...In which our heroine is visited.

My muse has been hanging around lately. I must've done something to make her pay me a visit - maybe it's the weather or my music selections of late. But she's here, and she's happy.

So I've been writing. A lot. About 24 pages of a script since Thursday. 

I'm kind of reluctant to talk about my writing sometimes. For as long as I can remember, people have been telling me that it's good, and not to sound cocky, but it never has been a stress to write for me. It's always felt very natural, very easy.

It all just kind of pours out, in some form or another. I don't have any special creative tricks, or moods to be in, or music to listen to. I just write when I feel like it. Part of the reason I write this blog is because writing the most cathartic thing I've ever found. I can say things putting pen to paper (or hands to keyboard) that I could never say eloquently or honestly enough in real life. It helps me say the things I can't. 

I keep pretending like writing isn't my passion in life. I thought journalism for a while...but that wasn't quite right. So I thought - film school, cinematography. I like photography, it can't be that different right? WRONG. Cinematography sucks. I love the aesthetic, not the science.

So I've taken three writing classes since being at Columbia, two for my major, one as an elective. The elective ended up being a senior class full of fiction writing majors and for the first time I can remember, I wasn't the best writer in class. Which was awesome because I finally had something more to achieve. I held my own fair enough, ending up with some interesting writing about teenage life.

But my two film classes which focus on writing have proved to be very beneficial. After D&P, Susanna told me I "had the chops" to make it as a screenwriter. This semester, she had a conference to talk to my Screenwriting I teacher, Heather, to talk about me. Heather really liked my work too and told me to submit one of my scripts to practicum, which is the big senior project for the film department.

And still, I don't feel like a writer. It doesn't feel like work to me to write. It's catharsis, letting the demons and anecdotes and observations out of my head, where they like to accumulate. I let them out, and feel better about most things.

So I'm writing a script to because I have an idea that needed out.

Don't ask me what it's about. Here's what you get: comedy, kind of but in the touching/serious vein of Apatow. People from my real life are characters. The protagonist is ahem well known to me. It's a girl. 

I'll tell you more when I feel that the time is right. But I'm writing something longer than I ever have before, and the muse is happy, so I am too.