before night falls

I think I saw this Julian Schnabel flick in college. There is a scene where the writer Javiar Bardem plays is being harassed by the cop Johnny Depp, who sticks a gun in his mouth and tells him never to write again. Still, Javiar Bardem keeps writing. My reaction to that was like, if someone ever threatened me to stop writing, I’d be like “No problem, dude, I’ll quit write away, you never have to worry about it from me” pretty quickly. I kind of hate writing, so what’s the difference? I also had a professor in college who was locked in a prison in Africa, jailed for his writing, and he wrote on toilet paper in jail so he could keep writing! Wow! (Incidentally, despite such a dramatic back story, he was quite dull as a teacher. I don’t remember him saying a word. ‘He mostly sat through class like a stone.) The reaction of both of these people is amazing, and inadvertently, discouraged me from writing, or encouraged me to listen to my lazy heart, because I was thought, well, no way, I’d never deal under such extreme threats, I’m no writer. (I truly am lazy. I had a screenwriting teacher who says you have to write a minimum of ten minutes a day to keep working on your craft. She probably meant that it’d be cool if you wrote longer, but all I heard was “cool! I only have to write ten minutes a day!”)

Lazy as I am, I have spent the past year not writing, not being creative (busy, you know, working, cleaning poop, etc., which is yes, as glamorous as it sounds), and I feel it. I feel a lack, a longing without it. I can tell I am not as happy, so ugh, this lazy girl, is going back to it.

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