Dos Passos, Artistically Rendered

In my hands is the Dos Passos Review Volume #7, Issue #1. On its 46th page is the poem, “South China Sea” — my poem. I’m critical of it. I don’t like the spacing — I like my poems bunchy, contained. Some of my lines, now that they are memorialized on paper don’t spring so strongly toward me:

…against clapboard down,

I don’t know what the word “down” is doing there. It feels messy, either evidence of poor comma usage or poor editing.

…did within the border of forecast,

A line from somewhere I’m not sure where.

Sure the poem is very old, an antique in my collection, springing from experience in the summer of 2000. Perhaps the word “down” made sense then, or the “border of forecast” was more self-evident. Again, I’m not certain about some of the poems lines.

I do however like this poem. It brings me some joy to see it in print, in a review I think feels right in my current poetic career arc. The image of two bodies, cradled like the South China Sea, Kenny Rogers on the Alpine Tavern jukebox brings me back to a certain place I can never return to. This is why we write.

Screenwriting:

On Wednesday of this week I received word from the Nichol Fellowship. My feature length script, “The Ancient Gallery” did not advance with the other 326 other screenplays into the second round. My script fell in with the seven thousand odd others deemed not worthy of a second read. It was a bitter pill, although one I’ve swallowed annually since 2001. The letter is politely written. I knew the methodically paced thriller had little chance to receive recognition being a genre piece. The Fellowship wants more Todd Solondz than franchise style horror. It’s a contest that rewards existential thinking/writing more than a piece with blockbuster potential. Make a list of those scripts that win/place in the contest: they’re hardly household names. The writers may go on to work on recognizable work, but the Nichol is an entre to that world.

What’s particularly bitter about this revelation is that 2010 marks the last year I will be eligible for consideration in the contest. One of the primary stipulations for entry is that writers cannot have earned more than $5,000 in screenwriting. By next May when the scripts are due for the 2011 screening, I will likely have exceeded that threshold by three or four times. Having reached something like a financially profitable place with my screenwriting is the biggest breakthrough in the last year and I’m not shy about saying that. I’ve earned around $7,000 this year already and am looking at potentially more in the very near future. Money is a bi-product of good writing, I believe. One missing for me from the beginning. I’m pleased with being paid. Until now it’s been the one thing I’ve never done as a writer. If it wasn’t for that nasty annual goal of winning the Nichol Fellowship.

I’ve promised myself not to bemoan success . I do however reserve the right to comment on it like I did my experience seeking it out. The joys of amateurism vanish as one ceases to be amateur. In my social work career the “aw shucks” moments have gently ebbed with each state meeting and 4:00pm conference call about slashing state budgets. The same holds true creatively. I’m in that phase of my career development where I can no longer scheme about my first breakthrough. The first one has come already and I am cultivating its evolution. They may get bigger. They just cease to wear the costume of breaking new ground.

The Struggle To Publish In Print

While some people in my life still revere the book and might tell me that my perspective on publishing is dour, I think the time is running short for an aspiring writer to see their words in print. In this month’s Atlantic there is an article which foretells a better time for content creators, writers, who are seeking to break in; that the very elements of our destruction may in fact spur a greater forum for success. I fall into the dubious column when looking at those forecasts: it’s that stalwart magazine’s necessary position to see greener pastures, to support the engines that are as ubiquitiously in power as the printing press 100 years ago.

I’m not equating my search with that greater, overarching state of the state of publishing. I am one of those aspiring though, no denying that fact. I was raised with books, a love of Powell’s on Burnside, the security of a shelf of paperbacks only half mastered. I accept that should my fate come to pass, and I become a writer, then a majority of my voice will be something other than print. I say something because, no one really knows what that thing might be. Crave that spine with my name, I still do though.

Even if it’s just once, just a single shot to start and everything else that follows is unfamiliar, it feels important.

This summer as I work through my poems as I do, I’m going to start piecing together that manuscript. There are a sufficient number of presses offering the opportunity, I’d be foolish not to. Right? I’m at least six months from starting a novel (and therefore so many more months from finishing it). I’m pushing that short story stone up the hill. Will it ever summit? The best laid plans right now feels like a slow return to the basics. I’m a poet. Although muddied in recent days with depression and self-doubt (talk about unoriginal) I feel when I reassemble myself on a bedrock of core values, I need to see this particular project through. It’s been too long.

Too long. Too long and the opportunity to make right, dwindling.

Click here for the poem.

To make appropriate note, this poem took on a radical change in publication. It was, as written, a landscape poem; it wasn’t meant to be written and viewed in portrait form. The editor, Coop Renner did a nice job though and the site’s layout definitely lent it a clean, up and down look. Enjoy.

Images of the South China Sea as Intimacy

It’s out and in the world now. These words will no longer be able to feel the challenge and changes from my pen.

Click here for the Dos Passos Review website.

Scott In Youth

Watched the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man two nights ago. In the other room, Lisa was watching Lost getting wrapping into these last few, precious episodes. In the other room my indulgence was 60′s pop/rock leading into 90′s/00′s avant-garde. My loose infatuation with Walker goes back to living in the Sellwood neighborhood. Kell Dockham adored Walker, played him on Saturday mornings while we looked out the picture windows at the driving rain or sun.

Enduring memories of talking about the most important things with “We Came Through” bursting on early spring Saturday mornings will never leave me.

What is it with reclusive authors? A musician who can’t get out of bed is far more intriguing than his extroverted consorts. Filmmakers who only reveal themselves once in a while make me happy in the most enduring way. Walker’s album Tilt kills me; it exists with Lou Reed’s Berlin in the stratosphere of art best kept at arm’s distance. It makes me nervous to listen to it in the same way people watch an unsettling image and have to look at it long enough to dry heave then ask themselves why. The once pop star lived in Scandinavia in the later part of his exile from himself.

Some of his cohorts described him as having possession of a vision of his more peculiar interior landscapes.

Interior landscapes. Good memory of the familiarity with my own. In recent days I feel like a fly-over state. I’m in the Kansas of the mind/soul. I’m the Saskatchewan of memories. These have never failed me. Until now. Maybe I’m quibbling with myself, setting expectations I’m not certain anyone can keep up with. Who else is there to compare with Walker? Salinger? Should I even mention his name while in a fit of self-reflection? It’s not fair to what I set out to do for myself. Each morning I wake up and examine a writer’s biography on Writer’s Almanac. Someone’s life I envy. Even the showmen. I’m disposed to knowing what I’m not.

There is something I’m terribly empty to defend against and that’s my desire to recluse. My time on this mortal coil won’t feel fulfilled until I can somehow sequester myself. Walker lived in Scandinavia. Fine. He spent a decade there. Good for him. Scott tell me how to retire to the Wallowas and I’ll do it. One month in a cabin and I’ll write a masterpiece.

Roads Leading Somewhere

A blanket of snow came in a rush on Tuesday night. No one predicted it until moments before when weather models acquiesce and precious barometric electricity takes over. The warm, wet front that the authorities correctly called for pushed in on the city from the ocean. What it didn’t do was push the cold front out of its way. Instead it laid in over top and the precipitation came down as heavy snow. Just as quick as it came though, the cold front eventually moved on eastward and eventually the rains poured.

This morning there was still a thick layer of snow on my neighbor’s front lawn. The rest of the white stuff in the neighborhood had already melted away to nothing, a few snowballs the kids had formed on the city strip for snowmen but nothing else. The sight of my neighbor’s white lawn stopped me momentarily in the doorway. It was strange testament to how a little shade from sunlight keeps the cold conditions socked in. His lawn existed in another climate. It felt a different place from where the rest of us were present and experiencing.

Hours later, the snow is gone now. Images of it stay with me though.

This morning I completed the third draft of another short story, “A Season For Living.” While it wasn’t my original intent, what took form on the page was erotic, sexual, filled with intimately seductive images. I’ve more than written fifty short stories in the last couple of years and none of them heated up like this one did. The sexuality was natural sexuality. Never forced. Written and re-written over the past few mornings, I feel like what “A Season For Living” presents are aside from pornographic. There are unique sexual/marital situations which are real to life. Its characters have faulted appetites which are both fragile and insatiable. Leslie is sympathetic. Troy is complicated: at once urgent, needful and others like a father figure. The arrangement they seek is bound to hurt in the offing.

Maybe what’s unique about “A Season For Living” is what makes me so fond of it.

One day in January, perhaps just as cold as this morning, I’ll bring a bundle of story submissions to the mailbox. They’ll be accompanied by a letter, traveling to magazines I’ve never heard of. In my catalog, the story will comprise its own micro climate. The lawn that won’t thaw. The holdout of electricity.

Take the time along the way to teach yourself — that’s the sentiment I keep reminding myself is crucial.

Unlike most people I encounter throughout this walk, I don’t make proper New Years resolutions: I make birthday pacts and resolutions (that day which is my watershed, January 21st). In step with most of my fellow man however, I don’t keep so well to those benchmarks which I make so carefully for myself. Barriers are as much a part of my routine as ‘to-do lists’, dialog with no one and secret moments at the bar. Of hearing stories and looking through a peculiar lens whenever possible.

The Year of 34/The Year of 2010 is nearly upon me. In the most simplistic terms, life as I know it is in store of another revolution; if marriage turned me on a 90 degree pivot then what comes next for me is 180 degrees. A turn that comes from out of the womb at the speed of light. Kid. Child. My next great role as a parent.

Dread isn’t the word although I carry around a lot of anxiety. I’ve always seen myself as a parent. My reservations come when I see and hear other parents and their behavior — almost never their children. The whole prospect of welcoming a son or daughter however has me clutching tightly to the things which are already a part of my life. While I’m determined to be a good parent, I’m still equally intent on being a great and unique writer while sopping up the spoils. Those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive things but the actions of parents are a constant cautionary tale of abandoned humanity and ambition. Those are the people I’m determined not to descend into being.

My overriding, humanistic objective in The Year of 34/The Year of 2010 is to take all coming changes to heart. Live them without a crippling sense of reservation. Whatever comes into my life will make me a better writer. Hopefully a more focused person on top of creative force. Almost all the rest can fall off the finger bone. I’ve spent 34 years getting this close. Enough so to taste it.

Pacts for The Year of 34/The Year of 2010 in no particular order

1.) 100 work submissions across all styles and genres.

01/22/2010 Update:

8 submissions out this previous week. 92 to go.

01/31/2010 Update:

6 more submissions since the last update. 86 to go.

03/03/2010 Update:

Four more submissions have gone out with five more today. After that I’ll be down to 77 more to go.

03/06/2010 Update:

Four email/web based submissions out today. 73 more to go here soon.

03/23/2010 Update:

Five more email/web based submissions out today. 67 more to go here soon.

05/08/2010 Update:

Two more email submissions of poetry.

2.) Read John Barth’s “Sot-Weed Factor”.

3.) Read more Science Fiction/Fantasy books/stories.

03/20/2010 Update:

Started reading Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov this afternoon (very short/a Time Life Books edition). While not among the strong, aliens and spaceships version of Science Fiction work, it is a dystopian/alternative history — or a “bend sinister”.

04/19/2010 Update:

Read another really cool short story, this one about the accelerating universe and scientists knowing when the actual date we will begin parting from one another. 10 pages. Amazing story arc in just 10 pages.

07/10/2010 Update:

In the last few days, I’ve read the first 12 issues of “The Silver Surfer” anthologized in book form. It’s wonderful stuff, although not relevant to the original purpose of my reading it. The Surfer is a herald for Galacticus — I needed cues for time travel/space and distance travel. The Surfer’s board is the only important tool to his travels.

4.) Read more Erotica stories.

5.) Take a writing class.

03/03/10 Update:

I’ve been looking into the Attic Writer’s website and I’ve found a class/consultation that I’d like to take. It’s something they do for poets where you can bring them a “manuscript” of poetry and they can advise you: where to submit individual poems, where to go with the whole piece, etc… It sounds pretty cool and at only $150 it’s reasonable.

03/20/10 Update:

Spoke at length with David Beispeil of the Attic Writer’s workshops and he explained some of what the class could entail. While not a traditional class with exercises, it could focus the work down on a subject/theme and in a direction I’m hopeful to find.

6.) Take an acting class.

7.) Reinvent this regular writing schedule by learning about the important of irregularity too: how to write at work, how to write at lunch or in a cafe, how to implement a spontaneous creative structure. Learn to pick up and put down a story again.

01/31/10

This month on four separate occasions I’ve stopped working in the morning and picked up later in the day. I’ve also had a pad by my work computer where I’ve taken lots of good notes on the basic story elements and/or structure.

03/03/2010 Update:

Today I’m intentionally putting off writing until the afternoon.

07/10/2010 Update:

Today Lisa went to the Country Fair in Veneta, leaving me home to work. I’ve been at the desk most of the day and plan on returning to the desk later for a second round.

8.) Attend the Willamette Writer’s Conference.

07/10/2010 Update:

Signed up as a volunteer.

9.) Finish three feature length screenplays: Promise Before The Sword (already done with draft #1) and Patrick, Killpatrick (schemed out).

01/31/10 Update:

I’m cleaning up the first draft of “Promise…” and although it’s not sharp, I can see much of where it needs to be.

03/03/10 Update

This last twenty days I’ve unlocked the feature length version of “The Collector”. It’s at 63 pages already and they feel pretty good. I’m anticipating 30-35 more before it’s done and they will be packed with action. Draft is out to Joel and Stefan.

03/20/10 Update:

Likely by tomorrow morning I will have a rough draft of “The Collector” to send out to Joel and Stefan. It staggers down toward the end and loses some of what it builds, but right now it does that — I believe — because there is too much in the script.

04/19/2010 Update:

As far as I can tell, what I’ve gotten to with “Ancient Gallery” is a completed screenplay. Excellent. The loose ends are tight. Sent it out to Rima Bauer Greer this morning.

05/08/2010 Update:

My feature length screenplay, “Promise Before The Storm” is, for all intents and purposes, done with this draft. It’s a good draft. It’s got some real life to it. A few abrupt movements but overall, the action makes sense.

07/10/2010 Update:

My writing contract with Donald Murphy is about 40% fulfilled. It’s a good little time travel feature. Will be done — I suspect — by middle of August.

10.) Win the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.

04/30/2010 Update:

Screenplay, “The Ancient Gallery” has been entered in the Nichol Fellowship.

11.) Write a 2,000 word essay which drives at the heart of my poetic style.

12.) Attend 10 local readings/new literary events.

07/10/2010 Update:

Will be finally attending an event on Wednesday night. I’ve sworn myself off of figuring out something better to do.

13.) Find a secondary outlet for entertainment review work.

01/31/10 Update:

I’m putting together a query letter to send out to movie magazines in the next month.

14.) Increase the readership of this blog: I’d like to see 10 usable comments from real readers.

07/10/2010 Update:

Although I have no comments to show for it, I’ve received word that an old friend reads this blog.

15.) When Lisa gets pregnant, focus my efforts on finishing Part I of the novel and writing Part II.

16.) Publish 10 Poems.

01/31/10 Update:

Although it doesn’t count to this year’s total, I received the new Deronda Review with “Self-Inflicted Famine” in it. Pretty cool magazine too. Lots of cool work.

03/09/10 Update:

In the shortest submission consideration ever www.elimae.com has accepted my words-on-page poem, “Ghost Story.” Should be nice to see how they handle that in print. Or on-line.

04/19/2010 Update:

Word from Dos Passos Review that they’re taking “South China Sea” which is exciting news. Love that poem. Sad to see it go somehow.

05/25/2010 Update:

I got word on Thursday morning that The Driftwood Review will pick up two poems — two excellent poems — “Alms Posture” and “The Tea Ritual”. Very pleasing. I even got word from the Roanoke Review who I had to notify of a simultaneous submission that they were “happy for me.”

17.) Publish 5 Short Stories regardless of genre.

03/03/2010 Update:

I’m awaiting word from the “Terminal Earth Anthology” on a short story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty. On March 15th I will receive word from them on whether it makes their pages.

07/10/2010 Update:

The “Terminal Earth Anthology” is picking up the short story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty. Word came about 10 days ago.

18.) Publish 3 Freelance Articles.

19.) Complete production of the short film “As Told By A Friend”.

03/03/2010 Update:

Stalling here. Got to get the video back and into Stewart’s hands for an assembly edit.

03/06/10 Update:

Just established a meeting for next week and picking up the erstwhile footage with a simultaneous delivery to Stewart.

03/20/10 Update:

I’ve just purchased the necessary hard drive and shipped it to Erik Fauske. Should have the footage in the editor’s hands by mid-week. Awesome news.

04/19/2010 Update:

Back to some pretty “bad” news. Drive failed. Reshipped. Hand off to Stewart is next week instead.

04/29/2010 Update:

Stewart picked up the footage last night. He’s going to work off of his own drive while the “bad” drive is replaced and returned to me via UPS by next week.

05/03/2010 Update:

Drive is in my possession finally.

07/10/2010 Update:

Parts I & III have been rough cut. Part II will come soon after. Editor and I have discussed some of the particulars, the goals and needs of the section and I have faith he’ll be coming up with a cut by mid-month.

20.) Learn to be more decisive about the direction I take in writing all stories.

21.) Experiment with drugs and therapy.

22.) Reconnect with the source of my stories. Find those people and places that are interesting and inspiring. In the winter months, this definitely means less television at 6:30 pm.

23.) Involve Lisa with more of the process, even if it’s to more comfortably keep creativity sequestered.

03/10/10 Update:

After sending word out about the publication in elimae, Lisa got wind of the publication. I’m awful at this. I really am. We had a long, painful talk about why I don’t tell her what’s going on with my creative world.

04/20/2010 Update:

Told Lisa right away about the publication of “South China Sea.”

07/10/2010 Update:

Considering all of the changes — see latest updates — Lisa and I have been much more in touch with what my writing career is doing. I’ve made money, I’ve got an opportunity to break through — it’s hard to keep contained.

24.) Use my voice to record the reading of a short story/poem.

01/31/10 Update:

I started a Podcast file in Rock Band for “Where We Are Not Native”

25.) A dozen new connections in the writing world.

03/20/2010 Update:

Connected to Portland poet, Sam Lohhman (Peaches & Blaque) and Attic Writer’s Director, David Beispeil.

07/10/2010 Update:

I’m fairly certain some of the strongest connections I’ve ever made came in the last month: Travis Short of Black Water Productions and David Lyons for the Simon Says project have been beneficial as well as Karen Peralta with Rainbow Writing Group. Making large strides here.

Modern Magi

The search for meaning on the backdrop of this season seems apropos. I woke up this morning to the same alarm clock (albeit a little later than usual). When I turned on NPR the news discussed oil prices, instability in Afghanistan’s leadership, health care, the job market and a disappointing first year in the Obama administration for African Americans. The world keeps on turning although there is something inherently different about today. We’ve been told it’s there. Told to feel for it. See it in other people’s smiles. Time was we were even convinced that if we’re not aglow with it, we’re something else. We are humbug.

When I was very young, I looked onto the coming hours between nightfall on the 24th and dusk the following day as ethically, almost astrologically apart from the others — this feeling I held strong to and identified with until very recently. The magic feeling survived into my early 30′s, in the glimmer of meaning and deference. Twenty odd years we followed the same course. Nightfall meant Lorraine’s house. Christmas Eve felt like a day when nothing bad could happen. Nothing cynical. One day of the year to thrill in the absence of anguish. Prevailing social currents distract us from the need of winding into a meaningful place. Maybe it’s the steady diet of social work and that experience with the plight of people. Perhaps its knowing that where there is pain, it remains and there is no vacation.

I don’t think that’s entire it though.

Charlie Brown Anticipates Adulthood

I’m going snow shoeing today. In ninety minutes, we’ll depart for Mt. Hood and the clear, cold afternoon unfolding on Trillium Lake. We’ll walk and burn our calves. Perhaps I’ll dig in and find that Irving Berlin moment, those days merry and bright. Perhaps something in the light will hasten the return of that feeling that today has an inherent superiority above all others. I hope so. Lisa will walk astride me. Sometimes she’ll be further up along on her own or next to Carrie. I know she wants this day to mean something too, just like any other day we encounter. She’s not similarly afflicted though. For good or bad, I’ve become one of those people who discover the presence of something when it’s sheer absence makes itself clear. Meaning doesn’t just stand out on its own. It has to emerge.

When all those reasons to be cynical fall away, today’s true meaning may well find itself in some astral form in a snowy field. There has always been some break in the light. A bit of cheer. I don’t know though. I’m hoping for it — sincerely. I don’t go into things with expectations however. Hope is that I don’t dig further into nihilism if it doesn’t and we drive down in the dark as empty as we ascended.

Something Says The Ride Is Drawing To A Close

In my thoughts frequently these days is the idea that being creative is an act of self-preservation. For some. I get up two hours earlier than necessary to write each morning because I spiritually have to; in my day-to-day work, encounters stage as events in a larger fictional realm; the gumption to get up the next day is a matter of remaining strong in the face of obscurity. Too much is written about how lonesome the interior world of a writer is but it cannot be underscored. A writer writes each morning the way everyone inevitably dies at the end of their life: alone.

To make more of it would be exaggeration.

I’ll admit that I’ve been my own handicap. In the last few years I’ve allowed myself to be pulled into a mass morality that has been for me an act of sabotage. My first twenty or twenty five years as a writer were spent in a closet of my own creation. No one cared what I was doing or related to it and I understood that. I used that callousness I felt as grist to my mill. It fueled me to find a better, more effective way to write and create. Again, too much might be said of this, but I corralled the anger I felt at being alone and used it. The feeling of letting myself die each time I expressed emotion was its own perpetual motion device.

That mass morality I’ve sabotaged myself with recently has been the misguided instinct to open up. I came out of the closet. I began to brandish this creative thing like it actually mattered to those outside my door. Making the world “aware” of me sounded good in as much as in the liberal, NPR loving world, awareness is its own reward. This is the same morality that gives us a National Rwanda Awareness Day and other shit like that. I held a four or five year “Erick Is A Writer” awareness campaign — for what though? To live within the punchline of some cliche? Drumming up that awareness turns out to be more exhausting than anything I’ve ever done. Those same people who weren’t interested then aren’t now (they never were) the difference is I felt this unnecessary compulsion to beat until raw fisted against the walls of my cell. If you’re not interested, I believed. Then the least I’m going to do is tell you what you’re missing.

Who was I kidding?

2010 brings me full circle. I’m feeling each morning it’s harder and harder to die although I know it’s what is absolutely necessary. I burned hot and bright at one time and now I’ve diverted so much to this campaign I’m exhausted. To allow someone to die alone seems an awful fate, but it’s what I want for myself and what I’m going to demand from those around me. It seems the only means to feel alive again. That anger, which was always there yet only supressed can finally crack free. The way a body feels exhausted/invigorated by a laugh, I want to feel through my old familiar growl.

Sabotaging my own success was that sense that anyone else deserved a reminder to give a damn. They don’t. They never really did anyway. People don’t really want to know what motivates you or makes you churn. They want cream. They’ll ask for it sweet or iced. Whatever form — give it to me.

I’m a fool for not seeing that earlier. Yet there is a sense of empowerment that I’ve realized this truth now before it was too late.

Running, always running.

When I was in grade and middle school, the mile run test was abject torture. My feet are bad. I preferred the sit-up or stretch tests. There has never been much strength there in my ankles and flat bottomed feet, and at random times throughout my youth I could be described as quite out of shape. Mom’s cooking, you know. In those early years, I would finish the mile through a combination of walking and running, a fair amount of gasping short of breath too. In my worst years, I applied a theory of running the long ends of the gym and walking the short from the third or fourth lap. It was how I dealt with the indignity of being unable to finish the mile.

As a freshman though, I was in much better physical shape. My Nintendo phase was gone. I worked out that summer with my Dad. That year I finished the mile for the first time without walking. I remember it, 26 laps around the gym without stopping. We had to signal to a spotter in the bleachers. Coming around that last bend felt really great, even if the time of up near 8 and a half minutes was no great feat (beginning of the realization, I’ll never be “fast”).

There was a starkly different sensation in that instance of surmounting significant distance. Whereas before, I moved sluggishly toward the finish line, this time I actually finished the task as described: the “mile run”. The sense of completeness was incredible. It was only in this later scenario that I had a sense of accomplishment.

That distinction between two different mile runs came to me today as I wrote the last planned scene of “The Promise Before The Sword.” A bloated, meandering, 110 or so pages of screenplay. Sub plots scattering in all directions like a dropped handful of pencil sticks. Some never completing. Pieces of story picked up and dropped. Characters exiting stage right with no compelling reason. For the first time in my life, I could see a distinction between “Finishing” and “Writing To The End” of a work. Perhaps now is a good time to know that. It seems like a worthwhile lesson as a creative person to learn. When is this work done?

I believe in this screenplay, this story of tangled moralities and endangered innocence. There is some meat on its bones, but a skeleton is all there is right now since I’m being honest with myself. If I allow the optimism to creep in on the fringes, I can see this feature length as the “smartest” most “compelling” work I’ve ever written, still it’s not all there in its proper sequence. When I was younger, getting to the end brought with it a sense of satisfaction. No more. I’m a better, more complete writer now and I understand that writing is rewriting and that when I sit down in the right amount of time with this screenplay again, the process will allow it to continue to take form.

The end isn’t where I need to be. Rather the right, appropriate end is.

I still can’t run a mile. That freshman year’s 26 laps around the Oregon City gymnasium was a halcyon day of physicality. Wandering into the self-help or exercise psychology section of Border’s Books isn’t my idea of compelling literature, still, I can glean some wisdom from my long ago experience in tennis shoes. What stage I completed today is distinct from the stage of finishing a screenplay. I wrote my story to the end. When I sit down to it again, that will be a matter of getting it into shape.