Anthony Goodroe's Lounge Discussions

I just joined today and am really glad I found this site. A little about why I'm here: In November of last year, I bought a book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron because Bill Sheft (Letterman's head writer for twenty plus years) mentioned it on Marc Maron's podcast. He said it was essential to his success. That piqued my interest because I had recently decided to explore comedy writing in some form, mainly sketch and stand-up. But I had a minor problem. Although I've been told time and again throughout my life how funny I am, my brain was devoid of any ideas and that was extremely frustrating. So I bought the book and started practicing the first assignment, which is called "Morning Pages". Some of you may be already familiar with this, but if not, it basically entails writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness in long-hand form first thing after waking up in the morning. An odd thing happened on day three. The basic premise for a movie popped in my mind and has yet to let go. I started writing down ideas and played with a little dialogue but soon realized I had no idea what I was doing. So I scoured the internet for help and started listening to some writing podcasts. I bought books, started studying movies and reading scripts. I was consumed with passion for my project and learning this craft. I just started actually writing my screenplay about three weeks ago and have twenty-two pages so far. I am pushing to finish it because I'm anxious to see how much it sucks so I can re-write it. The feeling of creating something is so tremendous that I'm really not interested in hanging a tag of success or failure on it if it never sells (although I have given several acceptance speeches for my Oscar on the back deck of my house). Anyway, it's good to be a part of a community of like-minded folks and I look forward to being able to post on a social media site without getting replies from my mother-in-law who has, once again, completely missed the point.