Day 9

17:30

A dispiriting day. Woke around eleven - went for a nice walk, came back to find out that the shoot for my 'break-out' project - the internet drama 'Paperjail' - is being postponed. This is not a good time for production companies to self-fund projects - which I completely understand. But when someone knees you in the balls, it hurts, whether or not the movement was intentional.

On top of that, I'm having to spend about thirty hours drawing around people in photoshop over the next three days for my job next week. And while the money is keeping me in writing paper ad whiny blogs, drawing around people's hairy arms for twelve hours straight totally sucks.

But first of all, I'm going to forget about this shit and do some writing.

21:15

Tired and moody. Only written 500 words. Feel utterly out of sorts today, which is annoying - I know it's because of the bad news.

If I can't write because I'm feeling grumpy about something, I'm going to spend more days angry than I am writing.

22:30

Had to have a nap. Wanted to just sleep through till tomorrow, but I have to do better than this.

03:00

A difficult day - maybe the most difficult so far. A couple of horrible scenes to write: frustrating, poorly put together, difficult to make believable, let alone interesting.

I'm learning that sometimes, when I scene feels impossible to write, you have to finish it in whatever way you can and move on to the next bit in that same sitting. If you manage it, you feel a sense of achievement simply for not giving up. But if you don't, you can create a bottleneck - the kinds of bottlenecks that in my case, having obstructed me from finishing stories for literally years.

And while you wrote these bits, I was trying my best, but it really didn't feel like I was trying my best, or read like I was trying my best. And for the first time this year, I got the old sense I've always had when writing: of self-esteem-dissolving-away - of every word passing a judgement on your inability to create anything worthwhile.

But then - fuck it. It's only a screenplay. And this is a blog - not a psychiatrist's couch. Jesus.

word count: 2,166
hours writing: 4.5