So, another year has passed, and it's Screenwriting Expo time again, the long weekend each year where I go to feed my dreams (some might say illusions) of being a screenwriter or otherwise creative in the entertainment biz. Given my inaction toward the creative life this year, I'm starting to feel like it's more and more an illusion, which I find depressing for obvious reasons. I could say that it's been a tumultuous year, which is certainly true, but the end result is that I not only feel a side of myself unfed, but a lot more guilt than usual about it. I'm coming up on 40 next year, and while I'm not of the school that has strict ties to accomplishment by a certain birthday, I do feel a sense of youth passing by and a need to get on with it if I'm really going to give it a try.

So I've spent these 4 days finding out lots about how other people go about being writers and making movies. I now have all of the tools necessary to start doing this if I really want, tools lots of other people would dearly love to have, and I think that this is going to have to be the year I either put up or shut up. Walking back to my hotel this afternoon after skipping out on the 2 o'clock classes, I decided that I won't come back next year unless I have a completed screenplay under my belt. I think I've reached the upper limit of seminar and book-learning in this case, and need to put it into practice before any other classes here can have meaning. I also know that it's easy to just keep going to classes and buying books, spinning wheels in what ultimately becomes a painful pretense of having a writing career.

Enough already.

"They" say that having clearly stated goals is the first step toward accomplishment, so here's my goal: by next October, I want to have completed a full-length feature screenplay that is far enough along in rewrites to consider pitching. I had considered not coming back until I was ready to pitch, but that involves a lot of other emotional factors and makes it a different equation. But it needs to have been polished, and have received some feedback, maybe even a consultation already, and definitely several rewrites by the time I come back to LA next fall. Otherwise, I'll save myself the plane ticket, hotel, and registration fee and keep writing instead. I believe I have stories to tell, regardless of what may ultimately happen to them, and I want to get them down.

Period.

So, to those 5 of you who are my friends and family reading this, please remind me of this goal from time to time—ask me how it's going, what it's about, whatever. And maybe next year will be the post that says someone wants to make my script into a movie, or that I've decided to do it myself. Or at least that it's finally finished. Just one or two steps, but the inertia of how I've chosen to live my life is driving me crazy with dissatisfaction. It's time to pick a road and actually walk for a while.