Sticking to a schedule is a real bugger when you don't have structure. And when your attempt to introduce structure fails because of you and sleep not being on good terms...

I don't think I could be a parent. Based on the sleep I don't get right now, with no work and no pets and no reason to not sleep, I still have the worst sleeping habits. Thoughts bounce around the inside of my skull, some exciting, some depressing, all distracting. A song will get stuck in there, but because of the music I listen to a lot of the time it doesn't necessarily have lyrics, which is almost worse. A melody, a couple of bars of music, playing itself over and over is almost painful when you haven't been musical for decades.

Geez. Decades. That's how I can measure my life these days.

I'm almost at the point I can say that about writing, too. It was about a decade ago I realised how much I used to enjoy it, when I was young, before it got beaten out of me by years and years of education. For so long, writing was a chore. It was homework, something that had to be done. I couldn't tell you what made me start again (or maybe I could if I went back and waded through the blogs I've been spewing for probably about that long, but I can't be arsed). All I know is that I've gotten a lot written in the last ten years, and it's no where near enough. One novel, and all but three chapters done of the second book in the series. Several short stories (some of which are up on this site somewhere). Two scripts that were produced by a theatre company I started with some mates. Several short screenplays, one of which we produced. Pilots for two different TV series. Three full-length screenplays, with a fourth to be finished TODAY.

And hundreds of notes, drafts, deleted and forgotten documents languishing on hard drives somewhere. And more ideas on my white board, talked about over beers, or bouncing around inside my skull. So I'm getting there. At some point it won't be enough to just write; someone's going to have to read it. And ideally give me money for doing so.

But not today. Today I'm finishing a screenplay I began four years ago. That I lost, and couldn't bring myself to start again with. That I found, 80% done, in a box in a cupboard in my parent's house. It's not a nice story, really. But it's the one that killed me to lose, and disheartened me from writing for a while. Once it's done, I feel like I can move on, I can maybe clean up, edit some stuff, and tentatively dip my toe in the wonderful world that is submission rejection...