It seems I rarely have anything to say on Wednesday's. Tuesday nights tend to be a shapeless bleed of television and reading, mostly because they're so damn far from a weekend and we're both exhausted from work.

I do have my first seven pages of the new script in workshoppable form. Now, to decide whether to try and get it up to 10 pages before I post. I try and stay ahead of myself when I'm putting things up in workshop, but I think some feedback might prod me onward. Did I mention I have three stories that need to be finished and a script to rewrite? I'm beginning to develop an image of what the winter looks like, and as it seems to be every year, it's me getting up early and/or working in the evenings on various writing projects until I want to bash my head into the wall. Not to mention it's been far too long since I actually put together queries. The one place where starting-out fiction writers have it completely, undeniably better than starting-out screenwriters is in getting read. Fiction writers may not get published, but if you send in a short story to a magazine someone will probably at least try to read it. If you have a book manuscript, someone will read it, eventually. But scripts aren't like that. You have to flog and wail and try to win competitions and press flesh with people and generally debase yourself in every way while not seeming desperate to get read. And even when they finally request your script, there's no guarantee it'll be read. Or that you'll ever hear back one way or the other. It sucks. And I'm not very good at debasing myself, so I suck at the process of flogging and getting read. I think people should just read me. I have to work on that. Especially since I live in Kentucky right now, instead of Los Angeles.

I have a script I'm really happy with right now that I haven't done one bit of marketing on since I got it Done, capital D. I have to work on that.

I have a script that really isn't going to need that much work to be where I want it to be. I have to get to work on that.

And I have this new thing and three short stories and a YA novel that's working--when I have time to work on it. At least I know someone will read the three stories, because I can just send them places, without any debasement first. Boy, did I not mean to get into this in the a.m. Oh, look, it's time for me to get ready for work. I blame this digression on the Glove Monster. I bet it's hard for MJ to dangle babies with a spider bite like that. The man lives a rough life, indeed. Maybe he can hire a Temporary Baby-Dangling Assistant. Or train a monkey to do it.

I wonder if he thinks the spider bite was radioactive. There was all that jazz about his kids knowing a certain movie about a certain superhero who was created by a radioactive spider bite inside and out. And you know, the problem with that theory is: he's crazier than that. The Glove Monster's too crazy to believe something as mundanely crazy as a radioactive spider biting him. Which is scary, scary, scary.

And finish up the Washington Post series, by reading yesterday's article The Weight of a Family's Hopes(really nice photo accompanying) and today's final installment Out of Africa to a New World, which I haven't even had time ot read yet. This series is one of the best I've read in any newspaper this year. I forget sometimes that journalists can be this good.

Into the breach once more!