understand how this works. I don't want to understand. It happens when I'm doing laundry, or when I'm crossing the street, or when I'm doing the dishes: I don't know and then I know. Today in a meeting at work, my new colleague told a little story about herself as a child, and there it was--this new character, born twelve years old and mostly whole, who singlehandedly changes the entire tone of what I'm writing. Two possible pilots will, I think, now combine, because one was funny and one was dramatic, and life is like that. It's going to be much more fun (to write and to read) than what I've been hacking away at, and maybe that's the secret. Maybe I lost the fun in my story: a tragedy in every way. I still don't know exactly what's going to happen--some of what I've got will need to be reworked anyway, to make room for what's coming--but the smell of smoking brains seems to be gone. It's the best feeling ever.

I want to go to there

Well, I had a good weekend. I went here.



The sister of a family friend lives on the York River--right on the York River, as you can see--and when she heard I was a writer, she called me up and offered me the use of her family's guest house as a writer's retreat. Wonderful! Sometimes people are just too nice to be believed.

It was a fabulous way to spend a day and a half away--I had the guest house to myself, but an open invitation to hang out with my hosts. I only stayed overnight, but together, we hiked around and played with my hosts' little great-niece and watched the sunset and messed around with the telescope, and then I got up this morning and watched the jellyfish (big red ones!) off the dock while I ate my breakfast.

I even got some writing done in between the wide-eyed exploring, if you can believe it. Laying the groundwork for the pilot I'm writing is proving really hard--I thought I'd be way into the dialogue by now, but I'm still pushing through what happens and when--but I got Acts I, II, and V plotted out over the weekend. It was good to have a place to sit down with this story in a place where my life isn't staring me in the face. I'm so grateful for the time and space, and you can bet I'll be taking them up on their invitation to come back--if I don't tell them and none of you tell them, do you think they'd notice if I slowly moved my entire apartment into the cottage? Shhhhh.

I love it when this happens

Part of my script just opened up. I was at work, entering edits and listening to Dark Was the Night, not really thinking about writing very much at all, and it spoke to me.

"Start with death," it said. "And a potluck."

UM, OBVIOUSLY.

Getting started

It's (pretending to be) spring here--I just walked to the store in flip-flops and I still have all my toes--and so I guess it's sort of right that I'm starting things all over the place.

I'm writing a lot these days, and by "writing" I mean "staring into space with occasional frenzied bursts of typing." I'm working on an original television pilot--original pilots being what get young writers in the door these days, plus the story just had to come out--and coming up with a new TV show is, wouldn't you just know, a tremendous amount of work in terms of creating a universe and then paring down and parsing out what fits into a 42-minute episode. This project is the kind of thing that makes writers write, and also the kind that stops them from writing: the world of my show just comes to me, floods into my brain at the most inopportune times (at work, at the grocery store, anytime actual typing is not possible), and then just looks at me, all coy, when I sit down to wrangle it into five acts and three storylines. "Don't you just want to tell me all at once?" it says, and I do. I love it, and I believe in it, and I can't wait to see it all grown up and heading out into the world. It could give me a little help in this all-important outlining phase, but hey. We're not going to talk about that. It'll come.

So in the midst of my writerly highs and lows, it's a good thing I decided to do something really straightforward, right? Riiiiiight. This purplish thing is my fetal Lace Ribbon Scarf, which is really just a jumble of stitches on US-4 needles. All knitting projects start this way, like working blind, with the future hope of something pretty and springy to wear while I wait for the bus (...which will likely be finished just in time for, say, Halloween, but purple alpaca is timeless and seasonless, right?). But it's like the script: you just have to keep going, believe that the pattern's going to be there (the difference being that somebody else made up the scarf design; I have to make up the script). But, you know. I'm glad I picked that activity to break up the uncertainty of writing.

Welcome to March. Time to make something, don't you think?

The bright future

I'm watching the Emmys. Yep, I'm the one. I'm not watching them because I think they're particularly in touch with what's good in TV--they're still nominating Two and a Half Men, but not The Wire, so there you go--or because the internet's down and I can't check the InStyle Style Watch, or whatever. I'm watching the Emmys because they make me want to write stuff.

There's just so much cool material out there right now--shows that are concept-driven and writer-driven more than anything else. Mad Men's Best Drama win gave me chills. Barry Sonnenfeld won for directing a kooky, magical, completely unorthodox pilot for Pushing Daisies. Tina Fey just won her third award of the night, and got to pick it up from Mary Tyler Moore and Betty White. Do you think, someday, I could win an award and accept it from a cardboard cut-out of Tina Fey? Because that would pretty much be enough for me.

I'd say that the Emmys wouldn't matter for me as a writer, but that's only half true. Of course I want to have written something that somebody performed and somebody else filmed, and then a bunch of people decided it was worth some crazy heavy golden statue. I can't believe these people get to roll out of bed and put their work energy into characters and plot and all those things that make my stomach flutter, and I'm so, so jealous. I would not object to any of those things. But writers onstage are always a weird thing, and I suspect my presence wouldn't do much to normalize the situation. They always look extremely happy but kind of freaked out, like groundhogs emerging in February, all, "Hey! It's a party for us!...OH CRAP LOOK AT THAT SHADOW." Also, female writers have it rough. It's like a wedding party: the guys head to Tux Hut an hour before, pick something off the rack, wear it, and bring it back in the morning. Actresses, who don't spend their days shut up in conference rooms with tables full of candy and pizza, have custom, designer gowns shoved at them from all sides. The women writers have to dress themselves and look nice without the benefit of a stylist. I'd like to think I'd come out on the winning side of this proposition--again, maybe my girl Tina will continue to wear awesome dresses make writers the new It girls--but it somehow seems like the odds are slim. I've met myself. Not that, you know, I'd let the gown thing keep me home. I do want people to applaud while I look pleased and confused, and then am escorted away by an anonymously glittery girl; I'm just not sure how well I'd deal.

Also, Lee Pace just lost. Do you think he needs consolation? I may be able to help. Call me, Lee!

Dispatch from the field

GREETINGS STOP DROWNING IN TEXT STOP PLEASE SEND FUNNY JOKES AND NARRATIVE SENSE STOP BACK JUNE 30ISH STOP WISH YOU WERE HERE STOP

I thought I'd sound more like Lauren Bacall

So, some of you may know that I was invited last week to write, record, and submit a 60-second movie review for the NPR show The Takeaway. I did it--seriously, one of the most excruciating writing experiences of my life, plus the joy of recording what amounts to the world's most harrowing answering-machine message--and guess what?

I got on!

You can hear part of my review here (I'm the first voice after they say people had specific problems with the story--I start with something about the movie lacking a heart), and they'll be linking to my complete vocal review, as well as to Cinema Hype, later in the day. I'll let you know when that happens.

I am totally the next Sarah Vowell. This is so exciting.

Update: The full review and the CH link are now posted.

Update #2:: The streaming audio doesn't seem to be working; this may be a download situation. Sorry about that.

Excuses, excuses

Ooh, I'm a bad blogger. A week between posts! Leaving a gap like this makes me feel like I deserve a lecture, like when I visit the dentist and he tells me I need to floss more. I'm not sure exactly what kind of build-up I accumulate when I forget to post, but I'm sure it's something bad. Resentment, maybe? A sense of neglect?

The truth is, I'm trying to write. Elsewhere. Much to my dismay, I'm not one of those fancy-pants book-deal bloggers, and until that day comes, I have to pretend like I have some kind of writerly priority system. Cinema Hype comes first, because of the whole contract-and-money thing, and then any necessary real-life-type writing (mostly to try and attract more contract-and-money situations), and then finally the creative work that's been percolating all day, unless crew or choir or small group or my own delirious need for sleep intervenes. They often do.

I like to listen to the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast during long afternoons at work--it's all very "I'm a waitress but really I'm an actress," this entering edits and updating databases while listening to long interviews with working screenwriters. If I time it right, I can finish a podcast just as it's time to go, and rush home to get something down before the inspiration of the day fades or I have to eat dinner and leave the house, whichever comes first. I was listening to the Michael Arndt/Little Miss Sunshine episode recently, and Arndt described his time of holding down a day job and writing in his spare time as one of the hardest things he's ever done. I can't express how much relief that brought me. People do this, apparently. Those half-hours add up, and eventually become finished pieces, however slowly. Piling up enough of those pieces might mean, someday, not having to squeeze it all in around the margins. I'm trying to establish a more consistent writing habit to make the most of that time, to have a little faith, to create a little hope for myself. I do think it's going to work, this keeping on keeping on. Though if somebody wanted to offer me a book deal now, that would be all right too.

Just keep writing

Well, this is depressing.

And true, of course. I'm not disputing that. I was an English major; the only thing we hear more than "Would you like fries with that?" is "It's not what you know; it's who you know." Here's the problem: I don't know anybody. I mean, I know people, but I don't Know People.

I did meet Jane Espenson once, at WonderCon, and she was just as nice and funny and supportive in person as she is online (though I will say that my dream of her saying, "Hey, I wear funky glasses and you wear funky glasses! Want to come write for TV?" did not materialize). And I think that while I'm trying to figure out how to Know Somebody, I have to take the advice Jane gave me, and the advice she gives all prospective writers: Keep writing. Write for TV, or write not for TV. As long as you're writing. Jane says that one way to get into this kind of writing is to be good at other kinds of writing, and to make a kind of lateral move (like Pamie, and I know I am one of many who would like to be Pamie when we grow up)--as she says, what's the worst that can happen? You become a famous novelist on the way? Either way, writing appears to be the thing to do. (Surprise!) It makes me happy to be able to say I've been prolific lately. I'm making good headway on a spec 30 Rock script, and I'm excited about an original pilot that's been percolating. And I'm trying to do whatever else I can find, to get out there or just get more practice: essays (my personal favorite) or short stories or reviews or a certain movie blog. After all, I'll only get better, right? This is what I have to keep telling myself. Just keep writing. It'll all come together.

Thank you for the pep talk, Self! Now I think I will go eat some pineapple for dinner, because pineapple makes everything good.

Making and unmaking

So, I am greatly saddened, kind of, to say that I probably will not be finishing my novel this year. (Again.) See, the deal I made with myself was that I would do NaNo IF I had no other pressing writing assignments. And when I had no other pressing writing assignments, it went pretty well. But then I got one--something I can't talk about yet, but be assured it'll be all over this space if things work out--and, well, 1,667 spent elsewhere each day start to add up. So I'm cooling it. Plus, my Novel Voice is, I'm sorry to say, kind of boring. Sorry, Self.

The good thing about dropping out of a crazy masochistic writing event is the amount of free time I suddenly find on my hands. It seems I'd been neglecting books, movies, actual food that requires actual cooking, a crafty project or two, and maybe some people. No more! This afternoon I made this much chili:

So if nuclear winter hits this week, I think I'm good to go (corn muffins optional).

I also knitted myself a cabled beanie, which ended up being more like a cabled yarmulke. Before:
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After:


This is the joy of small knitting projects: find that your beanie should actually have a propeller sticking out of the top? Rip back to the ribbing; you'll be fine. I think a couple of extra repeats of the cable pattern should make the poor thing at least reach my ears. Note to self: Things that stretch sideways shrink lengthwise. Words for the wise!

And now it's on to Christmas cards and Christmas music and probably a viewing of White Christmas or two. Not to mention The Noise. Are you ready? I...am not. But at least I have some time to think about how unprepared I am.

Status report

So I ended up not flaking out, and now here I am, seven days into NaNoWriMo. Things are going pretty well--I'm consistently about a half-day behind, which is nothing to my inner jaded old-fart cheerleader. You should have seen the great finishing flood of '05! Six thousand words a day! In the snow, uphill both ways! I will say, though, that NaNo is nothing if not an exercise in self-awareness, and not always in the good way.

First of all, my capacity for wasting time is, what's the word? Oh: "staggering." I can kill a potentially useful chunk of hours without breaking a sweat. I attempt to cast on warm winter garments with the yarn I bought recently, which seems not to want to be much of anything. I compose those long, newsy e-mails I've been meaning to get around to. I watch reruns of 30 Rock (Top-secret note to James: You're right. This season is funny. "I have twelve grand in checking." "...are you an immigrant?"). I spend time with Winner of the National Book Award, which is dark and hilarious and makes me not want to stop reading. I suspect that I joined Facebook (a new development; find me and friend me if you haven't already!) solely for the purpose of not working on my novel. I am, in a word, amazing...at not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm specially gifted.

Second, I have learned that it is possible for me to fall asleep while typing. You know how when you're reading in bed, and it's kind of dim and you're warm and suddenly it's 3 a.m. and your bedside light is still on? Apparently this happens to me when I'm sitting up and the lights are on and I'm, like, in the middle of a sentence. I'm writing along, sailing through my word count, and...suddenly the last three lines make absolutely no sense. I have novel narcolepsy. Somebody should hold a telethon for me.

I do kind of like my novel so far, though. Writing without a net means that my novel will probably have a total lack of narrative/symbolic structure, which will break my heart when I try to re-read it, but it also means that I can have a kind of zero-tolerance policy towards boredom. It's a road novel of sorts, so when I stop knowing or caring what happens in one scene, I can just take my characters somewhere else and say, "And then THIS happens ('Ghosts!' 'Bible salesmen!' 'Self-help books!')!" I see that this is how all those over-quirky, self-indulgent first novels get written: it's all about things that are funny and endearing in the moment, because all you really want to be is funny and endearing. I am hoping that this translates to some kind of consistent voice over the course of the 50,000 words, but...I'm not counting on it. That's what NaNoEdMo (which apparently some people actually do, though I frankly can't imagine who) is for.

Any field reports from my fellow-novelists out there?

37 down; 49,963 to go

Happy NaNoWriMo! I wasn't cool/dumb enough to stay up for the regional kick-off party in El Cerrito last night--midnight on a Wednesday? Bless my soul! Who am I, Paris Hilton with a laptop?--but I sat down this morning and wrote the first sentence of my novel to get things started. I didn't want to come home from work and face a blank white screen. And now I just have to type a few more words and it'll be done. NO SWEAT.

*girds up loins for massive writing effort*

Eight Things

Oh, my! I've been tagged! Whatever shall I do?

Rules: Give 8 random facts about yourself, then tag 8 more people to do the same thing.

The facts are these.

1. I always eat colored candy in reverse-rainbow order, starting with purple (or brown, if we're talking M&Ms) and working my way up to red.

2. I keep a mental list of alternative careers just in case the wordy writing-editing thing fails me. Thus far: librarian, florist, movie location scout, professional driver on a closed course.

3. My friend Maggie and I like to pretend that we're going to start an all-girl punk cover band called Israel and the Minor Prophets.

4. Top Five Celebrity Crushes, Fall 2007 Edition: John Krasinski, John Corbett, Jon Stewart, Zach Gilford, Lee Pace. Orlando Bloom visits when he has a few days off, but he's awfully busy with all that swashbuckling he does.

5. I hand-wrote most of a novel in the seventh grade.

6. I'm not much into shoes, but I adore cute purses.

7. I am a starboard rower, which means that a) my oar goes to the left, b) I sit in an odd-numbered seat (usually 1 or 7), and c) my right arm is bigger than my left.

8. I used to be grossed out by the Presbyterian tradition of dipping sourdough communion bread in grape juice, but now I like the way it tastes.

I don't think I have a combined total of eight bloggish friends, so: if you have a blog and want to consider yourself tagged, do so. If you don't have a blog and want to consider yourself tagged, well, either or Blogger or Wordpress could probably oblige you...

NaNoCrazy

How is it that the last section of October is stressful? Every year, there's the Halloween issue, which I've been considering off and on since spring and still haven't settled. I will be that person running around on October 30, looking for legwarmers, a ladybug costume, and, I don't know, a vintage cocktail dress (for the perfect aerobic ladybug lounge singer costume, obviously). And then there's the question that we all struggle with in as we settle into fall: Should I try to write a novel in November?

In 2005, I finished NaNoWriMo in a blaze of exhausted glory, hitting the 50,000-word mark with minutes to spare. Last year I started out with a great idea--based on the true story of my friend's Canadian grandmother and the Mexican restaurant she bought while her husband was in the hospital--but got busy and distracted with Cinema Hype, and petered out around the middle of the month. It was distressing. I didn't and don't really want to put myself through the process of watching a novel not get written.

I'd proclaimed myself finished with monthlong writing contests for the time being, since I'm still writing CH and I'm certainly not any less busy than I was this time last year, but now I'm starting to feel the pull of the NaNo. The posting guidelines for CH are less stringent than they were, so I don't have to post every day. I thought Tim and I might be filming our movie in November, but it looks like January's more likely. I'm fiddling with various TV spec scripts, but that's an off-and-on kind of thing, and it's the wrong season, and maybe Hollywood will burn to the ground before then anyway; I give it a 50-50 shot. And then I start thinking of how much fun it is to have something grandiose and kind of insane (Heh, I just typed "inane," which might also be not-wrong) to work on, and how much I like meeting up with people in cafes to work, and how Chris Baty's silly e-mails are really, really encouraging, and it just makes me want to sit down and write a novel next month. I even saw something this morning that made me think, "Hey, that's a novel!" This may be a sign.

I think I'll do it. Unless I don't. Unless there are certain things that happen on a certain schedule to prevent me (How's that for vague?). Or unless I start to feel like not finishing would be too, too stressful, not in the way that motivates, but in the way that makes me avoid books, words, novel-talk, the computer, other writers, other people, and the real world altogether. See? This is fraught already.

Conundrum!

Status report

Well, that's a relief.

I sat down last night with the film outline, just to get a feel for it, and ended up with a couple of pages of dialogue. I don't think I'll ever get over that sensation: sitting down with nothing and having the scenes just show up like that. It's so bizarre. I can't say whether it's any good or not--that's a decision for another time--but it's not a blank screen, and that what counts.

So: Liz 1, Emptybrain 0. Woot!

For Your Consideration

Have I mentioned the news about the movie? No? Well, here it is:

I'm co-writing a short film.

My friend Tim recently offered me the chance to co-write a short for his film school application, and see how we work together. He had some ideas for a romantic comedy, he said, but he wanted help turning his brainstorm into a script. I got the outline this morning, and I haven't looked at it yet. But it's there, sitting in my in-box, waiting.

This entire situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling and absolutely terrifying. It's a great opportunity, a chance to write something that will actually get made. Honestly, I can't wait. It also means that somebody else is depending on my writing, which is basically nightmare material. (Perhaps, if I want to write professionally, I ought to get over that?) I just have to keep telling myself that my instincts will kick in, even if the thought of writing an original script sends them running for the exits, along with my storytelling skills and my sense of humor. It's all there, and I know that. I just need to sit down and be very quiet for awhile, and see what comes up.

If you need me, I'll be on the couch, staring at my laptop.

Check, check, double-check!

I was a machine this weekend, my friends. No lounging about for me; I Got Things Done, in that gratifying "I am an active and contributing member of society" kind of way. If I'd had a to-do list, I would have crossed a very many things off of it. Very exciting!

What I've been up to:

- Watched the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice and remembered how completely gorgeous it is, despite not being the MOST complete and faithful adaptation and also having a truly appalling "closure" scene tacked on to "satisfy" our 'merican sensibilities.

- Admitted my own lameness and applied nose to grindstone; started writing my spec script. Me: 1; Cold open that has now been moved to after credits: 0. Woot! (Also, dialogue is so much easier than brainstorming. MUCH BETTER.)

- Walked to library, ATM, used bookstore, and farmer's market and came back with a pretty and fairly priced copy of Atonement and a million pounds of peaches, cherries, asparagus, raspberries, and mixed baby organic greens.

- Made raspberry-peach pie from scratch

- Mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors. Since my mother reads this blog, I'd rather not say how long it's been.

- Somehow ended up with some friends cramming into my living room for a Pirates of the Caribbean catch-up party. Have I mentioned lately how much fun those movies are? I'm so pleased with how the trilogy turned out. Anyway, I can't believe they sat through essentially six hours of movie time, but pizza, wine, pie, and pirates makes for a fine gathering, if I may say so. Only just avoided a late-night showing of At World's End to round out the evening. Instead, we made silly videos featuring an origami crane, filmed with a masterful eye on Luke's phone.

- Picked up two new books (The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde, and Take the Cannoli, by Sarah Vowell) to supplement The Complete Stories of Eudora Welty, which I'm reading in dribs and drabs and will probably only finish if I'm buried with it. Three books at once! Oh, the liberation! I am a WILD and UNPREDICTABLE WOMAN.

- Finally accepted the fact that my shower is incredibly lame; bought Water-Pik massaging shower head that promised to fix my water-pressure issues forever, only to install it and make the problem WORSE. Will return Water-Pik if possible and (grudgingly, with much muttering) go back to shivering and shaking my fist at the original, crappy shower head. D'oh.

- Went to IKEA alone in a show of tragic miscalculation; bought shelving unit and then realized I had no way of getting it off of the shelf, onto my cart, into the car, and up the stairs into my apartment. Made use of fine IKEA employees for the first three; called Luke and flattered him into helping me with the fourth. Shelf space! I love shelf space! Now I can arrange my stuff in a casually charming and eye-pleasing manner! Excellent.

- Rearranged bedroom furniture into a configuration that makes far more sense, unless I get a sewing machine for my birthday, in which case I'll have to move it back.

Things I am pondering for the near future:

- What else happens in my spec script? Ack! (Okay, that's an exaggeration. I do know what happens, kind of, but the whole thing feels very slippery right about now. Surprise!)

- Assembling the shelving unit. I may have gotten the wrong color--black-brown may not go with my stuff as well as I thought--but there's no way I'm taking it back down the stairs, into the car, out of the car, and back to the store, so it's mine now. And anyway, far be it from me to decrease the amount of shelf space in my apartment.


This post brought to you by the couch, wireless, and the letters N, R, and M (for Not Ready for Monday!).