"Writing a feature screenplay under a deadline" sounds damn romantic. You can already imagine the brash slap of typewriter keys, like a boxer punching above his weight, stray coffee cups, maybe an ashtray that overflows. That's all horseshit. "I'll just hole up and write it in a week" comes next. There is no shortage of hoaxes for this process. The truth is, I can push out about three pages on a good day, but not every day. In the past I wrote in bursts, and then retreated to a pressing job, or a business trip, or just took a break and then came back to that pile of pages with fresh eyes, ready to chew my way out of the latest corner I had painted myself into. I don't have that luxury on this new script. I do not say this as a complaint, I volunteered to write it in a month. There is no one to blame but me for this 100 page adventure.
I did not leave the house for few days, insulating myself from distractions, clearing the decks as I marched around the little white table I write at. Months and months of notes were typed up and printed out on fresh sheets of paper that smell like Spring. I taped them to the closet doors in the living room, rows and rows of them that I can stand in front of when I get stumped, looking for secrets that will put me back in the chair. The problem is, when you stay inside too long, you are in a vacuum. Sure, V dances in the kitchen after dinner and a smile plasters itself across my face. There is plenty of life crammed into the rooms of our house. But that is not enough to keep my thoughts fresh.
Today, E had to go to the dentist. Up early, with far too little sleep we take a taxi and get there on time. I sleep on the couch in the waiting room, the latest pages tucked in my bag with a fresh pen to mark them up but they never see the light of day. She pokes me an hour later, waking me. Outside, we make our way to the metro and there I see a camper parked in an empty parking lot. The windows are closed. The mind leaps, unable to stop asking asking questions. "What if someone actually lived in there?" We stop, and I take a quick picture of it with my phone. It is beige, sagging on deflated tires. I wonder if it was here the last time we were at the dentist and I just did not notice it. "Who could be in there, and why?"
On the train, I see a handsome man trying to pick something from his nose without being noticed. There is no path of discretion. Sometimes you have to dig a little. A mother with raccoon eyeliner and her teenage daughter chat in low voices. Their purses match.
Back home, the mundane and the rare play around in my head as I close my eyes for an hour. I need to get out more. Holing up is the last way to write a script. You need to rub elbows, and stay connected to that endless, impossible lifeline of details and minor dilemmas that make the world go around.
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