STRIKE!!!

As everyone knew, I came out to San Diego for one reason. I came out here to be a writer. And while by writer. I meant novelist, I wanted to do other things. I wanted to write television, columns, and reviews. It was what I loved and it's what I wanted to do.

Is television writing hard? Yea...but I wanted to break in badly enough. And anyone who read my ALTERNATE SPIN series online (shameless plug: www.angelfire.com/ky/sliderspinoff) knew that I had the creativity nd the talent. What I neeed to do was head to LA.

I logged onto the Sliders unofficial BBoard. It was time to announce my latest AS story was posted for reader consumption. For a while, one of the posters had been talking about the writing strike. No one thought it would get that far.

My eyes widened on the post. The writers did decide to strike. No one had any idea when it would end. That threw me into a tizzy. I came to California to do this.

What was I going to do?

QUESTION MARKS

The writer strike was definitely the buzz on one of the SLIDERS boards I went to. What was going on? How would television be affected? Would film be affected? How long would it take?

They were questions that were also on my mind. It had always been said that to make it as a writer in LA you needed talent and a lot of luck. With a spinoff fanfiction, three novels of different veins, and ideas all over my somewhat messy room, I knew I had the talent. Now the luck?

I could only wonder why. Why now? I was finally with backbone and motivation to work to get my butt up to LA. I had focused as I typed away daily on either PICTURES or NAKED EYES or an AS story. Why couldn't they wait?

What was I going to do?

FITS

When your goal has been snatched from you, what does one do?

For me I found that you slept a lot. No matter how early I went to sleep, I never appeared to wake up before noon. There were even times I didn't crawl my way out of bed until 1pm.

Nothing seem to matter really. Since I could walk and talk I was determined to be a writer. For two years, I had prepared myself to get into that mindset of an LA writer.

With the strike on, I felt...lost. Instead of feeling like a writer-in-training, I felt like someone that was adrifted on a raft in the middle of the Pacific without paddles.

And why not just go and writer, strike be damned? I was not an idiot. All wannabe writers knew that if they become scabs (people who cross that picket line to write) that they will never work again in LA again due to being blacklisted. However, if wannabe writers do nothing, how would they attain the dream? How would I?

GIVE ME A REASON

Ideas in my head. I would get them but when I sat down to write words on paper, I heard the nagging voice.

What was the point?

I couldn't leave. I would be stuck in dead ends jobs forever. Why, why, why, why??

So naturally, I had to go back to the SLIDERS board. One of the posters TF had been doing moment-to-moment reporting. It sounded like the dispute between writers and studios had to do with online residuals. Each wanted some hand in it.

I couldn't really argue with the logics. I meant...if I wrote an episode of 'Grey's Anatomy' and it was streaming online, I would want my royalty for each time it was watched. It's only fair.

Still...why do we write? While we all would love to be paid to do what we love to do, that's not all there is. People write...because it's in every pore, every fiber of their being. To not write would be the equivalent of a child deciding to hold their breath until they are blue in the faces.

I continued to visit the board to keep up with happenings. The more news I got, the more that the metaphor appeared to be right. The writers and the studios were acting like kids holding their breath.

Meanwhile, wannabe writers, audiences, and people who worked in the industry suffered for their pissing contest.

I wrote for my enjoyment. However, it would be my dream to make a living from writing. As much as I want to move to LA, I sat it wasn't going to be soon. It also wasn't going to be with a writing job waiting anytime soon.

So what was my reason for being? How did I go on?

IN OR OUT?

Time passed. Two jobs and lack of an off day worn me down. Office politics threatened to make me bolt. My communication was cut off from others due to a past due bill and the fact I didn't really have a lot of friends...period...in San Diego.

So what did I have left?

To quote from that favorite Season 2 Buffy Episode? I had...'me.'

The fruits of my labors manifested. "Limb Envy," episode 5 of AS's Season Six, made its way to the webpage...FINALLY. Not one of my best I openly admit, but it was done.

I started to doing journal entries again for DIEGO'S WORLD on a regular basis. They had fallen to the wayside again, along with my biweekly columns. They came back with an honesty I hope to continue as my personal life gets busy. And to state the obvious, my columns are back after a hiatus.

Finally, NAKED EYES had become my newest typing project. While I still have yet to write the ending, I typed it up for the flash drive to have it there for editing. The idea that all of my novels were on this little box for me to get back gave me a naughty thrill.

I had walked into my second job the other day. The day before had been so sucky. That day was shaping up to be just as bad. So I wrote a note to myself.

'Center yourself and everything else will fall into place.'

And that was how I felt about the writer's strike. I would eventually make it there, be among that circle. The only thing I could change was myself. Make myself ready. Everything else...would come eventually.

Diego


 

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