Quote of the Day: Captain Corelli's Mandolin

When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness.  It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides.  And when it subsides, you have to make a decision.  You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.  Because this is what love is.  Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day.  It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body.  No... don't blush.  For that's just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are.  Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

~ Louis de Bernieres

Quality You Can Taste

I'm getting a rise again.
But I'm older now,
there's strings attached.

I order double-doubles with fries now.
I know what a novel should look like.
I need to finish it,
I'm not far now.
That's...

That's overthinking.
Write what you see again.
Write what you feel,
and why.
When you don't know what to do,
write a list.

How Long

It's easy to look at the disappointments in life and be sad
and want to kill yourself for months on end.
That doesn't take much more than life happening to accomplish.
Two months of dragging a cutting knife over my forearm every night
on the light soft side where you can see all the lines in good light.
Two month of waking up every morning not wanting to be alive anymore,
just sticking around not to hurt anyone.

Focus on what's been learned instead.
Write characters and stories instead.

Back East

So I'm writing again I guess.  Thats a good thing.  A soothing thing.  Zinque is a welcoming crowd, maybe all the more so because I'm so stressed the fuck out right meow.  I need to breathe more.  I should go to the gym tomorrow; early.  And then have coffee with Sacha.

Do you ever feel a sunflower opening in your mind?  It unwinds, like a slow reveal.  Ugh, shivers from the knowledge of that word.  Industry lingo.

Say stuff like that; like reveal and privileged POV and VO (voice over).  Be charming, be confident.  Remember your training.  You'll do fine.  Read out loud tonight before you go to bed.  Read out loud when you wake up tomorrow.  Read out loud, then go to the gym, then have some coffee with Sacha.

Get to UCP early.  Get there at 2:30.  Be on the way by 2:00.  Remember what it's about, Back East.

A boy comes home, shell-shocked from paradise.  He looks worn out.  He has a terrible story.  The ringer of the show is that we never hear him tell it.  We only see how it's affect those involved and the reactions through glass of those who hear it.  The terrible story tells itself out through flashbacks, and it's a terrible story.  Or paradise gone awry, of spirits and karma in an alien (3rd world Hindu) world and consequence; it's about loyalty and betrayal and making amends, or at least trying to.

Maybe it's Bloodline meets Californication The Beach.  I guess everything with me's going to be meets Californication.  And I want to see surfing on scripted TV and not have it suck.

It's Return to Paradise.



*****



That's when you find things out.
Like writing.
It's when you do things you don't want to do.

There's one ship on the horizon line in the haze.
It's a work vessel.

The West

never forget the West.
don't forget
hold onto that feeling
or at the very least
the memory of it

she's gone now
but remember when you started it
when you wrote the first scenes
you were still in love
you thought you were gonna marry her

dream on that
work on that
strive to be where
you need to be for that to happen

write, write, write
don't just edit.