I spent a lot of sessions addressing just that issue, believe me. (How is it that therapy sometimes begets more therapy, I end up doing therapy about the lack of therapy--I could save a lot of money and just sit home staring at my navel. Sorry, that was mean and disparaging towards my shrink but I’m feeling a little HOSTILE.)
Anyway, in making my survival plans, I foolishly made a deal where I would take myself on three--maybe only two--“artists dates.” (Remember that from the ‘90’s? The Artist's Way was the hot read and suddenly everyone I know was religiously doing their “morning pages,” which I could never understand because why spend so much writing time on something that will never pay? And yet here I am, blogging again . . . ) So after I’d made this stupid deal, my competitive instinct kicked in, and I decided to take it one step further and actually do some writing on those artist’s dates. Hence, “Writing in Public Places.”
No, not just coffee joints, that would be cheating. Real places where real people go to do real things, in reality. As opposed to places where writers go to burrow inside their own heads and avoid reality. Or where they go to sit in front of their laptops and have everybody think they’re writing, which is sometimes all you can manage. I’m being kind here, as if all those people who sit in front of their laptops at Starbucks really are writers, and not just trying to look cool and pick up boys/girls.
So even though today I was strongly tempted to remain on the couch all day with Kathy Griffin’s Official Book Club Selection, here I am sitting on Dockweiler Beach, listening to planes go by overhead. Okay, I’ll be honest. Possibly I would not have budged from the couch had not my irritating neighbors thrown an Easter Egg hunt, filling the air with high-pitched squeals of excited little children and obnoxious little dogs.
But here I am nevertheless, and since I got here on my bike, I’m not even equipped with my laptop. I’m not even pretending to be cool all alone on this uncomfortable concrete bench. Instead, I’ve got this ridiculously small blank book--purple leather cover, hand-bound fancy paper ($8.99 at Cost Plus World Market)--and I am scribbling with an old green Uni-ball pen.
This is what my first draft looked like.
I hate writing things by hand. I have terrible handwriting, made worse by this shaky little book and chronic injuries to my wrists from years of pounding keyboards. (I’m a Dragon girl at home, and have gotten pretty good at the dictation thing. You know more about that than you really want to know if you read my previous blog. Which I’m not linking to here, because the pictures of my surgery are just too gross.)
I’m flipping back the pages now and noticing how much more legible I was when I began. Oh well, will edit heavily later anyway.
Yes, I admit to editing--and proofreading--my blog. I know we are living in a “publish first” universe now, but I am a compulsive re-writer, and I am completely psycho about spelling and punctuation. (Shout out to Mrs. Shaw, my 3rd grade teacher, for teaching me about the “sem-eye colon.”)
I love semi-colons, and not just for those little winking smileys. I love the “I’m finished with that thought; here’s another thought that kind of goes along with it” concept--not a full stop, not just a pause, but something in between. It’s my bi-sexual punctuation mark.
But you notice I don’t use them anymore. Hollywood has broken me of the habit. The semi-colon is too high-brow. I don’t want to look erudite or anything. Erudite people are not hip enough to write movies that will make lots of money. Now I use the dash.
It’s very popular in business writing to use a single hyphen surrounded by space - like that. Most screenwriters use a double hyphen -- also surrounded by space. I like to jam my double hyphens right down between the words--like that. I don’t know why. I don’t know why in Hollywood we still use the double hyphen, instead of allowing our software to turn them into the more elegant and slender “m” dash.
I personally hate when my software turns anything into anything. (Don’t even get my started on the evils of dictation software.) When I type (or dictate) “(c),” I don’t want to see © appear on the screen. Thank you, Bill Gates, for idiot-proofing the software so thoroughly that I have to trick it into doing what I want it to do, not what you want it to do!
There’s an irony to the fact that I am sitting on the beach, writing by hand on actual paper, and I end up bitching about software. I am possibly a little teensy bit obsessed with my computer. Clearly, I’ve had more reality today than I can handle. I think I’ll go home and continue this in virtuality. But first, let me check my e-mail on my phone.
