Titles are not the hard part. Or are they?

So, some smart guy said some cool things to me tonight. Lots of people, but one in particular did. And I want to remember them, but I'm horrible at exactitude in quoting, and, sometimes, in expressing myself clearly when it counts.

I'm taking a writing class, you see. And, well, the more you write something, sometimes, the worse it comes off. And it's kind of like, well, painful to read twenty-eight pages in front of people...and nobody laughs. A slight, but slight, exaggeration. And it's like bleeding through the eyes for me to sit in a room with people who are frankly better at something than me.

The 'old' me is a one-draft, never-look-back wonder, awash in sloppy work, tossed-off rants, and unfinished projects. The person who looked around the class on the first day with a sinking ill-feeling, ready to ask for a refund and run away. Index cards? F**k that, not me.

Tonight I walked out with a tightened up (from last week) but gloriously unfinished, dragging in parts yet containing actual funny elements, workable and fixable, structurally sounder and more complete than I thought possible, draft of a Curb spec script.

People talked. I listened. I only held my head in my hands in moaning despair, oh, once.

Twenty-eight pages. Three plotlines, three acts. Jokes. Written in other characters' voices that aren't my own. Identified the draggy parts and the parts that need heightening and elements to carry through and punch up. I let people help me. Nobody f**king died. Painful, but a good pain.

I'd thought I'd corrected some things, but I'd overcorrected some things. Okay, cool.

It's my first one and I learned how to do stuff. And it made me f**king happy.

And you know? I'm, well, proud of this.

I feel like I unlocked a few secret doors.

Liberally paraphrased.....badly requoted...and f**ing good stuff anyway as I heard it.

"It's a process....it's a first step...people are always gonna tell you, you're always going to be able to make it better. It's tough. But it's fun, and yeah, it should be, it should make you happy....And, you know? You'll always have this skill, no matter what happens, no matter what the hell else is going on, how sh**ty things are, how crappy life is, you can always flip on the computer and write."

Thank you. It's truer than you know, Smart Guy. Seriously.

I never did break open the index cards, though. Maybe next time...Still a bit of a rebel.