I’ve been up and working since before 5 AM. It’s raining outside my office window, cold heavy rain from a gray heavy sky, more like fall than spring, except that under the rain the garden glows brilliant green and pink and orange and purple. The lilac against the gray sky is amazing….
Seattle doesn’t know it’s May and is still playing the April weather game, but it’s okay. It makes my office feel cocooned and safe. All I did yesterday, from 4:30 AM until nearly 6 PM, was eat meals with Nicola and work on the latest screenplay revision. And that’s all I plan to do today. It’s been months since I’ve had the chance to do this work, and it’s a particular bliss for me: today I am a screenwriter. Whatever happens next, I am happy for these days.
And this is where I’ll be, in my safe rain-shrouded place with the people of my movie, until their story is done for this round and I come back, blinking, into light.
You were born to write. All the rest is just your normal amazing talents and abilities. There’s no sweat as warm and satisfying as the sweat of work we love.
I used to think it was just being a farm boy that got me up so early but then in my second year of high school we moved back to the ocean’s side and I found the peace and quiet of the early morning surf. Then in college, I discovered that this early time of day, while all my brethren and sistren slept, was the best time to find the meaning in my studies. After that as a young working stiff and family man, the peace and quiet of the two mile walk into work was the only time when I could think about what I was going to do if I ever had a rest to my life.
Some people say you need sleep to stay sane. Some say its dreams we need. I say thank the gods for the early morning hours, the silence broken by bird chirps and house sighs and the light slowly becoming day.
Have you filmed any of your screen plays yet? As in youtubed or whatever? Just asking.
It’s raining here, too and I am reminded how M. L’Engle wrote ‘A wrinkle in time’. Twenty minutes between her children’s naps she would pound the typewriter.
Barbara Sanchez–thanks for the reminder about sweat from all writers writing, everywhere.