getting started

As any writer knows, the hardest part is getting started. After looking forward to this trip for months, today I found myself struggling for a number of reasons.

First of all, I chose to get started by re-writing instead of writing, which was a bad idea. Re-writing is a soul-sucking, discouraging process because it's all about judging yourself. After spending the good part of the day nit-picking the screenplay I've been working on for the past year, by mid-afternoon I had the blues and decided to get out of the house.

It doesn't take long to familiarize oneself with Eastend; all told, it probably has only a half-dozen streets and a half-dozen avenues. On my way to the drug store to pick up a new notebook, the few people I crossed gave me the three-finger wave from their pickup trucks. It made me realize how disconnected I had become from this pace of life; although I had spent almost 20 years of my life in a small town such as this, it suddenly felt alien to me. That in-between sense of displacement suddenly became acute. I decided to go back to the Stegner House and recharge my batteries.

After a nap, a meal and a long evening walk down a gravel road, I felt much better. Tomorrow I will start fresh with a change of tactic. I am here to write, not re-write. Perhaps I can use the strange emotions percolating in me as fertilizer for my brand-new screenplay.