Monday, January 21, 2008

Blogsploids

I've never bothered posting what would be a traditional blog on here. A blog of olden days. A personal screed that just lays out there limply as a confession of what I'm feeling. No one, no one, no one, can get in the way of what I'm feeling, though. Overwhelming depression is what I'm feeling. Am I a hack as a writer? All my life I have thought of myself as a writer. I have a degree as a screenwriter of all things. I am almost 31. Well, in May I will be. It's not that far off. When I got my degree I figured I would dick around for a year, pop out a screenplay, fire it off to some agencies, get some interviews with agents, hire one and be off on the lifetrack to the middle class. I dreamed long and hard about walking out of an office job one day a little bit early to take a meeting at some out-of-my-league dining establishment and go to sleep that night knowing it was my choice as to whether I ever needed to walk in the door of the old office again in my lifetime. It is perhaps a generational affect that I judge my success or failure on my level of celebrity attained. I don't necessarily mean that I should be a household name but I'd always (from age 4-29, at least) that by the time I'd reached 30 years on the planet, I'd have an impressive title that could wow some girls at the bar. Instead I am 30 and can't even begin to pay back the student loans I took out to pay for my second-rate commuter college education, let alone afford to spend the night out carousing and flirting and whatever else (business connections?) it is that all my friends have accomplished in the bars over the years. I sell fish for a living. And I am effectively an intern in a marketing department that might never receive any real oxygen from the higher-ups at a company that wants to grow beyond it's $100-mil a year borders. I live a filthy, seedy, boring, rat-trap existence and I am only maintaining it by smoke and mirrors.

Digression: I decided to write a journal, blog-o-riffic entry tonight because I am wondering if it is time for me to throw in the towel and forget that I ever wanted to be a writer. My dad thought he was a writer up until he got married and had kids (he was a month past 30 on his wedding day) and he lived a more-or-less fulfilling life. I think. I guess. He died before I'd really ever pressed him on the issue. He was a mathematician in practice, in civil service to the Navy, designing ships, and procreating like mad to the tune of 10 kids. I will probably never be as Catholic as my dad. I don't plan on it. I plan against it, in fact. But the question to myself (and on the outside chance that someone reads this, to you, gentle reader) is this: at what point can I cut my losses? I've written screenplays that are apparently terrible. I've read screenplays before. I've read a lot of them spread out over a long time. Even the "great" ones that I have read are dull and lifeless to me. So it is not a sad occasion to say that I can't figure out what makes a good script. It is, however, distressing to me that I can't even write a decent enough query letter to draw some sniffs from agents and the like. I've spent my whole adult life in sales and I started daydreaming of a Nobel in Literature when I was twelve. It would follow reason in my head that I have the background to at least fake it well enough to get some interest. But I have a manuscript to a novel (about 300-pages) drying and cracking on the vine. I have ascript that got a vicious beatdown by an intern at UTA. I have other scripts that are fading away as figments on a hard drive. I've got piles of rejection letters. And I've got a cracked sense of hope. Aren't all the friendly "keep at it"s and "you're really good"s end up meaning less when you can't even get anyone to read what you've written? Ah, nuts. I'm writing myself into a circle here. Who cares? It is beginning to look a lot like a hobby. See you on the streets!

P.S. - anyone know a good place to live that has free rent and a hot tub?