IN THE SUMMER OF 1999, the Holy Spirit directed Rick Karr, a 51-year-old Texan, to answer the calls made to a phone booth located in the middle of the Mojave Desert, 15 miles from a highway. He spent 32 days camping beside the phone booth on the desert playa in scorching heat. During that time he answered over 500 calls, many of which came from someone named Sergeant Zeno, who said he was phoning from the Pentagon.
(via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » “Write Every Day” is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects)
(via PostSecret)
No one can accuse me of pandering or writing purely in the hopes of having a commercial hit. I doubt I could do that if I tried anyway. My friend pointed out that I also have a track record that establishes that I’m not fixated on having commercial hits. I forgot that part.
for ivaplays
But the hallmark of a good writer is not avoiding script calamities. They are unavoidable. It’s responding to them - working hard to get the story right, being prepared to sacrifice every part or piece of the story and ultimately the episode itself to get the story right so the jokes will fly. It is hard work, but it’s mostly indoors, done with a MacBook Pro, nearby copious amounts of coffee, so it’s not all bad.
[In other words, the only way out is through.]
Story-surgery is required at a number of stages - and is more easily done early on in the process. That’s why is worth being brutal with your story or outline before you start writing a script. It’s like baking a cake. Mary Berry says to make sure you measure the ingredients carefully. If you don’t, it’s very hard to remove flour from a cake and add an egg when the cake is in the oven. The script equivalent of removing flour from a cake is through-the-night rewrites, caffeine overdoses, panic, sweat and weight gain. This, in my experience, can be exhilarating, once or twice but is mostly no fun
On realizing when my vacation started
#December has been an unusually stressful month this year, what with jury duty, a rather punishing work schedule, and the usual Christmas shenanigans.
One of our Christmastime rituals is driving down to Florida to visit Liz’s brother and sister-in-law. It’s about 750 miles, door-to-door, and we do it all in one day. In the past few years, we’ve driven on Christmas Day (less traffic, generally, and no road work), but this year we drove down on the Sunday before Christmas. The traffic was denser and pushier, with about three slowdowns through the I-95 deadlands of South Carolina, a few necessary rest stops, and so on.
The next morning, the 24th, I ran out of hot water about halfway through my shower. We then went to the Publix grocery store to buy some necessities for the week and ingredients for a dish Liz would make on Christmas Day. Shopping and navigating my cart through the aisles reminded me of driving through Orlando the night before (i.e., dense, crowded, lots of defensive driving, and being stoical in the face of madness).
After the shopping, we went next door to the Mexican restaurant for lunch. We ordered, I drank my iced tea, and I started to slow down. At some point, while sitting at that table, eating chips and salsa, I relaxed because I realized -- for the first time in a couple of months -- I was not in problem-solving mode anymore. I didn't have to plan my work for that afternoon, craft a last-minute PowerPoint presentation, juggle time to buy Christmas presents, deal with my insurance company, calculate car lengths and speeds on the fly, or endure a surprise cold-water shower.
For Liz, her vacation started the minute our wheels turned for Florida. For me, it started when I had the leisure and space to just sit and relax and enjoy what was in front of me.
How would you like to be remembered?
I would like to be forgotten. What’s so good about being remembered?