The End

I think my 33 years of watching football must have ended. Instead of watching the AFC and NFC Championships yesterday, I watched multiple episodes of Downton Abbey.

I just want Anna and Mr. Bates to be happy.

Novel vs. Play

Nothing against writing plays, mind you, but I think I've discovered precisely why I'm enjoying writing this novel so much. After conceiving of the novel and writing plenty of notes in my journal about it, I began writing on January 2. In the past 18 days I've written about 5,600 words. It's probably not as much output as I was hoping, but I've been enjoying writing. From about 2004 until 2007 I really worked hard to try to be a playwright and have come to the amazing realization that I can't become one because my plays will never be produced, not unless I can produce them myself. I have neither the time nor money for this. I have three jobs and a family with whom I love to spend as much free time as possible.

Writing a play doesn't matter if you don't get produced. The play does not exist if it is not produced. So, in order to become a produced playwright, here are the generally accepted steps:

1. Get a great GPA with your undergrad degree.
2. Write plays so you can send samples of your writing to grad schools.
3. Accept a crippling amount of debt or have access to a lot of money.
4. Go through the application process of getting to a grad school.
5. Go to grad school.
6. Work ass off in grad school, live in poverty, write, write, write, and schmooz like crazy.
7. Graduate. Move to big city. Submit plays. Make sure you can afford to work very little so you have time to write plays and schmooz like crazy.

There are other ways around this, of course. But I would not hesitate to say this is the generally accepted path. See, I've realized if I'm not produced, I'm not a playwright, because a play that is not produced does not exist yet. Some folks might debate this, but I think I'm right.

Here are the steps to becoming a novelist:

1. Write novel.

The novel exists. It's down on paper or on your Kindle. In the e-book era, I can self-publish at no cost. Everything that the novel can be? Is. It exists. A play does not exist until it's in production. Do play readings count? No. If you're someone who thinks you have written plays and you have never been produced, you've never written a play. 

The one thing that has always bothered me about writing a play is that always in the back of my mind, I think, "What will I write on the cover letter? What is a good synopsis? Which ten pages should I choose to submit?" This is harmful thinking. None of this matters unless I have the time to go to grad school and get an MFA in playwriting and spend a lot of time getting to know a lot of people. Or getting attached to a theater company somehow and convincing them to produce my plays. Or starting my own theater company. 

All I'm thinking about now is writing the novel. Maybe this simply means I've "matured" but every time I've tried to go back to an unfinished play, and I've done this a couple of times in the last two months, I can't get started. Because I know it's futile. It's a shame, but it's true. I just don't have the time or resources to be a playwright.

Am I sad about that? A little. I don't feel like I wasted my time trying to write plays because I think any time spent writing makes me a better writer. Even writing this is valuable in its own way. But I'm sticking with text, thank you very much. 

5,000 Words

I've been working on my novel for precisely 15 days. I've written slightly over 5,000 words. Not that I'm gauging the quality of the work by word count, but considering I've spent the last several years not writing, it's definitely a sign that my several years of not writing is truly over at last. Last summer I attempted to start a different novel and that sputtered, although I will definitely revisit in the future. What I'm writing now, very tentatively titled You're Telling Me!, is sticking to the ribs. I'm writing a bit of the novel every day and I'm also writing in my notebook every day.

THIS...IS MY NOTEBOOK:


I love my Moleskine™ notebook. My Moleskine™ notebook is the one status symbol I allow myself. It says, "I'm a writer. BACK OFF!" Not that anyone has been the least bit intimidated when I'm carrying my Moleskine™ notebook. It's more expensive than your traditional, simple little spiral notebook, but it's far more awesome.

Notes on the novel:

1. I think I may have found my form. First of all, I have not ONCE wondered how I can possibly market this to producers. Half the time I wrote any of the plays I tried to write I kept thinking about what I'd write in my cover letter and synopsis and which ten pages I'd choose to send theaters. This is an unhealthy and foolish way to approach art. We are at a point in 2012 that if no publisher wants my book, I can publish it myself in a Kindle edition at no cost. HA!
2. I don't like to saddle my prose down with descriptions of my main characters. I'm never particularly fond of writers who need to tell us everything about Person X's physical characteristics down to the bridge of the nose and the tightness of the buttocks. That's not important to me. It never has been.
3. I wish I could type with my eyes closed.
4. I can be as silly as I want, and then also not as silly as I want. I'm writing it. I can do whatever I want.

These are important things.

Great Bad Romantic Comedy Idea

I came up with a great bad romantic comedy idea today: An intellectual property lawyer, played by Matthew McConaghey, falls for a kindergarten teacher played by Kate Hudson. She painted Mickey Mouse on her classroom wall and he's suing her. The bad romantic comedy will be called CEASE AND DESIST.

Write me a check now, unnamed coke-addled movie producer. You're welcome.

Line of the Day

From the novel I'm working on:

"I love plays about tuberculosis," he said, "but this one I found particularly inspiring."

Unplugged

We did it. This is for keeps. On Tuesday I canceled our DirecTV service. It had nothing to do with the quality of the service itself, which was surprisingly good. (We didn't lose any signal during last year's blizzard, a storm with enough ferocity to bring snow into our attic.) No, it's the fact that there's nothing on television. Every single cable channel now features reality television competition shows of one stripe or another, whether it's on the History Channel or A&E or TLC or the Food Network or Country Music Television. I have little doubt we'll soon see The Great Farting Contest on CSPAN before the year is out. And while I'll miss Turner Classic Movies, I'm not going to pay $110 a month for Turner Classic Movies.

Hopefully the cable/satellite model of having to pay for hundreds of channels that our dogs aren't stupid enough to watch will go the way of the dodo. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans who watch cable television couldn't beat our dogs at Trivial Pursuit because they wouldn't be able to figure out the peculiar mechanics of how to open the box. Our dogs could probably open the box and win by default. So the idiotic programming and economic model will probably continue.

Broadcast television isn't much better. Last week, I just saw a commercial for a new Rob Schneider sitcom on CBS called "Rob!" featuring the hilarious culture clash that occurs when he marries a Latina. I'm sure the coked-up executives at CBS thought it would be extraordinarily profitable to pair Rob Schneider and Cheech Marin (as his father-in-law) as a comedy team. It's real, by the way. Look.

I don't think I would surprise anyone who knows me that I think anyone who finds this the least bit amusing should be immediately sterilized, and if they have children, have those children taken away from them. And then deported.  Rob Schneider has long been a comedian who's about as funny as a slide show of Thalidomide baby photographs. And he's making a living wage doing this, and people will watch and laugh, probably because the laugh track will make them think they should laugh. Whoever these people are, they need to be removed from society because they are a danger to themselves and to us.

I should have prefaced this by saying I have little fondness for the aggressively stupid person. And when I say aggressively stupid, I mean the willfully ignorant pinhead who has absolutely no curiosity about what actually is as opposed to what is told to them by someone on television. These are the lowest form of creature, lower than the blind slugs that crawl through the dirt below our feet and as stupid as a tree. It is, in fact, for people more stupid than trees that most television programming is designed. I am heartened to see, for example, that NBC has brought back Fear Factor, a show designed for people who find Two and a Half Men too intellectually taxing, people for whom being toilet trained will prove to be the greatest accomplishment of their lives.

I have guilty pleasures, mind you, but those are confined to Electric Light Orchestra albums from the late '70s, not something like Toddlers and Tiaras. That show, of course, features abusive mothers at whom we're supposed to laugh instead of demanding they get thrown in jail and have their children taken away from them forever.

I'm not going to miss cable or satellite or whatever you want to call it. I read a book tonight! And I continued working on my novel, which is tentatively titled Chains, Pennsylvania, although that's not really a title, it's a setting, but I have to call it something, so that's what I'm calling it.

I have not turned on the television tonight. The service is disconnected as of Monday. I think we'll be fine.

A Screenplay to Send to Acclaimed British Director Steve McQueen

I've decided to write a screenplay about human misery, so that critics will love me. The film is called A Pile of Dung and it's about a man with no arms and no legs and no tongue. He lies on top of a pile of dung in an alley. He's had his tongue cut out and his nose cut off and he just lies there and moans. I'm picturing Michael Fassbender for the role. It will be a short screenplay since the film is just the noseless, tongueless torso moaning on top of the pile of dung, but the film will be three hours long.