If I could shake the coughing, I'd probably feel pretty good. At any rate, wasn't a bad day all in all. I started submitting grades, and I have a shot at finishing tomorrow with the next day, a 5pm deadline, as cushion. So I should be fine.
Another Big Budget High Concept Idea came to me. What the hell is going on? It's not natural for me to think this way. I think I'll set aside the low budget idea for a rainy day and go with this one since I know that's the advice my agent would give me and this entire enterprise is focused on making him some money ha ha. I'll again get a solid sequence outline before I start scripting but I'm not going to write as obsessively as before, it's bad for the health. I'll take my time with this.
There have been several very important year clusters in my "coming of age" as a writer and an adult (if that's the right word ha ha). First, 1959-62, my Army years, the most intense educational experience of my life since I was in an outfit with 97 holders of Masters degrees in the humanities, many of whom became drinking buddies. Next, 1966-1975, years in grad school and Eugene, when I became a writer. Finally, in Portland, about 1979-1989, when I matured as a playwright.
The reunion this summer celebrating the second of these, the Eugene years, is something I've been thinking about. I plan to shoot a lot of video with a documentary in mind. But a personal docu, about my own coming of age journey, which will be much harder to do but if done right, might be quite powerful in its emotional truths and insights. Tricky, too, since I have one shot to get a lot of the footage. Other footage, research stuff, setting stuff, I could capture later. I need to think this through and have a working outline in my head so I know what I need. What makes it especially tricky is that to tell the story right, I have to deal with my relationship with the woman in my life at that time. Presently, she'll have nothing to do with me. Will she be at the reunion? This would be interesting since in that time and space, we were "an item," many would think of us "as a couple." I can't image interviewing her on tape! ho ho ho. But I can't tell the story right without her playing a prominent role, and I've already thought of several possible devices with which to get around the possibility that 1. she may not be there or 2. she may be there but uncooperative or even hostile. All possibilities allow for a gripping story strategy. (In a recent exchange of emails, her sister finally got my side of the story enough to realize that actually I am not the bad guy in this soap opera.)
The eternal truth for writers, the Great Mantra, is this: It's All Material.
In this week of illness, my knee appears to have improved a bit.
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