Semi-Urban Cartography

Rodin Sculpture

More than two months have passed. The weather has changed back into Autumn the season where it seems in perpetual returning. One more turn of the calendar and its into the holidays, sliding quickly into the end of the year benchmark. Time to know where have I been.

I’ve found myself in this transition, waiting. Two months ago I had the best meeting with a Hollywood agent of my young career. That’s not saying much, I’ve had so few meetings — even fewer that came with any sense of connection. We struck up a conversation — forget the nerves of a pitch. Still, there was a real type of chemistry, enthusiasm from both of us palpable enough to envision meetings, plane rides and phone calls. I called people. My family. I was electrified. I did all I was asked.

Now I wait — am waiting.

Waiting is part of the game. So is ‘no’. Hot and cold, here and gone: it’s not only the books and magazine articles that tell it. The climate is always overcast. When I email her, she responds quickly. She tells me what part of the process I fit into. An agent with her clout (great list of clients) can’t drop all of her existing clients to read some Portland, Oregon neophyte with hope beyond hope that his idea is a good one. That Oregon writer has to wait his turn. He needs to do so with abiding patience.

My first instinct when this bite came was to hold on. Don’t start anything new, until. I hold onto three good ideas, any of which I could start tomorrow. A dark comedy. A really smart thriller that feels like a contest winner. Something almost screwball. When I began my vigil — not stopping my process, but diverting to smaller things I could easily put down in the meantime — the plan was to get moving on whatever of those ideas she liked best.

“Erick, I love this. What else do you have?”

For the first time in my writing career, I found myself allowing someone to guide my process. Someone who wasn’t even in my corner yet.

Now it’s two months later. There are now four really good ideas on my desk. I’ve added a stage play. The small projects I hoped would keep me interested, fail to excite me enough at 6 in the morning to run after them at full speed. I find myself feeling dull. More than a few of my mornings, I’ve spend dawdling, reading web sites. Sleeping in sounds better — late at night, I dread getting to my desk, something I’ve never felt before. I am wasting my time, time that life is beginning to tell me, won’t be so easy to come by. Kids wake up early, throughout the night and stay up late. I’ve had these mornings for some time, and there is still just what paper tucks into the shelves of this desk to show for it.

Maybe it’s never time to wait. If this is true, I can already say that I’ve learned that the hard way; luckily, I only took two months as well. November is coming. National Novel Writing Month. I could hammer on one of the two half-hewn novels that dwell here. Dark months. Good time to write, a wry, or thought provoking screenplay. Someday the stage will die and my words won’t grace it. If it’s never a good time to wait, then I need to seize on one of these things now, regardless of what my prospective agent says.

To all ends, a resolution. On Monday, I must wake up with a new drive. There are fewer mornings like this one, never to return unless they begin to pan out.