I got squirrel bait for a brain

So I sit down to gather more info about the Battle of Bogside and learn about the effects of tear gas and how the citizens of Derry counteracted it...and suddenly I'm at the computer writing about something that happens 12 years later. It's as if I turned on the spigot in one spot but somehow the water started coming out of a completely different faucet. Dunno why...but I added another 1400+ words to my total.

I don't mind this happening. God knows it's better than just sitting here fiddling and waiting for the magic to strike. I can't tell you how many times I've contemplated going out and grabbing a bottle of wine and sloshing that into me to loosen up the flow. I wrote a full script like that, once, just to see what would happen. I took a week off work and got a buzz going and slammed out "Find Ray Tarkovsky" from start to finish. Of course, it needed some serious polishing, but the structure stayed the same as did the main characters, and it's one of my most commercial scripts. Fact is, I was told once that if I'd written it just two years earlier, I could have sold it. But my usual sense of timing was in play, which is why I got sloshed to finally get past my inner delays.

I thought about trying that again more than once -- I have one script I got stuck at page 45 on and another I just couldn't seem to get going -- but now it's too late. I can't justify writing a screenplay, anymore, not if the 30 I already have written have gone nowhere (winning competitions doesn't count unless they lead to something more than just a nice plaque on a wall).

Oh, well -- live and learn and keep at it long enough and you might figure out how to actually do what you think you know how to do. And if I forget again, there's always Burgundy.