Voices

“I’m not good enough.”
“I was foolish to think I could do it.”
“This won’t interest anyone.”
“You’re a hack.”

As you may have guessed, these aren’t cornfield ghosts begging me to build an athletic field. This is the voice I call Evil Tom, and at times, the Force is with him. This is one of those times. The further I get into a project, the stronger the voice becomes. I have to fight through it, and tell Evil Tom that he is a no-good-doody-head*. I’m struggling through this outlining process. I don’t have the faith that a solution will present itself and that I will figure out how to organize my story into a tight, well crafted script.

I have to tell myself that a solution will present itself, and that my script will be good enough. And while I battle Evil Tom in Act II of Tom: A Life Less Mangled, I must believe that he will eventually be sucked up by a jet engine after our grueling sword fight on the rain-swept tarmac of Philadelphia International Airport, so that I can move into Act III, head held high and hopefully enjoy a lengthy epilogue the critics will find melodramatic and preachy.

This is not a blog post as much as a diary entry. And though it seems it, I’m not looking for people to tell me things will be all right. I know that I will get through it and finish my script and be happy with it. Then the process will start over and Evil Tom will come back again and again to haunt me.

I think I will take up fencing.


* He doesn’t like being called a no-good-doody-head, and tells me I’m a hack for using such a juvenile term. Better writers would think of something interesting.