Day 37: Focus, Karen ... Focus.

For the last three years, I've been a writer who hasn't written.

With the exception of an anonymous blog (an exercise I highly recommend), I just stopped cold. Instead, I buried myself in a ridiculously co-dependent relationship, smoked an insane amount of pot, felt sorry for myself, and gained 30 pounds on top of the 20 I'd already acquired (and that was above and beyond the extra 25 I carried to begin with).

Why did I stop writing? Well, I've always liked to blame a certain music television network, one that bought the concept for a show George and I created, greenlit the pilot, and then fired us when they sold our show to some company in Canada (in Canada, there are no rules about paying the minimum wage demanded by the Screen Actors Guild). For many months before the firing, when the project was in limbo, we turned down (and didn't look for) work - we were loyal to people who knew better than to make loyalty part of the picture. We kept trying for a while after losing the show, but when all was said and done, we were no longer "hot." We were no longer even warm. We were simply invisible.

I went back to pitching projects solo, but if my ever-thinning wallet was engaged, my heart wasn't. For the next year, I absorbed rejection after rejection like an aging boxer taking body blows in the 10th round - no matter how impressive the stamina, everyone knows what's coming. I pretended I was indifferent to the constant setbacks, but each lost job cut just a little bit deeper. For a long time, I'd been golden; I'd accomplished things no one thought I could. I'd gotten into a tough film school (thus quitting a very cool career as a music critic), sold my first script soon after graduation, staffed on television shows, made a good deal of money doing rewrite work, penned a few terrible TV movies, combined forces with George to successfully pitch our own show (along with other projects we worked on as a duo) ...

And now, finally, it had all trickled to a dead end.

I know, I know ... typical Hollywood story. But it's funny how stereotypes seem less obvious - and more unique - when you're the one living them.

One day, I just stopped. I never even broke with my agent of eight years - I simply quit talking to him. I moved across town, changed my number and disappeared. To this day, he must wonder what ever happened to me. I began marinating in a bitter stew of regret and self-pity, and no one could talk me out of it. I went on unemployment for the first time in my life, and when that ran out, I went on disability (my wrists were shot). I stopped seeing my friends, stopped leaving the house unless I had to, stopped writing, and stopped caring.

The relationship I was in had begun the same week the TV show was lost, and while her support was unflagging during the dark days, she had serious problems that conveniently allowed me to ignore my own.

And so it went, until finally, eight months ago, I became single again. Shortly thereafter, at the insistence of a woman I met on the internet (but never in real life, at least not yet), I started the anonymous blog. But focusing on real writing - a new screenplay or book - remained problematic. Instead, I focused on obsessions that would help me avoid any path that might lead to more literary rejection. Pot, romantic drama, wasting time online, watching television, managing my time poorly as a tutor - you name it.

Forty days ago, I decided I'd had enough. I admitted once and for all that if I ever wanted my life back as a writer, I had to stop smoking pot. I had to stop using romantic obsessions as timesucks, had to lose weight so I could feel better about myself, had to stop finding excuses to hide.

I've known for months now what I want to work on. It's a book based on the last screenplay I wrote - a book aimed at the adolescent market I've always written for. I know in my bones it will sell; I have that familiar feeling I used to get when I knew a pitch was going to work.

And yet, I haven't really started working on it. Every time I try, I find myself shying away.

I know what I need to do. I need to focus. I need to set aside 9 a.m.-noon every day as writing time - time when I unplug the phone, disconnect the internet, turn off the television and turn on my brain. I need to ignore my fears and depend on my arrogance - the same ego that always allowed me to believe I could accomplish anything I wanted to. I need to risk failure, which really shouldn't be such a big deal.

After all, living out my life in the shadow of failures I've already created isn't such a great alternative.