I’ve been stuck in a creative rut for 5 years now.
From 2013 to 2019, I was actively working on screenplays. I created this website to house those screenplays online, and to do some blogging with my brother Sean on topics we were interested in. Towards the end of 2018, I got a manager for my spec pilot, LSD/88. We worked on fine tuning a draft and then he brought it to some actual networks and producers! It didn’t go anywhere, which was deflating but not surprising. It’s a hard business to break into. But I was proud to have gotten to that point at all.
Then 2020 came and the pandemic hit, and I lapsed into not writing much at all. I still journaled, I still took lots of notes on ideas, lines of dialogue, characters, anything I found interesting (and I still do all that as a practice, thankfully). But I haven’t found a real way to return to writing with the intention of sharing my work. I haven’t finished a screenplay in years, though I’ve started some. I lost my routine, discipline, and maybe even the will to tackle large writing projects.
I’ve also been a poor blogger. I haven’t posted here in almost 2 years. But I’d like to try again, for a number of reasons. I think the internet of it all ties into my creativity, or lack thereof, in crucial ways. The state of the internet is horrible. The main drivers, social media, are owned by awful oligarchs, who’ve actively made their products shittier over the years, not to mention the (dis)information and manipulation that has real world ramifications. I don’t want to support that if I can avoid it. I finally deactivated my Twitter. I’m blocking Instagram for a month as a trial before getting rid of it completely. I’m trying to reform my relationship with the internet towards the interesting, curiosity driven place it can be, away from the dopamine slot machines and information overload that has plagued it.
I’ve had this in my drafts for awhile now, and funnily enough, finding out J. Cole has started a blog of his own was the reminder I needed to publish this. He says: “This is just a place for me to share. I been wanting a lil blog for years. Somewhere to post random shit I fuck with where the audience is way smaller than it is on the social media platforms.” I can’t think of a better, more succinct way to put it. My other main inspiration is Austin Kleon’s blog. He’s long advocated for owning your own space on the internet and I’ve always appreciated his writings on art and creativity. He’s the author of Steal Like an Artist, and I do indeed intend to steal plenty from his blog for my own.
I want this space to be fun, loose, unstructured and interesting. Sometimes I’ll share writings of mine, sometimes I might just post some cool pictures, or point towards a song or movie I love. But above all, I want to use this space as a tool that will allow me to enjoy the internet in a healthier way and start to flex my stagnant creative muscles again. Here’s to giving it another shot.