Post-writing

I'm losing energy to do animated art songs, the project I expected to turn to after the short novel is done. Too much work and my energy decreases daily. More and more, I get satisfaction in being a consumer, not a creator.  After all, I've been so obsessive about my creative projects for so long, I've had little time to consume at all. I am terribly "behind" in reading, seeing films, hearing music, and so on. Maybe it's soon time to do that front burner and forget about adding to my already bulging archive. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Not.

I still have energy for teaching. In fact, teaching seems to be more important to me than ever, which is to say, I get more satisfaction from it and have a sense of actually doing something constructive. I can make beginning screenwriters better -- well, if they listen to me I can, ha ha. I find it much easier to do this than to make playwriting or fiction students better. Screenwriting has more "rules." It's like teaching someone how to write a sonnet. You can't show them how to write a good sonnet but you can show them the rules and correct their mistakes. It's a step in the right direction. Same with screenwriting. You can show someone the rules for a spec screenplay. And it's amazing how few teachers seem to be doing this.