I’m not writing at the moment. Well, I’m writing this but I’m not writing plays and screenplays. People wiser than I have said a writer needs to get her work out there so it can be seen.

So, that’s what this writer has been doing for several months – sending out my stage play comedy COMMUNITY, helping put together the filming of THE CALAMITIES OF JANE (a webseries I co-wrote), watching rehearsals for a monologue I have in the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and the biggest enterprise of all, getting the creative team and money in place for my feature film SHELBY’S VACATION.

Some weeks ago I ran into Dan Berkowitz of Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights fame and we were noting that the ALAP / West Hollywood play contest deadline was approaching. I said I actually wasn’t entering it this year, and he put on his mock scold face and said in a taskmaster voice, “GET ON IT.” I laughed but part of me wanted to explain where I was in my life right now so he wouldn’t think I was a SLACKER.

When I was much younger, it took awhile to cultivate the habit of writing regularly. The blank page was SCARY.

Okay, these days it’s still a little scary. But I get past that pretty quickly and just get on with it. (I attribute this to doing a ton of Natalie Goldberg’s timed writing exercises years ago, where you write as fast as you can for ten minutes; if you haven’t read her books WILD MIND or WRITING DOWN THE BONES, I highly recommend them.)

Because it’s fairly easy for me to sit down and write (please note, I’m not saying everything that flows out of my pen and computer is genius), I know I could jump on a couple of different ideas that are waving to me from the sidelines and get going on them. But if I did that, I would be consumed with them and COMMUNITY, JANE and SHELBY’S VACATION would not get launched and I’d be annoyed as hell that my writing isn’t being seen by audiences.

So, that’s the answer, Dan. I’m not a slacker. I’m a businesswoman marketing her work right now.