Writing and Moving...

When some of my friends move, they say "I bet it won't be as bad this time." Not me. Every time I move, my inner monologue goes something like this:

"This is going to suck. It's going to suck harder than I can even imagine. Prepare yourself, Darren, for complete suckage. Prepare yourself and maybe it will not suck as hard."

And yet no matter how much I prepare myself for said suckage, I inevitably reach a moment -- where I'm sweaty and my arms are sore and there's still WAY more stuff that needs to be moved than has already been moved -- and the whole escapade has fully exceeded my suck-expectations and made me regret moving. I always end up deciding that I will never move again, and I condemn my idiot self for not adequately preparing for this level of sucky-ness.

And that, my dear LCLs, is the writing process. Or, at least, the writing process as it pertains to Danny and me. You see, we always go into a script (or even a rewrite within a particular script) trying to be fully prepared -- it's going to suck, it's going to be so hard, we're going to plunge into the depths of despair and depression -- and then we inevitably fall DEEPER into depression and reach GREATER depths of despair than we ever imagined.

We've always (so far at least) somehow maneuvered our way through the dark times, but we're constantly overwhelmed with the fear that each new challenge will be the one that finally bests us.

And I think, frankly, that that's how it's always going to be. There might even be some small comfort in that. Because if a script (or a move) was somehow less challenging than I thought it was going to be, it would probably mean that I was coasting, or at least that I'm not trying to get better. And if I'm not trying to get better, then I'm probably just getting worse. So I think I've finally come to a place of being OK with the roller coaster, a place of self-awareness that these dark times are an important (and positive) part of my process.

Unfortunately, being OK and self-aware doesn't mean I forgive myself for not preparing more for these damn dark TIMES.

-darren

p.s. I'm thinking of moving. I bet it won't be as bad this time.