At least, that’s how it is for me.

Got started on my funny film festival script. It’s half way done. Had to wade through several deep and freezing lakes of neurosis and anxiety to get to the point where I could start. Turns out I was not nearly as ready to write the fucking thing as I thought I was.

When will I learn that having the idea of a thing clear and easy in my mind does not actually mean it will be easy to write? I probably would have been better off doing a basic outline first, just to get the sequence of gags down.

So far, I have “guy whose entire pitch is ‘Die Hard with dinosaurs'”, “seemingly meek little woman whose pitch starts off like Bridges of Madison County then turns into a story of violence and gore”, and “guy with the most convoluted character descriptions ever”.

Possible future pitchers include “person with the most unshootable movie ever”, “person failing badly at concealing that his movie is basically very freaky porn”, “person who thinks someone will read their thousand page script” and the key to the ending of the bit,. “the person whose pitch starts off lame but ends up being so good it makes the execs cry”.

That way, our protagonists get what they want, the short film ends on a feel-good note, and the plot is neatly wrapped up.

It’s a rough draft, the first of many I suppose, so it doesn’t have to be perfect. I will have the entire term to get it right. But still, it stresses me because I care so much about it.

As any decent writer would, I suppose. I suppose it was not reasonable to hope that I could pull off being the calm and confident genius approach when it came to real work. That routine might have worked in school, but then again, in school there was never anything I wanted really badly at stake when I was at regular school. Just grades, and as faithful readers know, I have always taken them for granted.

It’s hard to value that which comes easily to you. And when you can pull shit like completely forgetting there’s a test until you show up and the teacher says “As you all know, we’re having a test today… “, and STILL get 85 percent, there’s not exactly a lot of pressure to try as hard as I can.

Plus, I honestly believe that remaining calm about things like tests and assignments improves performance. But that’s neither here nor there.

I had today off, so no school for me today. It’s nice. From what I can see, I will usually have Wednesdays off, which is very groovy. I like the idea of my week being split into two sections, with Monday and Tuesday in one part and Thursday and Friday in the other.

Sure, it might double the number of days when I have two classes in one day and therefore need to allocate lunch money for said days, but I think a day off in the middle of the week is worth the extra dough.

Tomorrow will be one of those days. I imagine I will conserve cash by going to Subway. Last time this came up, last Monday, I went to the Donair Dude next door to the school (formerly a Mediterranean place) to try them out, and what I could get at the previous place for $10 cost me $13, so I remain unimpressed.

But I haven’t had an actual donair from them yet, so the jury is out on that. One of their donairs touts itself as being “Halifax style”, and as someone who is from the Maritimes and has actually had donairs in Halifax, I remain skeptical.

Especially since the one in the picture looks like it involves tomato sauce, and I am like, WTF? This isn’t a goddamned pizza, it’s a DONAIR.

Which I should explain, seeing as I am pretty sure the only person who reads this that knows what they are found them to be extremely gross.

They are basically just pita wraps with meat cut into strips in them along with Donair Sauce (don’t ask, dunno) and whatever veggies you want in there.

So it’s more or less just Greek Subway.

They are tasty and good. And a very big deal back in the Maritimes. So big that our biggest native pizza chain started off as a string of donair shops that eventually added pizza to the mix.

For most of my life, they were called Greco Pizza And Donair. And their pizzas are pretty good. All their pizzas are square, so you get more pizza that with round ones.

That led to one of the most obnoxious ad campaigns ever :

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/v0JmKNjoqxo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Nobody’s eating my fucking corners, bitch!

That felt good.

Anyhoo, after a brief break, I will finish my little script. I think I have calmed down enough to give it a decent try. I have also looked up how to do a rapid cut montage with dialogue, so that big hurdle has been potentially cleared.

Makes me wish I had come up with something that wasn’t a rapid series of intercut scenes at the same camera angle in the same room. Dang me and my sophisticated knowledge of how to make high density content!

In fact, I am kind of worried because I know we will be doing a table read of it tomorrow and I am pretty sure it will just seem super confusing then. It relies heavily on the visual continuity of a fixed camera and the fact that intercut scenes are telling a story in multiple parts that are sequential in that they go in linear order, but are intercut with other stories.

Even I know that made no sense to you, gentle reader. Talk about things that are clear in my head and very complicated to explain!

Anyhoo, time to take a short break then finish the fucking thing.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.