Time Shifting
So one of my main tasks these days is managing my own productivity. The metric for measuring my productivity is page count — if I’m turning out pages every day, then I know I’m being productive.
The trick is that I’m writing on a machine that wants very much to show me video game news, Mac news, and very important YouTube cat videos. It’s extremely easy to get distracted and go off on a cat video tangent. This is where previous generations of writers had it easier — typewriters can’t play cat videos.
So I’m trying to apply the technique of time shifting to my everyday productivity schedule. Time shifting was popularized by the TiVo: It records your shows so you can watch them when you have time to watch them. In other words, it automatically captures information so you can disseminate it later on, on your own schedule.
On the web I’ve been using Instapaper to time shift my web browsing. When I see a page that interests me but I don’t want to read right away (because I’m supposed to be writing!) I can use Instapaper’s Read Later function to cache the page’s URL and store it for later retrieval. Then once I’m done with the day’s work I can pick up the entire list of cached sites on my computer or on my iPad and read away.
This is great for me because it immediately ends any procrastination and ensures that I’ll never forget to read those interesting articles later on. It bookmarks the information so I can use it at a time when I’m absorbing rather than creating — and absorbing/reading/getting information is vital to the act of creation.
Now I need to figure out how to time shift everything else in my life. I can’t time shift email because it’s dependent on other peoples’ schedules; I can sort of time shift phone calls by just not answering my phone — EVER — and just listening to voice mails. But phone calls also require instant replies.
What I really need to do is learn how to time shift myself into another dimension.
The Chair Hunt continues: Now I’m looking at the Steelcase Leap Chair. The design feels more modern than the Aeron. Plus I’m more of a fan of cushioned fabric over mesh. Plus it seems more practical and less science-fictionish.
Ass Meets Chair
After a dozen years, my chair is finally giving out. This is my work chair — the chair I sit in when I’m crouched over my computer writing. I got it at Ikea before I had written my first screenplay, my first full length stage play, before all of that stuff — and now it’s finally giving out.
I noticed this problem starting to occur about five years ago. Screws kept falling out of the bottom of the chair. I would studiously screw them back in — I even keep a screwdriver on my desk for this purpose. Over the years this would occur with greater and greater frequency. It didn’t affect the performance of the chair — there was never any danger of the thing completely falling apart, which I suppose is a testament to Ikea engineering — but it went from initially irritating to habitual. Just another weird thing that needed to be done every now and then in order to keep on writing.
Now the chair’s cushion is well compressed and there’s a hole worn in it that is metastasizing with increasing speed. The arm rests are wobbly. The chair-sitting experience is rapidly deteriorating. It’s time to get a new chair.
I usually don’t anthropomorphize things, but I’m sad that this chair is going away now. In a meeting someone recently told me that I’ve just started my mid-career phase — I’m no longer a beginner or emerging writer anymore. So this chair was essentially my baby chair. The chair with training wheels on it. Having just typed that, I think I’ve just decided to hold onto this chair instead of throwing it out. However, it’s going to have to go into a corner or something. And I still need a new chair.
I’ve been looking at one of these. My goal is to get a chair that will last me another 12 years, taking me through my mid-career phase and into my curmudgeon phase. I figure that it’s worthwhile to spend a lot of money on something that I use every day, for hours a day. Also this chair will make me feel like I’m on the bridge of a space ship, and that’s a worthwhile thing too.
I wonder if this new chair will affect the geist of my work. I have a feeling that it won’t. I’m always a little worried about changing the variables of my work. But inevitably, any good writing concerns change and transformation. So change needs to happen no matter what.
Yes, the old chair’s going to go into the corner. It’ll be like a trophy — something that I can glance at for rememberance’s sake. I think I’m even going to leave the hole in its cushion.
Actually, scratch that — I’m gonna get the hole fixed. It’s an eyesore.
Tee Vee
I’m doing a comprehensive study of television right now. Reading scripts, watching the corresponding shows. There are so many good things on TV right now — and it’s only going to keep getting better. Here’s what I really like right now:
It is an absolute shame that Party Down has been canceled. I hadn’t heard about this show until about two weeks ago when a good friend said that I had to watch it. It’s about caterers in LA — i.e., actors working lame day jobs — and each show centers around a specific event that they’re catering: A homeowner’s awards party, a sweet sixteen birthday, an orgy. It has incredible acting and writing — for me, this show is up there with Eastbound and Down. Maybe it’s because the comedy concerns people that have seriously lost their way, and the tragedy of their lives is great fuel for laughs. I don’t know. This show belongs in the pantheon of great shows that were killed after just a couple of seasons. But at least we’ll always have a couple of episodes worth of Jennifer Coolidge taking fairly rudimentary lines like “I SEE LEMONS!” and turning them into comedy gold.
Castle is my current favorite procedural. I liked Firefly, but Nathan Fillion is much better playing a womanizing mystery novelist than he is at playing a brooding space captain. The dialogue in this show crackles. It’s fun, it takes place in NYC, and its characters are nifty. It upends the idea of the procedural, focusing on character as much as plot — a great mix. I haven’t been this excited about a show since I saw the first few seasons of House.
Louie is an absolutely amazing show full of ballsy truth. I’m told that Louis C.K. has complete creative control over the show — he even edited the pilot. The comedy in this show knocks my socks off, but beyond that he tells some really compelling stories that contain a lot of drama and unpleasant but important facts about life. I’m amazed that he was able to get some of this stuff on the air, but make no mistake — I’m really glad that it’s there.
I’m late to the party with Ken Burns’ The National Parks, but this series is as enthralling as anything else this master of docs has put out in the past. All of Burns’ documentary series tell the story of America, but you’d never expect a show about the creation of our national parks to touch on race, classism, and the sheer power of individuals to turn their passions into national movements. The story of John Muir by itself is incredibly fascinating.
Finally, I saw the pilot for Will Arnett’s latest show Running Wilde — it’s fantastic. I was hoping GOB would get his own show, and finally, he pretty much has it here. Keri Russell is involved as a pretty fantastic straight man; plus the kid that plays her daughter is fantastic. I have no doubt that this kid’s going to be a star — her comedic timing is impeccable.
Feels Good Man
A few things that are making me feel good these days:
I’m seeing more and more Asian names at the top of the production food chain. No joke. Many of my meetings these days are occurring with Asian American executives, development people, or agents in the room. And we aren’t discussing the next Karate Kid movie or the Chan Clan reboot. I’m not sure when or how this happened, but it’s happening.
Back in college there was a lot of discussion about the lack of Asian American representation in the media. That’s what lead us to this, which is amazingly, still going strong. Now, you know I’m a populist and I’m for the entire human race as a whole, but it’s nice to see more Asian American representation where there was admittedly very little before. It lets us get our own story straight.
Have things changed? Not completely — we’ve definitely got a way to go — but I feel like they are in process in a positive way.
Good stuff on the iPad front: We’ve talked about GoodReader and the Netflix App and other such things before, but there are some other great developments in the app world for everyone’s favorite magical device.
Pulse — have you seen this thing, man? It lets you visually browse Uncrate, Sartorialist, GearPatrol, etc., all at once. Huge time saver, because instead of having to load up every site individually, it can show you all of them in a visual grid at the same time. Now that’s what I’m talkin about!
You might’ve also read that Hulu Plus is coming out soon too. The service is still rolling out, but the iPad/iPhone client is available now.
In the last few days I’ve read twelve one-hour pilots and watched the actual filmed episodes on the same portable screen. TV the iPad’s killer app, and Hulu brings us a step closer to its future. Sure, it’s becoming a paid service, but hopefully you get what you pay for.
Finally there’s Instapaper, which lets you cache and store webpages to read later on. This is genius for saving time. You drop the “Read Later” button onto your web browser, hitting it whenever you see a page you want to Read Later. Then when you’re in a more comfortable place in the time/space continuum, you can fire up the Instapaper iPad app and read all of those saved pages from the comfort of your couch. Magic.
Plus: More Year Zero and even Cowboy news coming down the pipe soon. Yessssss!
Feels good? Uh-huh:
I’m Not Afraid to Die on a Treadmill
Will Smith:
I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked. You may be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. And you may be better looking than me. But if we get on a treadmill together you are going to get off first or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. I’m not going to be outworked.
A friend of mine said something similar to this a long time ago, and now he’s a superstar producer on his way up. Some of you know of whom I speak. And like Will Smith, his success has come to him because he stood by his word. In fact, if I saw both him and Will Smith running on a treadmill together, I would be afraid… For the treadmill. That thing would have to give out eventually.
A recurring theme in my work recently is that love is not enough. Oh yeah, you may love to write, love to act, etc., etc., but that’s not enough — your deeds must match your feelings. You have to make some sacrifices. You’ve gotta get to work, and then work your ass off.
I’m not sure where I’m going with all this except to say that I admire Will Smith and I admire our friend. And if I had to choose between being an unstoppable force or an immovable object, like our friend I’d choose to be unstoppable — because then you get to go places.
I’ve been lurking the Backstage Forum lately to see how the other side lives. Eighty-six percent of my friends are actors, so I know what a rough profession it is. And the only aggravating thing about reading the Backstage forum is that the majority of the posts on it are warnings concerning various representation/headshot/”acting school”-based scams.
A ton of scams also exist to trick writers, but I’m guessing that most of them are of the “send us your script and we’ll edit it and send it to Real Hollywood Producers for a fee” variety. At least the lies aren’t told directly to your face like in these acting scams. Plus a really disturbing situation is that a lot of these operations exist to specifically scam children and their parents. Hello evil, it’s nice to see you’re alive and well.
I think that because we’re in the business of storytelling — where great ideas are sometimes invented out of thin air — there’s this perception that rewards can come quickly and with a minimum of effort. But like ideas, people need to be refined and developed — and that’s a process that can take years.
Still, it’s fun to read about actors’ ups and downs. The emotional aspects aren’t so different from writing. I’m just glad I don’t have to drive all over town for auditions.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
