KA—
Hello and happy early birthday! I celebrate you in advance. The view from here is that 30 kicks major ass. I can’t wait for us to turn 40. And 50. And 60. And to keep being like… this rules! Think of how many books we will read in the next 30 years. And, god willing, the 30 after that! I love life, and I’m so happy to read you love yours too even when the days are heavy with work. Days like dominoes, baby. And speaking of which, in the next Loose can you send me the Mountain Goats Starter Pack playlist you made for me for my LA drive? For some reason it’s not saved in my playlists and I can’t find it and I want it for posterity but more importantly for listening to now, now, right now!
I’m in the Denver airport where I’m waiting for a connecting flight to another place in Colorado where my phone has reported it SNOWED this morning. I am looking at the beloved Dr. Marten mules and saying “Oh no…” Eh. It’ll be fine. But I did get to break out my favorite orange coat from deep in my Los Angeles closet and boy oh boy was I happy to do so. Late October in LA is creepy. Nice again?! Fuck off, sun! Be colder! Truman Show vibes.
I worked on flight one. Rare for me! Normally I let myself do nothing and revel. But there’s too much to do and the sick truth is I’m enjoying pretty much all of it. As someone said to me the other day after I told an incredibly-boring-to-anyone-who’s-not-me story about a line of dialogue a friend wrote that was neither good nor bad but was in fact so absurdly neutral it made us laugh until we cried: “Wow… You’re really in it!”
I am, indeed, really in it. Plane project was a six page written pitch of a movie I’m writing for business class which I was able to mostly knock out to make room for the 30 pages of script I need to write before Sunday at 1pm. 15 pages for each of the two features I’m working on. Life is back to being determined by deadlines. It’s heaven on earth.
The movies are incredibly different but both really sound like me. I’m sure I’ve given you my speech about how movies are both math and magic, and I have one leaning toward each pole right now in a way that’s helping when it comes to keeping them separate in my mind. One is pure id. It has somewhat of a structure, somewhat of an engine — it’s a road movie about denial, if I had to put a name on it — but writing it feels like pure discovery. Sometimes I feel scared when I’m working on it. It’s hard to feel like you’re flying blind while also feeling an immense pressure to be Good, but the work gets better when I stop trying to be Good and start trying to surprise and delight myself. I’m trusting my instincts and know I’ll fix it during the official rewrite that’s already scheduled for spring. I’m having fun writing magical realism, war, and romance in one tonally gonzo soup. The project has been described as “ambitious,” which makes me feel better when I suspect I’m beefing it.
The second project is an adaptation so it has more of an innate structure, but it’s also just simpler in scale and scope, and I feel myself writing more confidently than I ever have (I actually know exactly how this sequence should function if I want such-and-such to play later) while continuing to surprise myself. Oh, the main character is doing that?! Sure, that works for me. Writing scripts is the most exhilarating when your character does something you do not expect and your fingers are typing but you’re still like Oh man, I can’t believe they’re doing that, that’s crazy! It’s a Detroit movie. And it’s fun to picture it. To try to write the rhythm of the place. It’s interesting what visual information I’ve taken for granted and have neglected to put in my action lines since I can see the landscape all so clearly in my mind. O! The haunting beauty of Detroit in late November!
The best part of my flight, which left LAX at 5AM but was shockingly the most pleasant airport and flight experience I’ve had in some time in part because I had an entire row to myself, was looking out the window and thinking… Is that… The Sphere…? I was flying over Vegas. And it WAS The Sphere. It was so bright and so big and so bizarre and, as Ava just texted me after I sent her a video of it, “objectively comedy.” Seeing the grid of Vegas lit up at night from above is wild. Just a high-wattage postage stamp in the middle of nothing. I woke up at 3AM so I don’t have anything deeper to say than that Humanity is very weird and cool and I probably wouldn’t have anything deeper to say even if I’d gotten the long-gone minimum of 8 recommended hours.
Movie, movie, movie. Cards and outlines and story and pages and notes. I was in the pit last week re: these projects, re: career, re: what happens after I graduate. But as usually happens once I start actually writing, life got better once I released the catapult into pages and suddenly anything feels possible. I know I’m becoming a better writer and I love doing the work. What’s there to be afraid of?
And there’s evidence that I’m actively doing work-life balance by the sheer fact of I’m writing from the Denver airport on the way to live a bit of life. Oh man, I can’t believe I’m doing that, that’s crazy! Sometimes the writing and the moving physically forward in the world are the same means of discovery. I do not know what is going to happen, but I feel better when I stop worrying about being Good.
I’m going to go get a second illy vending machine espresso and take a little airport walk. I don’t think I want to eat because I already know I’m not going to be able to shit all weekend with weird travel stomach and having an Einstein’s bagel on the bottom of whatever eclectic stack of food I consume this weekend feels less than ideal. I can’t stop talking about shit lately, I don’t know why, sorry.
Again, happy early birthday my dear friend! Wish I could dance with you, but I know we will soon. You have all my love.
Stay Loose,
Rach