Cleaning the Office

One of my favorite Neil Diamond songs is "September Morn."  That's neither here nor there.

I woke up this morning a little tired and still recuperating from a fun and wild party night on Saturday.  I had so much fun that I stayed up until 5, woke up at 8, then was drinking by 10.  Then I realized I had a meeting to be at at 1, about five minutes before I was supposed to be there.

Got in the car and went.

I host these creative talk sessions with four other male writers and directors.  I feel like one of the most important things to do when it comes to being creative is talk.  I am a writer, so that means that I spend a lot of time by myself.  Worrying.  Frowning. Nervous. Pacing.  It can be a mean existence.  It can be hard on one's sense of self.  So when the five of us get together and just go around and chat, it instantly opens us up.

Here's what we do:

We go around the room and talk about what's on our mind since the last time we got together.  That can be talking about creative projects and talking them out.  That can be talking about marriage and work.  It's really whatever we need it to be.  Two hours. That's it.  Then we go about with the month.  And somehow, just knowing that at any given moment during the month we can reach out to each other gives us the confidence to keep going.

I'm actually glad it worked out to be as simple as it did.  The rest of the night I slept and had sex with my boyfriend, who's leaving to go out of town for a week on Wednesday.  It was actually nice to just relax and be a soft, cuddly, silly boyfriend.  And not the uber serious worker bee that I tend to play most of the time.

I'm still in recovery mode today, which is actually a blessing in disguise.  There's something about being slightly hungover that is dreamy.  Of course, I got into the office this morning and cleaned up.  I finished a screenplay on Thursday.  So everything that I had up on my boards regarding the film I wanted to take down and put back into files.  I also got rid of a lot of things that represent problems I have solved.  In the garbage.  Felt good.

So now I look around me and I am just letting the boards (my white board and my cork board) stay blank for the day. That feels good.  Nothing that I'm rushing to for the moment.

Of course that will change by tomorrow.

Writing this blog is helping me just cleanse myself.  Writing about the mundane details of being in my office.  I watched this great video on the NY Times website about Vera Wang's office this morning.  It made me think about my office and the space that I have created.  I also realize that I love having a tactile office.  I need the boards up.  I need the index cards.  I need the sticky notes.  I need to feel like I'm drafting plans…like an architect or a fashion designer when I'm writing. It just feels better to be visual and to move while I'm writing.  I'm starting to appreciate standing up and working.  It's pretty wonderful.

What's next?

I have been watching interviews and documentaries on You Tube all morning.  That will last for a bit.

But I have three projects to work on this month.  Nothing as intense as writing three new scripts in a month.  I just realized that my month of craziness was May.  Four months ago.  And last month was a heavy writing month as well.  August.  Gosh, it's all just kind of flying by.

September.  What are you about?

Well, I am transcribing an old play of mine that I don't have a Final Draft copy of.  And that's turning out to be more work than I want to do because I feel like I'm going to be rewriting things this week.  It's due on Friday.  That might be this week's project, although I really don't want to be doing that.

I have a play I wrote this year that I'm supposed to be rewriting in order to get in shape for fall theatre submissions.  Then I think I'm going to just get all of those submissions done and out the door.  Fuck it.  Done and done and done.  I want to just submit everything at the end of the month and get it all out of the way.  I don't want to have anything really hanging over my head in October.  Because October is all about writing…but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Then I have some pilot treatments to write.  Yes, I said some.  Because I won't be writing all of those pilots this year.  But I have some ideas I think I want to flesh out.  At least one will be written in October.  So the process of starting the collection will begin.  I'm psyched about that.  I love this idea phase.  The writing phase is so rigorous and impossible sometimes that just the fresh phase is so nice to be a part of.  So I'm doing that.

I have three ideas that are single camera half hour scripts, which I haven't done in a couple of years.  I have two one hour pilots I have written most recently.  And all of these projects are female centric.  Leftovers from what I was working on to develop with my best friend.  So now that she's off doing a show for Bravo, I'm going to work on these ideas.  These are from the nine pitches I made to her a couple of months ago.  I'm happy to see it all fleshed out.

I've got work to do.  Nothing is making my happier right now.  I need to work every day.  That's just what's presenting itself to me right now, so I want to enjoy it.  It's what brings me the most pleasure.

And I love pleasure.

I am grateful for the pleasurable experience of work.
I am grateful to slow down a bit before I speed up again.
I am grateful for love.
I am grateful for friendship.
I am grateful for my work ethic.