All locked up and no where to go

I spent the entire weekend locked in my apartment writing and watching movies, only leaving the homestead to feed my fake sister Christina's tempermental, mental patient cat Spooky. Even though the cat knows me and actually, (shock of shocks) likes me we still have to go through this same dance of me offering my finger as a substitute nose so we can do the universal cat equivalent of a handshake. I have to do this for her to know that it is OK to rub herself all over me and meow loudly about whatever injustice she feels she has indured in her owner's absence.

My cat, who is insane but in a different way, is like some pushy close talker with no concept of personal space. No need for hellos. He's on you within two seconds of entering the apartment.

Anyway, the weekend was productive. Dishes were washed, dirtied again and washed again. Part of the living room got successfully vacuumed. I watched my VHS copy of "Face/Off" which I hadn't seen in at least a couple years and was happy to see that it was holding up well due to John Woo not fiddling too much with the clothes. Giant black flowing overcoats, double-fisted gun play and men's suits never go out of style. And it was startling to see Nick Cage and actually enjoy the acting. That hadn't happened in so long I forgot that underneath the hubris he can actually act.

I've been working on this screenplay I'm supposed to be getting to my compadre Roger to read as he's been wanting to read the thing since I told him about the project. Of course, since I can literally write myself into infinity, I've become obsessed with making two scenes in particular click and have been entertaining the thought of gutting the thing and starting over. I started writing the thing when my insomnia finally went away and I was on this crazy writing streak where everyday for, like, seven months I'd get off work and write from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. straight living off coffee and Marie Callendar frozen dinners. Then I'd lock myself up in my apartment all weekend and write more, usually from 8 a.m. to midnight.

Yeah. It was insane.

Then my mother came to visit and I came down with a bad case of whatever that thing was that everyone was getting a month back and I was out of commission for two weeks. That totally put a kink in my writing. In those seven months I'd written nearly seven screenplays, a musical, edited one of my unfinished novels and several short stories. (Yeah, I'm working on getting a literary agent. Anyday now ...) Mind you, The Californian pays me to write for a living then I'd go home and write more. I was basically writing myself into the nut house so after I got sick I was forced to finally stop. I'm just now getting my rhythm back. I ended up spending the weekend doing another edit on this movie musical I started writing after I saw Cher a few months back. (It features all the crappy music I love.) I wrote the thing in three days. Decided I hated it. Started a rewrite two months ago. Then a few days ago I decided I liked the original one better and decided to fix it rather than rewrite the whole mess. So now the thing is ALMOST at that point where I should probably leave it the hell alone. I just need to cut a few scenes and fix this one character who is not clicking for me.

Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know about my obsessive approach to writing. I made the mistake when I was home in St. Louis to tell my mother about my writing projects. (I haven't told her what I've been working on since I finished my first novel that I will someday ritualistically burn when I was 13.) It's not that I don't want the mommy person to know, it's just my projects outside of The Californian all run on Danielle time which is achingly slow. For months before I got sick it was all about the musical (which takes place in Oakland), now I'm trying to get the old brain back jumpstarted by watching TV and reading.

Still I have to endure her asking in that "I'm just really interested in your life since you never tell me anything" voice, "So, how's the play going?" Considering that the musical is in development hell in search of a musician with an infinite amount of free time, it's as fine as it's going to get.