Can't You See I'm Workin' It Out?

I used to host a show on my college radio station dedicated to showtunes.  It ran on Sunday nights and had been running for years, so it had a great following with lots of requests.  I'd get a call every week for "Workin' It Out" from They're Playing Our Song, the musical that starred Robert Klein and Lucie Arnaz with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager and music by Marvin Hamlisch.  I had heard of the show, but hadn't seen it or heard the album until that first call.  With a three hour show to fill each week, I was happy to play a song from that listener's favorite show each show.  In the song, Klein is working on composing a song while Lucie Arnaz is trying to collaborate and juggle her personal issues at the same time.  Hey, I never said the inspiration for this blog was original.

When I was blogging over at The One Year Push, I had an interaction with a reader when I'd pretty rashly decided to stop blogging and whined about not having reader feedback in a long while.  That reader said a few things that struck me personally, and I copped to the criticism because he/she was right, I didn't have the right to whine about not getting feedback when I wasn't showing much progress in my goals.  I wasn't progressing, and the blog showed it.  I went on with it a bit more, changed the storefront and tried some more without pressuring myself to post on a regular basis.  Up until a few months ago, that's where things stood.  I'd taken a break from blogging and from writing, thinking perhaps that I'd be better off then at focusing on work and family.

You can see this coming, can't you?

Nope, it didn't work.  I didn't feel the fulfillment I'd feel when reading back a scene that had just burst out of me.  I'm not going to find much fulfillment at work (yeah, who does), but I do at home, my family is incredible and is the driving force behind me getting back to writing.  Plus, someone I'd worked with in the past has become a producer and has been encouraging me to give him completed work to show to his partners.  He's just read a treatment I've written and liked it a great deal.  I've got other ideas I'd left in the dust that deserve better treatment, so I'm brushing them off and writing new treatments.  Aside from my old colleague, I've got a few other people in the industry I haven't shown any work to, so once I've got a block of items to be read, I can go to them as well.

I'm more hopeful than ever that I can make an honest run at this.  I just have to keep myself pushing harder than before.