2002-09-21 8:43 a.m.
finally.

I'm writing. Sweet fucking Christ, I'm writing.

I want to cry and scream and thank the living G-d at the top of my lungs.

I'm writing this play and it feels right. And if you've been reading this journal for a while, you know how hard it was to get to this point. Maybe you don't. It was. Depression, immobility, months of being in a heartbroken funk, shit, years of writing pitches, half-finished ideas, halves of scripts, and short stories that were more for catharsis than anything else. Nothing to show for it but a few truly inspired series outlines and a folder full of journalism clips.

I told D the other day in a very harsh email that what we did, the pitching, doesn't matter at all until you have something written to show. Anything. You get nowhere until you've proven you can do what you say can.

Today's my first reading, even of the vomit draft, as Scott calls it. The first six pages, up to Mark's entrance (aka the inciting event). I'm going to write more, but that's what what asked for.

It's so naturalistic. I didn't think it would be.

After writing with D for so long, I didn't know if I still had this in me. I've always had the imagination, the characters, the situations...but I didn't truly believe I could write. By myself. As John Cusack said in his two-minute cameo in "Floundering": "take the leap, dude."

I do now.

I'm supposed to have coffee/something with Dad in a bit. And I don't want to. I want to write this. But I do want to tell him that I was right all along...I knew where I was heading, instinctively.

what I'm reading:	The Vietnam Plays by David Rabe
�	Low Life by Luc Sante