Kicking ass and taking names

Writing Partner has caught the bug.

Despite the fact that he went to fancy film school and knows lots about making movies, he doesn't have that much actual writing experience, and he's been very nervous about what I'd think of his part of the script.

Everything we've written up to this point we wrote together. I'd do a piece and send it to him and he'd do a piece and send it to me. But this project is in chapters, so I took two and he took two and we've worked on them independently, only occasionally checking in with the other one to bounce some ideas around.

He sent me a short he wrote on a whim recently and I did not like it, so it made him really worried that I wouldn't like his new stuff.

Then that thing happened. You know, that thing that happens. You know.

He sent his first draft to a friend who sent back three pages of notes. Partner looked at the notes and it hit him what he had to do. And that's when it happened. You know, that thing.

His story took over his brain. He called me like six times in one day to tell me how excited he was that he wasn't in control. The story was telling itself. He just sat in front of his computer for hours typing whatever his brain said to type.

And I cheered and said, now you're a writer.

When I read it today I was generally pleased. I go into every reading of everything expecting it to suck. So if something doesn't suck I am generally pleased. And I was generally pleased. I had some issues so we workshopped for an hour while I walked up to Larchmont, bought some tomatoes and hummus, and walked back. Cell phones are wondrous things.

There was a scene at the therapist. Our character, Sheila, reveals her thoughts to a psychiatrist. It was boring. So I said, this character is only here so Sheila can talk to herself (I heard that about therapists somewhere on this here interweb so thanks, whoever pointed that out - Unk, maybe? Bill?) and we need to ditch the psychiatrist.

But who?

I said, how about a friend? She's already shoe shopping in one scene. What if a friend came with her? Then she could-

That was all it took to get the ball rolling. The ideas started popping out of his mouth and he got really excited again. He called me fifteen minutes later just to tell me how awesome an idea that was. I'm actually a little worried. I think he may have replaced sleep with writing time.

But it did give him the opportunity to write a lesbian make-out scene so that had to be fun.

Don't ask.

I do find it interesting that his chapters are all about sex and mine are all about violence. That has to have some psychological significance, but we will not delve into that because it would be too boring to put on camera since it will not include any lesbian makeout scenes.

I was worried Partner wouldn't be able to keep up my pace but now it's me who's falling behind. I gotta step up my A game so we can make this brilliant.

I'm gonna be such a bitch to everybody when we're rich and famous.