Working, Waiting and Wining

Several times a day, I stand in front of a mirror and examine. I scrutinize the recurring pimples strategically spread across my cheeks, a natural blush from a constantly dirty pillow. Thank God for MAC. I damn the slowly fading yellow stain on my eyeballs. I'll give up tobacco, eventually. The dark bruised skin under my right eye provides character and evidences that nasty fall more than a year ago. What a terrible tumble. My gaze then drops and I behold It, the looseness around my pelvis speaking to my air of just that. Damn... I think I'll have another glass of Cabernet.

It is eight months before my thirtieth birthday and I'm wearing the pain of the past decade. I haven't seen my eight year old daughter in as long as my face has been bruised. I wonder if she remembers me as vividly as I remember her. Living on two separate coasts and for what? Fame? Fortune? Forbes? I haven't wasted anytime though. I swear I haven't. (Someone please pass the Cabernet) Since leaving Philadelphia a year ago, I have started my television and film corporation, a blog, authored two books, written three episodes of a television series based on those books and began writing a director's edition screenplay for my first film, a horror film. I have done so all while living in a tent in the foreign city of Los Angeles, save for the three months I stayed with a so called "boyfriend". (Hey! Cabernet?)

It's okay though. It's fine. He kept my brand new Canon camera. My web series, in which I star, can wait. At least I managed to produce and post the title sequence online. Oh, my business' website is coming along just fine. So, I haven't done what most single parents would consider to be the unthinkable for nothing. Up and moving more than three thousand miles away while their only child, their daughter, in grand-parental care. Why are you doing this again Lauren? Fame? Fortune? Forbes? All I need is, (Oh, there's the Cabernet), is for one of these other film corporations, minor or major, to purchase my screenplay. No, I haven't finished it. I have more than half the film written and the writing process is moving smoothly. But let us discuss the basic process for screenplay procurement.

Production companies receive, review and then greenlight screenplays worth their multi-million dollar investment. Then the artist must wait for a response to even know that the corporation has found their work is worthy of purchase, credit and royalties. But first, they must receive the screenplay. But how is the exec, producer or whomever designated to collect this incoming material to do so when NONE of the popular production corporations want unsolicited materials? And if they happen to read it, be it either by email or postal mail, they have made it known that only the first ten pages will be of interest. One minute per page standard screenplay, ninety to one hundred and twenty pages per screenplay. Yes, Mr. or Ms. Exec you know exactly what I've written. But back to the process.

No talent agent, manager or representative to get your work in there? Then social media it is! They want to find me. Social media, okay social media, like Instagram, right?. Great, I need to be cool, hip and trendy for the first time in my life. My calling is the fine and prestigious art of television and film production. We, by default, are English, Contemporary Art and Technology geeks. Since when were we EVER "cool" or trendy. I write horror not humor. Well, maybe dark humor, think Addams Family. Please, Mr. or Ms. Exec, don't make me relive my high school years. I spent three of them online so that my little sister didn't get picked on anymore. I am far too artsy and uppedy to be an internet sensation like the other kids. Especially because I now live in a women's shelter and am waiting for the country to go back to work so that I didn't waste my last two hundred dollars on bartending school. (Aaaah! I drank all the Cabernet!)

Something's gotta give. Before leaving Philly, I spent a year walking off weight. I WAS three hundred pound at a grand height of five feet five inches. That was one hundred or more pounds ago. Now, all I think about is winning an Oscar after undergoing abdominoplasty and liposuction three sixty to complete my weight loss project. And now, I have to twerk and stick out my tongue and grunt and laugh like a lesser animal like I didn't beg my freshman high school English teacher for one extra point because who finishes a class with a ninety-nine? Who?! Now an impressive portfolio later, I have to be an Instagram hoe and for The Oscars! Count your blessings Lauren. Count 'em. (Seven hundred - fifty milligrams, Chardonnay)

Actual blessings, right. I still have my laptop, clearly. (Ooooh, ooooh, ooooh, Chardonnay). My fifty dollar cell phone's camera still works, in selfie mode. I still have my video production software. I can make this work. I will cut out all of wine and relieve my beloved future surgeon! I will quit smoking tobacco for the super pearly white eyeballs that my mother graced me with! I will find my hip, cool, trendy self without lecturing on existential matters to impress on Instagram to lure entertainment execs looking for my popular culture just to bore them with my love for Noire, Erotica and Whimsical Fantasy. I swear, shit, I'm sitting on the next Harry Potter but first I have to show them the fat ass I'm sitting on. Wish me luck and more Cabernet! Wait...

Alyssa, your Mommy loves you. <3