Citation Needed

This newsletter forces me to write, once a week. I’m terrible at motivating myself to create, so I need something like this to make me do things. Maybe that’s why I’ve been having such a hard time developing this tv show idea. The only one who’s going to make me finish it is myself, and that’s just not something I’m good at.

Sometimes I wonder if I even have a show idea. My mind is full of scenes, but maybe that’s not enough. Maybe just connecting them together and having a theme won’t give me a show. Maybe I should focus on something else entirely. I don’t know. I hoped that being unemployed would somehow jumpstart this creative process, but so far it hasn’t.

The above is a sketch for a drawing I’m making for my son’s 20th birthday. By the next newsletter it will be finished, and I’ll put it in to show you. I’m also doing one for my partner, whose birthday is two days after our son’s. I haven’t started on that one yet, but I know what it will be.

See, I’ve made progress on these because I have a purpose and a deadline. That works for me. The best short story I ever wrote came about because it was going to be part of a shared-world collection of stories, with the theme being San Francisco noir. That gave me a deadline and a set of guidelines to work with. An idea came to me and I wrote it up quickly and it became a good story. But without those elements spurring me on, it would probably have never happened.

The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I will give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

A once-lover gave that to me in a card she drew herself and said it made her think of me. And I, myself, still don’t know.

Thanks for reading. Here’s your reality check: Vocal fry