Baptism by Procrastination

I'm sitting with my feet up in my mother's air conditioned room, typing away on my blog.  Not on my screenplay.  I am listening to music on iTunes.  Nothing related to my screenplay.  I spent the night here, so I could work on organizing her kitchen after she had pest control come spray.  I went to my boyfriend's gig last night.  I didn't work on my screenplay.  I have been emailing with my friend Elyzabeth on her script, not working on my own.

Ah, more writer's procrastination, you might say.  Get back to work!

This is the thing.  I feel cleansed.

I washed every dish and utensil in her house because of the spraying that had been done.  Also, she had bugs, so I wasn't sure what had been crawled on and pooped on.  So I had to wash everything clean.  A lot of silent, repetitive action.  It felt meditative.  It felt like something someone would have monks do to clear their mind.  It felt like the household chore assigned to me by Mr. Miyagi before he made me practice my karate.

I had spent the week writing. I finished the screenplay on Monday. I worked on another project and read six scripts on Tuesday and Wednesday.  On Thursday, I got back to writing notes on the screenplay.  On Friday, I index carded some new scenes.  So even though I think I've been taking it slow this week, I have been working my ass off.  Today was a nice change of pace.

So now the second load of dishes is being washed.   Mostly everything has been put back.  Liners have been put in the drawers.  Her house looks pretty wonderful.  It's cleared out.  It's orderly.  And the anxiety has subsided.

I took a shower.  I'm clean.

I truly feel baptized.  Clean.  All of the dirt and the stress and the bad thoughts have gone down the drain.

And I'm ready to get back to work.

I am grateful for a clean house.
I am grateful for relaxation.
I am grateful for the Dixie Chicks.
I am grateful for the work I have been doing.
I am grateful for everything I have.
I am grateful for peace of mind.

Sympathy, Acceptance, Mediation, The Ugly Cry and Oprah

I had a good cry this morning.

Damn you, Oprah!  It's all your fault.

I got into the office this morning to prepare for my friend Tory who's coming to write with my today.  I arrived before nine, there was only one other car in the lot.  I unlocked our gate.  And I did my ritual: water for the tea kettle, washed my mug and sat down to look at my meditation for the day.

I am doing Oprah and Deepak's 21 Day Meditation Challenge that's all about finding joy.  Yes, I am a Super Souler.  I watch Super Soul Sunday reruns.  I'm an OWN viewer.  I am Eric and I'm an Oprahholic.  It's true.

So today's meditation is Day 18: Radiating Compassion.  I like compassion.  I feel compassionate.  I hope I radiate.  I read the email they sent and read the centering thought, which I will use as my mantra in today's meditation:

I radiate sympathy and acceptance.

I look at the mug I brought in from my mom's house over the weekend.  My tarot reading said that I need to bring items from home into my personal space.  My most personal space is my office.  Dad had this mug that someone gave him when I was a little kid and I've always loved it.  I would always drink out of it when I could, even when he was alive.  It's a short little white mug, nothing oversized, with his name on it: Danny (in Old English letters).  Then two red dice.  And the words Las Vegas (also in Old English red letters).  

I turn on my timer and I close my eyes.  I repeat the phrase over and over and over again.  I can hear the water boiling in my hot water kettle.  This usually gets me through the first part of my meditation.  I love hearing that sound of the water getting hot.  At some point during my meditation, I really fixate on those words: I radiate sympathy and acceptance.  I decide to think about those words, what they mean to me, and how they show up in my life.  For some reason, I get the voice of Iyanla Vanzant in my head.  She says, "Let's think about that."  Okay.  I don't know what Iyanla's doing my my head right now during my meditation.  I thought I only had room for Oprah and Deepak.  Get your own meditation challenge, Iyanla!  

But I did take a moment to pause and think about that.  Then I thought again about the word: Compassion.  What does that mean to me?  When I talk about my Dad now, the big thing I mention is that the healing that happened when I was sick was because I offered compassion to someone who I never felt had it for me.  Now in my meditation, that hit deep.  I thought about sympathy.  That wasn't there for me either.  Then I thought about acceptance.  I never felt acceptance from him.  But I did offer him compassion and wasn't that a good thing for me to do.

Then something else creeped up.  I have been doing a lot of work on my self lately in the area of accepting my self as I am.  I have been working on getting whole.  I give gratitude every day and especially every time I write a blog post.  I end my posts with statements of what I am grateful for.  Once I accepted my father, had sympathy for him, and offered compassion to him, I finally had acceptance, sympathy and compassion for myself.  

Once I offered compassion to someone who didn't have it for me, I was finally able to have compassion for myself.

Oh God.  I started to tear up.  I went back to Iyanla's voice: "Let's think about that."  My throat got tight.  The tears started to roll down my cheeks.  My face was contorting into the ugly cry.  I think this is what is referred to as having an "a-ha moment."  I just let the tears come.  I let the realization hit me.  I had never really had compassion for myself until after my Dad died.  And it wasn't because he died. But it is because I finally offered him compassion.  He was hard on me, so I was hard on myself.  Nothing was never good enough for him, so nothing was ever good enough for me.  And this simple thing of doing the opposite worked.  It was a two way street.  If he could give me negative messages, they could affect me negatively.  But if I had something positive, it could trickle up.  And it did.  And he finally had compassion before he died.  And sympathy.  And understanding.  And acceptance.  And peace.  I had done that.  But just as importantly, because I had done that for him, I had done it for myself.  I don't live under a dark cloud of self loathing any more.  Yes, I have my days where I am ridiculously hard on myself.  But the love, the compassion, the sympathy and the acceptance comes through first.  My drive is based in that now and not based on knocking myself down in order to pick myself up.

The feeling passed through me.  My breathing got more steady.  My a-ha moment was pretty disruptive, but felt wonderful when it passed through.  That was something I had known for a long time, but it hadn't coalesced until now.  

Then I thought about how that is tied to today.  To what I'm doing today.  

I am writing a screenplay.  The first screenplay I have written since graduate school, which is a while.  I had an idea for this play about my life growing up and my obsession with Woody Allen.  And I got the opportunity to write it as a screenplay in order to apply for a spot in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab.  It's really about the transformative power of art.  It's about how I became the person I am.  It's my origin story, in a way.  It's also about how I met my best friend Alanna, who I've been friends for since we were wee little kids.  That all sounds wonderful, right?  The story of how I came to be this wonderful person I am today: creative, smart, curious, artistic.  All of that sounds so lovely.  But the story of how I became who I am is the story of a fearful, tough, mean, abusive guy.  My father.  He was hard on me and said pretty rough things to me because, in his mind, he was making me tough to handle the world.  He was tearing me down to be built back up.  That's the origin of what came before all of the compassion.  I am writing this story honestly.  Not everything that happens in the screenplay happened to me.  But the emotional truth is there.  I don't think I was prepared to write about my parents fighting or getting hit with a belt or the pain of being eleven and disappointing the only person you want to please.  I don't wrap everything up neatly, either.  I don't have the perfect relationship with my Dad at the end of the screenplay.  I had to find something that worked for me.  I had to find what made me feel better and that's where my best friend's family came into my life.  It's a love letter really to all four of the parents in my life, mine and Alanna's.  And it makes me emotional.

So as I get ready to start my rewrite this morning, the Universe (and Oprah and Deepak) gave me a gift.  To focus on that compassion.  Because while I have to tell the truth of what happened and who my Dad was to me, I also know why now.  I am able to have sympathy for him without rewriting history.  This is what I have been working on personally and now I get to put it into my work.  That's a gift.

I am grateful for a good cry.

I am grateful to be in a state of mind where I am open.

I am grateful for the lessons of my childhood.

I am grateful for my struggles.

I am grateful for my pain.

I am grateful for the ability to write about it.

I am grateful for the access I have to my personal truth.

I am grateful for my sense of humor about it all.

I am grateful for the survival quality of that humor.

I am grateful to be able to laugh about it and have sympathy and compassion about it now.

The Wilderness

This is a chapter from my second favorite book on inspiration by Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro.  My favorite is his first book on this subject, The War of Art.

"My Years in the Wilderness"

"In a way I was lucky that I experienced failure for so many years.  Because there were no conventional rewards, I was forced to ask myself, Why am I doing this? Am I crazy? All my friends are making money and settling down and living normal lives. What the hell am I doing? Am I nuts? What's wrong with me?

"In the end I answered the question by realizing I had no choice. I couldn't do anything else. When I tried, I got so depressed I couldn't stand it. So when I wrote yet another novel or screenplay that I couldn't sell, I had no choice but to write another after that. The truth was, I was enjoying myself. Maybe nobody liked the stuff I was doing, but I did. I was learning stuff. I was getting better.

"The work became, in its own demented way, a practice. It sustained me and sustains me still."

I am building my own practice.
This practice has a space, my office.
It has a time, usually from 9 or 10 AM until 5 or 6 PM.
It has its own ritual:
I wake up.
I don't talk to anyone for an hour - I brush my teeth, I shower, I get dressed.
I go to the office, quietly driving on the 134 to the 5.
I enter my office, turn on the light.
I get the water for my tea and turn it on.
Then I turn on my timer for 20 minutes.
I sit down and I meditate.
I say my mantra.  I sit still in one place.
The buzzer goes off.
I make my tea.
I take out my laptop and I sit down.
I take care of business.
Then when I have had enough of that:
emails, blogs, writing out my to do list for the day…
I write.

I spend my days satisfied.
I take walks if I need to.
I talk to my office mate when I need to.
I know that when I leave, I have put in a full day at the office.
This makes me feel purposeful, useful and cheerful.
I know that I have dedicated my time and my space to my practice.

I do this every day without the promise of recognition
from anyone other than myself.
I recognize the work that it takes.
I recognize the time I have given to my practice
and I work everything around that time I take.

I am able to do many things at once because of this practice.
And I don't see any start or end to the work at hand.
It's beautiful.

I am grateful to have entered the wilderness and to have come out of the wilderness.
I am grateful for every difficult event in my life that is my teacher.
I am grateful for sleep.
I am grateful for meditation.
I am grateful for days off.
I am grateful to be fully engage in a work practice.

Confessions of a Former Anti-Outliner

I'm a playwright.

That  means some people will make assumptions about my work:

• I am "wordy."
• My work is heady.
• I don't care about structure in the way that TV or Film writers do.
• Outlining will impede my creative process.

Virtually, none of those things are true.  Maybe if they were, I'd be a more successful playwright.  Maybe…

I actually like what can be said without words.  I fell in love with scenes without words as a youngster. I think that's because I was a dancer.  I loved this idea of communicating without language.

My work tends not to be all of that heady, although I do write about subjects I'm deeply passionate about.  I tend towards the anti-intellectual in my writing.  I don't feel the need to show off how much I know or how much research I've done (although it usually is a lot).  I do like my plays to be informed.  And I think they're smart.  But never cold.  That's an immediate turn off in terms of plays I go see.  If a play leaves me cold, then I tend to not pay much attention.  

I actually love structure.  But I don't think that plays have to follow a certain structure.  Like the well-made play, for example.  I think plays should find the form that best suits the story the writer is telling.  I actually like structure a great deal because I think that it can help me articulate the themes of my story. Form follows function, that's an early lesson I learned as a young writer.  And to find different structures to build a play on is exciting. My TV and Film work is a bit more limited in terms of structure, but those can be fun structure exercises as well.

I don't really outline my plays.  Unless, I have a complicated structure where I am weaving stories and I need to balance them out.  I do like a laundry list.  I usually compile a list of things I think should happen or elements that I would like to include in the play.  Then I build from there.  I think TV and film work has to be outlined.  I don't know how people do it without outlining.  An an outline can just be a list of events as they happen.  It can be clearer in your head than it is on the page.  But I like to track story, so outlines are important.

I think outlines get stagnant when you don't allow your story time to breathe.  I like to write and then if I'm stuck, I go back to my outline.  I can change stories and events.  As long as it progresses things along.  I am not bound to an outline.  I like to jump off various points.   But the outline provides me with an objective for every scene.  So sometimes I will use story earlier than expected, then I need to figure out how to raise the stakes where I originally had planned to use that piece of story.  That's another reason I love an outline, because I it allows me to move the story quicker.  I might find a place earlier in the script for a piece of information, then I can look at what I have and figure out what to replace it with.  I think I did that about three or four times with the script I just wrote a draft of.

But I'm also the guy that loves to rearrange the index cards on his desk just so, with the right amount of space in between.  I love a certain amount of order, even when that order is fully by my own design.  But little bullshit things excite me.  Like Tabasco sauce being on sale for 69 cents each when you buy five.  There's a certain order in that.  

But these are the games I need to play with myself.  It's not an outline, it's a guideline.  So I can veer off of it, as long as I'm aware of where the path is.  It's security.  But I don't just hang onto it without discovering what's off the beaten path.  That's not a good philosophy for life, either.  You have to go off the beaten path.  But life without a direction is a meandering existence and you never feel like you go anywhere.  Same thing with a script.

And with life, I like to know some things.  I like to have a sense of where I'm going.  But I also want to be surprised and I want to discover things I didn't expect would be there.

I am grateful for Tabasco sauce (especially when it's on sale).

I am grateful for quiet mornings.

I am grateful for 5 1/2 hours of sleep when it's enough.

I am grateful for 10 hours of sleep when I need it.

I am grateful for boundless energy and enthusiasm.

I am grateful that I got the screenplay written last night.

I am grateful for a day to do other work.

I am grateful for elevens.

I am grateful for peace of mind.

I am grateful for supportive friends and colleagues.

I am grateful for my certainty that I am in the right direction.

I'm an Asshole

People who know me will immediately refute that title.

(I hope)

You're not an asshole.  You're one of the sweetest people I know.
You're so generous.  And kind.  And lovely…

Well, if you think that, you're not one of the following:

• Any family member of mine (especially my Mother)
• My boyfriend (current or former)
• Someone I've worked with

I reserve that limited-edition part of my personality to people I happen to be very close (or in close proximity) to.  To be fair to myself, I am not an asshole 100% of the time.  But right now, I'm kind of an asshole.

I'm working on a screenplay that's due in September.  And I'm writing it swiftly.  In about five weeks.  

Okay, if you're Nic Pizzolatto, that might not seem like a short amount of time.  I just read in The Hollywood Reporter that he wrote six scripts in a month.  That guy must be a real asshole.  So in this instance, I'm more than happy to say that I'm no Nic Pizzolatto.

I just want to be left alone.  I don't want to talk to a lot of people.  (Tim, this does not apply to you.  I adore you and technically we don't work together, even though we share an office space.)  Other writers, I'm okay with.  Because they understand the asshole zone.  I know writers don't own the patent on the asshole zone while they're working.  But, at least with other writers, we know where the land mines are and how to avoid them.

My boyfriend is so nice and he always wants me to be nice.  He told me the other day that I don't have to be such a dick when I'm working.  And I wanted to tell him (I kind of did, softly, in a text earlier):

Yes.  Yes, I do.

I claim my dickhood.  That's different from my dick hood.  I can't claim that.  I'm circumcised.

My tarot card reading from a week ago even supported my dickhood.

You're a writer.

Your cutting ruthlessness is about getting rid of what is useless.

You're the head of your own company.

You rarely vacilate.

And somewhere else it said:

Your temperamental behavior is simply a part of who you are.

Don't lose that.

Your work is very important now.

I feel like directing my boyfriend to my tarot reading.  But then I feel like that would be like using a bible verse to justify behavior.  And that would seem hypocritical of me.

I have had the "good son" syndrome my whole life.  I wanted to be the good boy for everyone to make them feel better.  I never wanted to burden anyone with my problems or my difficulties.  I always put that on the back burner.  

But one of my life's experiences right now is that I have established a space for myself.  I have a physical office in which to work.  A place to go to and be myself.  But along with that physical space, comes a mental and emotional space I need to carve out for myself as well.  And in that space, I can behave any way I want to.  

I remember years ago, when I was a student playwright, I studied with the great Erik Ehn who said to me:

No one cares how the work gets done.

As long as it gets done.

And this is from one of the nicest people I've ever met.  And arguably the most talented.  Apparently, I was grappling with my assholeness for years.

Just to clarify, I am not talking about being an ego maniac.  Or blowing up at people for the sake of setting up a hierarchical relationship.  

I am talking about the frustration that is created from knowing that you are giving birth to something that didn't exist before.  I am talking about that grimaced look when you are wrestling with an idea that's not turning out the way you want it to.  I'm talking about that desperate state you enter when no amount of food, drugs, cigarettes, or masturbation can help bring this nothing that was barely a thought a minute ago into being.  I'm talking about labor pains.  

It makes you mad.  I'm sorry, but there's no way around it.  And hiding it, for the sake of not upsetting someone, takes too much energy.  But more importantly, it's a denial of yourself.  

And then you have to ask, why would someone want me to deny myself?  Because it makes them feel better?  Because it makes them nervous.  Because they don't want to hear it.  Because it's too painful.  Because they're denying themselves.

Well…

I realized that I should have just left yesterday when I said I was going to leave.  I should have gone to my friend's house in the Hills.  I should have gone on a run.  Or meditated.  Or worked out.  I should have just left.  But instead I stayed and was a total jerk all night.  And even when I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I just laid quiet, making things uncomfortable.  But I didn't leave because I didn't want to create a bigger deal.

Now I realize I was denying myself in so many ways.  To make someone else feel comfortable.  And I wasn't making it good for anyone.

So now I'm going to take off for a few days.  Just my office and this place in the hills.

It's what I did in May when I knew I had a major deadline of three scripts I had to write in a month.  And I was wonderfully fantastic to my friend Molly.  We had a great time and we both helped each other out in getting our work done.  But if I had stayed, I would have been the biggest asshole to my boyfriend.  Kind of like yesterday.

So I'm better if I run off to the woods to turn green…or to howl at the moon.  Then I can return when my body and mind have reverted back to normal.

In the meantime, I'm going to watch this on a loop.  It makes me very happy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcFrZ0Bpjo8

I am grateful to know myself.

I am grateful for other writer friends who get me.

I am grateful for the pleasant moments in life.

I am grateful for moments of solitude.

I am grateful for moments of peace.

I am grateful for You Tube dance videos.

The Week Ends

Back when I used to go to someone else's office and put in my time, I used to hate weekends.  It felt like Friday evening came and then it was just a countdown until Monday came rolling around again.  Then each day was another step towards Friday.

My weekends were jammed with things I needed to get done that I didn't have the time or energy for before.

Now that I go into my own office, my feelings about the weekends have changed.  I work my ass off during the week writing.  This month, I have a screenplay I'm working on for a deadline.  So every day is focused in some way. By the time I leave the office at 5 or 6 every night, I'm ready to be done with work.  I can put it away.  Although tonight, I have been been putting notes together on another project I'm getting ready to write in October.  But the prep work is massive before the month long writing session.  I also have been watching documentaries tonight for that other project.  I also did work on loading up scripts for our October writing challenge.  So I probably came home and did another 3 hours worth of work.

But sometimes work has to happen in the evening and on the weekends.  I don't mind it if it doesn't happen all of the time.

For me, I'm happy to put it behind me this weekend.  I finally have a full weekend to just not work on the screenplay.  Although, I have scripts that I'm getting paid to read that I need to read on the weekend so that I don't interfere with my writing.

I know myself.  When I have more full time work for pay, it's hard to write on a full schedule.  So since I'm not doing that right now, I have to take advantage of my rested mind and spirit.  And work!

It's funny how work structures my life.  I don't drink much during the week.  I don't do anything that will impair my judgment or my energy.  It's like when I was training for the marathon years ago.  I would have massive training runs on Saturday mornings, so Friday nights were mellow.  And if they weren't, I would be suffering.

One of the things I love about having an office, besides having my own space, is that my time is managed differently.  I can compartmentalize my writing and other types of work I need to be doing.  It's pretty fantastic.  I actually feel on schedule for the first time in my life.

I know what projects I'll be working on for the rest of the year.  So all I have to do is show up.

I've earned my exhaustion.  I even ran and meditated twice today.  I didn't think I'd be able to attend to both my work and my body when I was this busy.  It hasn't happened before.  But it all energizes me.  It's a good thing.

And now I know what I'll be working on come Monday, Act Three of the screenplay.  But hopefully that won't be more than 15ish pages.  Then I can get to the work of cutting the script down.  Oy!

I am grateful that I had so much energy today.
I am grateful that I got two meditations in.
I am grateful that I got work done on my pilot, even though that's not the priority this month.
I am grateful that the spiritual work is happening too.
I am grateful that people are seeing me as productive, prolific and pro-writer.
I am grateful that I am now in bed and barely keeping my eyes open.

Where Does A Good Idea Come From?

Yes, the Universal question.

I'm sitting in my office and I'm looking at everything on and near my desk:

• My index cards
• the ones filled out with notes on my desk
• the ones filled out with notes on my cork board
• the blank cards
• the blank cards in unopened packages of 100 each
• Books
• Books for research
• the projects I'm working on now
• the projects I hope to work on
• the projects I know I have to research a shit ton before I'm ready to write anything
• Books for inspiration
• books about the creative process
• bios/memoirs of people I admire
• Plays
• Ones I've read
• Ones I hope to read
• Ones that just make me look smart
• Food
• Post It Reminders of things I need to Do
• My Dry Erase Board
• It's Blank.  A virgin.  Unused.
• My Computer
• Endless possibilities
• Distraction
• Information

Do those things lead to good ideas?

I go on at least one walk a day.  To get food.  To clear my head.  To have a smoke (when I'm feeling naughty/at my wits end).

So outside is important too.  I had David here yesterday working with me and we were talking through an idea he had for a pilot.  He's writing up a pitch document for a script he already wrote.  And as he was explaining the idea and as I had questions, I remember asking him about the idea.  For the record, I do think it's a good idea.

Why do you like it?

What made you want to write about this?

What's the personal story here?

We talked about this idea on our way to get coffee and on our way back.  But we both needed to clear our heads from what we were working on.  He also listened to me talk through my idea.

I am coordinating a TV/Film writing challenge for the playwrights group I belong to  called The Playwrights Union.  We're writing scripts in October, but right now we're trying to decide on an idea.

Then we have to figure out if that idea makes a good series.

Then we need to figure out a few seasons worth of story arcs/possibilities.

Then we have to have compelling characters.

We need a "hook."  Just like a good song.

And it needs to be something we would be compelled to watch week to week.  Right?  It has to have that watchability factor.  

Are those components of a good idea?

I recently pitched nine ideas to my best friend for a pilot we want to work on together as a potential vehicle for her.  She had just gotten off a three season run of a cable show.  And this conversation happened in the short window before she just got a series regular on another cable show.  So now I think I'm going to write the script anyway.

But the point is that I had come up with nine fresh IDEAS.

What was my criteria?

• female centric
• 
  
• half hour comedy (mainly)

Then I kind of went all over the map.  I was able to do this largely because I know what she is capable of and what I would like to see her do (selfishly).  So that criteria expanded:

• what haven't I seen on TV
• funny worlds
• a great character
• books I've read recently or read about
• personal interests

For me, an idea originates because it's something I am interested in.  And it works best if it's something I'm obsessed with or can't stop thinking about. 

• research

If I'm researching the fuck out of something, then I know it's a good idea.  Well, I know at least that I'm interested.  And I like fun places to be.  I like to inhabit a world that seems interesting.

Then the next questions tend to be:

• Is this going to be interesting to anyone else?
• What's interesting to me?
• How can I translate this to be interesting period?

Because this is the problem I run into with a "great" idea.  I could research for years. I could read and watch documentaries about this subject forever.  But where do I want to focus?  I'm someone who can get lost in all of the work.  But at a certain point, I need to make a decision.  David and I talked about this yesterday about his idea.  It all sounds like a great subject.  But where do we jump in?

I only had questions for him because these are the same questions I ask of myself.  So once I have the stacks of note cards with questions or research or ideas for scenes or whatever I've brainstormed…I start to narrow my focus:

• Who are these PEOPLE?
• Do I have a great lead character?
• Are we following him/her?
• Is this world the interesting part?
• What's the most interesting?
• Who inhabits the world?
• What's interesting about them?

It's best if I'm not inventing drama.  If the needs, wants, conflicts come from the world organically, and they're INTERESTING, then I feel I'm in good shape.  That was the problem with a certain TV show about a niche section of show business that ran for two seasons…it started inventing drama (or more accurately melodrama in the bastardized sense of the word).  It didn't have enough stuff.  Or it didn't trust the stuff it had.

I like ideas to marinate.

I started keeping an accordion file of ideas.  Woody Allen has a drawer full of scraps of paper.  Some people have shoe boxes.  I like something that looks like a file.  Tabs.  I like tabs.  And I like a clasp that makes sure those ideas don't fall out.  And I like rectangle index cards of the same size.  Uniformity.  I like things to look organized.  Then that means that they look professional.  Then that seems serious or impressive in some way and it adds authority or prestige or purpose to what that germ of a fragile idea is.

I'm bullshitting myself.  Every day.

I need that bullshit.  I need to feel smart.  I need as much resolve and as much chutzpah and guts (mainly self created) going in because I am responsible for putting together a whole world from soup to nuts of something that's interesting and compelling and worthy of large sums of money that forge a commitment between two business entities.  I have to act like a corporation in my writing factory in order to stand toe to toe with a more obvious, public corporation that employs thousands (sometimes even tens of thousands).  

Some people would say it's not bullshit.  It's whatever gets you to the desk.  It's whatever gets the ideas out.  It's whatever gets you out the door.  It's whatever you need to call it.

So I don't exactly know where a good idea comes from.  Or I don't know how to answer that question. But like James Lipton asked Robin Williams once on Inside the Actors Studio…where does comedy come from?  Or where does the inspiration come from?

He did a five minute routine using a pashmina.  And when he finished using that pashmina in every which way he could, he sat down.  "I can't explain it, but I can show you."  I'm paraphrasing.  

But that's what I can do.  I can show a little bit.  I can't begin to break it down in a formula.  I just know what works for me and what feels good.  Our brains adapt to what we respond to.  And usually what we respond to is what feels good.  So the index cards feel good to me.  Organization feels good to me.  Talking a lot feels good to me.  Eating feels good to me.  Grandiosity feels good to me.  Sometimes.  Big ideas.  Funneling into human interaction.  All of that feels good to me.  So that's how I work.

Where does Good Idea Come From?

It comes from what feels good.  Then figuring out how to fit that on to living, breathing human beings that only live and breathe in your head.  And those facsimiles need to hold your interest (first) for a long time.

Then you know you've got a good idea….?

I am grateful that I was able to type for that long and consistently.

I am grateful for so many thoughts.

I am grateful for friends who I watch work bravely.

I am grateful for ideas.  All kinds.