This Marriage is sooo OVER!

It's been quite a few days since my last post and I'll tell you why.  It's because I've been caught up in a very messy and extremely ugly divorce.  But the marriage is soooo over now. 

As I wrote in an earlier blog "A Bad Marriage,"  writing can be just that.  Granted, it can be wonderful and amazing sometimes, but at other times it can be a great big stink fest that takes up all of your time and effort with nothing to show for it.  My aforementioned marriage was to a screenplay that I've been working on for several years.  The idea actually came to me well over 15 years ago and I've worked on it on and off, but it has since changed and morphed into something that I don't even want to think about anymore.  You're sickening!  I can't even look at you! 

It's like an old familiar friend of the opposite sex who wants you and only you, but you're just not sure you want the same.  The kind of friend  that won't take no for an answer and comes around just because, and absolutely positively will not go away until you threaten violence or call the police to get a restraining order.  That kind of friend.  Or should I say frienemy.  

I've been at a crossroads with this friend for months, this screenplay of mine, and I didn't know whether to scrap all my hard work, research, sweat, loss of sleep, sanity or whatever and just press on through with it.  I was very close, or so I thought.  How wrong I was!  This old hag of a story just refused to let me go, like a specter hanging over my head it was always there haunting me.  I had put it down, picked it up, put it back down again, and I was supposed to be on my last ditch attempt to complete it starting today but something happened.  Weeks ago I had decided to work through this coming December and if I failed, so be it.  But before I started to grind away, I thought I needed to examine the effect this story has had on my life thus far. 
 
I get up every weekday at 4:45 am.  But if I seriously want to write for at least an hour I have to get up at 4.  It's just another 45 minutes right?  I haven't been able to do it.  For the last 5 or 6 months it has been a tremendous struggle to get up and out of the house.  I'm a night owl, but unfortunately I have to be at work at the crack of dawn.  There are benefits to this of course, I'm home earlier, traffic is much lighter both ways.  But it doesn't give me much time in the evenings to get anything done after the kids go down.  So if I want to write, I'm limited to the early morning hours.  And when I'm working on a project that excites me I'm motivated to get up no matter how early it is.  It's no problem at all.  But those days have been in short supply recently.   

My last screenplay was almost too easy.  My muse was happy and I had no problem getting out of bed early, but this time....  yeah.  I took serious note of this, that maybe I need to pay attention to myself more often.  Because I failed to realize that my total lack of motivation to rise in the morning stemmed from the old hag of a screenplay I was holding onto with a vise-like death grip.  I failed to see that my inept ability to move forward and just write was directly connected to my story and my subject matter, which I actually have no interest in pursuing any further.  It's just not in me anymore.  But I'd made a promise to myself to finish what I started and dammit I was gonna do just that. 

So this morning I came into work ready to get in a good hour of writing.  I decided to fight my incessant urge to edit, being an editor and all, and write the story from beginning to end in long hand.  I don't edit very much in long hand, and I can circumvent the computer processing business and work through it rather quickly.  But as soon as I put pen to paper to write the title and the first line, my stomach sank.  I knew right then and there that it was over for me and this story.  I couldn't do it any longer.  So I balled up that piece of paper with the one line and a title on it and tossed it into the trash bin across the room.  I usually miss this shot and have to get up and walk all the way across the room to retrieve it and drop it in the wastebasket.  Michael Jordan I am not, but of course that's besides the point.  It was a good omen, not that I'm superstitious or anything, which I'm not.  But it was a nice kicker.  I had decided then and there to finally move on.

Now I absolutely hate leaving things undone, but this is one thing I am now gladly giving the boot.  I lament the loss of time and creativity apparently gone to waste.  But when writing, I always have to remind myself that there is really no wasted effort.  Everything has its place, even the stuff that doesn't work and doesn't make the final cut.  Good ideas always find their home somewhere in our other writings, other stories, articles and anecdotes and such.  Nothing is ever really lost because our subconscious mind keeps it, mulls it over and uses it to build new stories and new worlds, new characters, challenges and situations.  Believe me, what I wrote will surface again in some shape or form at another time.
 
So you see, I've now left my tired old marriage and I'm now seeking a prettier, happier muse who will help me get out of bed in the morning and get to work, glad to be there just to spend a few moments alone with her.  So goodbye you old hag of a screenplay!  Hello beautiful new muse!  Hopefully this time I won't have to call the cops on you.