Financial Fuck myself part 3 - april fools' time

Financial Fuck myself writing experiment – part 3

 THE EXPERIMENT IN A NUTSHELL

I went through a year and a half of writing absolutely nothing.  That shit’s fucked up.  I had to unfuck the situation by making threats to financially fuck myself in an attempt to fuck the laziness out of... myself.  Each week I set a goal, I will write X amount of pages on a feature, or sitcom, webseries, whatever.  If I don’t reach my goal, my wallet takes a raping. 

RECAP:

EXPERIMENT 1 – WRITE 30 PAGES OF A FEATURE.  I LOST (came up short. I wrote 20 pages), and had to buy a quarter ounce of weed and give it to a friend of mine for free.  Here's the link to the original blog:

http://thechingofcomedy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-diary-of-wannabe-writer-financial.html

EXPERIMENT 2 - CLOSURE ON LAST WEEK’S CHALLENGE  – SHIT GETS EPIC – GOAL WRITES 10 PAGES OF THE EPIC SCRIPT...    (a chain script concept between 3 writers, of the script being passed back and forth to each other to do whatever the fuck we want to it). Here's the link to the blog of part 2:

http://thechingofcomedy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-financial-fuck-myself-writing.html

WHAT WAS AT STAKE? A deal with 2 people.  $40 on the line for Warren, and a permanent ban on myself to ever try to force my musical taste on Scott again.  That means no more showing upto his house and being like, “Yo, this emo band is awesome!! Here’s their cd”

And him being like...SIGH..."okay, I guess I’ll listen to it."

RESULT – I WON, MOTHERFUCKERS! Scott, I’ll burn a CD of The Menzingers next time I see you.  They’re fucking awesome! They’re like a punk rock version of the Tragically Hip. 

The count for now is

1 win

1 loss

In the previous blog, I had talked about how the script started out with a twilight zone-ish concept.  Then it soon became a competition of who can out-farce who, who can write the most fucked up, darkest, disgusting, offensive material.  Scott and Warren know my humor very well by now, but I’m hoping my latest entry still manages to get a shock reaction out of them. 

This entry was a double edged sword.  On one hand, I think what I wrote was absolutely fucking hilarious and much funnier than the stuff I wrote last week.  On the flip side, I am also genuinely embarrassed about what I wrote.  If Scott and Warren are the only 2 people who ever read my 10 pages, that’s cool with me. 

THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:

I think I’m fucked.  I’ll be honest.  It’s already Thursday, and I haven’t started.  Anyways, I made a deal on Monday with the same friend from challenge 1, but this time with an HQ of weed on the line.  Because I’m only giving myself a week, I’m not putting $65 on the line again; especially with my last paycheque sucking balls. 

Anyways, the deal was that I had to either write the pilot to my sitcom (22 pages) or a short film and it’s due on April 1, 11:59 PM.  Yes, it’s April Fools day.  What should a script delivered on April fools be like? I don’t know.  I’m going to think about this one.  Maybe I’ll write a short about April Fools. 

My next deadline after that should be might be April 20.

The Financial fuck myself writing experiment part 2

BE WARNED: I use the word "epic" way too many times in this blog. I'm sorry. It hopefully won't happen again.

CLOSURE ON LAST WEEK’S ANECDOTE:

For those not familiar with my financial fuck myself writing experiment, here’s the first blog I wrote about it.:

http://thechingofcomedy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-diary-of-wannabe-writer-financial.html

Okay, so an update on the first experiment.  Bad news is, I did indeed financially fuck myself (might I add I fucked myself even more by putting money on Carlos Condit to beat Johny Hendricks at the last UFC).  The email that I wrote to the recipient stated, “On Sunday March 17th...11:59 PM, I have to send you a piece of writing. I don't know yet what it will be as I'm deciding between like 5 different ideas. It either has to be 30 pages of a feature, one episode of a sitcom (22 pages), a short film script, or 3 episodes of a webseries titled The Human Project (I've written one episode so far). So, if I don't deliver on March 17th, a free quarter bag of soil will come your way.”

Maybe I don’t have to spell it out, but soil being our code word for weed...I guess making my pot dealer my gardener.  Maybe not the best code words in the world.  I ended up going with a feature-length romantic comedy.  Bad news was that I failed to deliver 30 pages.  On the other hand, I didn't completly fail at writing either. I delivered 20 pages.  Whether those 20 pages were good, I don’t know.  The reader and uhh...gardening enthusiast got back to me immediately with script notes which I really appreciate.  She seems to sort of enjoy it so far.  It’s far from the best stuff I’ve ever written, but I’m sure I’ll make it better with re-writes.  So, I lost $65. Anyways, for the first time in...maybe ever, I don’t look forward to the phone call I’ll be making to my pot dea...I mean...gardener. 

SHIT GETS EPIC...

Well okay, by epic I don’t mean I’m wagering an epic amount of money.  

So, it’s a new week and a new financial fuck myself challenge. This week I have a clear focus.  I’m in a writers group with 2 other people.  I’m not even sure what our writer’s group is called...I think it’s the Fuck Robert McKee Writers Group Extravaganza, or Do The Write Thing...I use the latter name when I mention the writers group on my resume.  Anyways, Scott started out a script that had a Twilight Zone like feel to it, wrote 5 pages then passed it off to Warren.  Then Warren wrote 5 pages and passed it off to me, then I wrote my bit then passed it back to Scott.  We’re almost at the very end of the script (now the 90 page mark)...so this week I need to stop procrastinating and write my final bit of the script, either 5 to 10 pages, then Scott will finish it off.  Ya know what, let's go with 10 pages. This is my last entry to it, so I'll go bigger.

If I don’t deliver the script to Warren and Scott by this Sunday at 11:59 PM, Warren’s $40 debt with me will be wiped clean.  I had thought of making a deal that I’d never be allowed to crack immature jokes about his homosexuality again, but that’s too big a risk.  Plus, he’d ultimately lose out on a shitload of laughter.  I don’t wish to deprive my friend of the best medicine in the world. He may live longer due to my "funny" immature gay jokes.

As for Scott...I don’t know, he makes way more money than I do, so I’ll just say that if I don’t deliver, I will never again try to force my musical taste down his throat.  No more showing up to his house with a burned CD being like, “Yo, you gotta check this band out!  They’re awesome!”  to him shortly getting back to me being like, “Yeah...didn’t really like it.”  That shit will end if I don’t deliver my part of the script.

A little more about the script, the working title is, The Epic Script.  Why?  Because it is motherfucking epic, that’s why.  The story is epic...well epic in just how fucked up and insane it gets...and how stupid it is as well. I may have been the first person to turn a somewhat intruiging concept into a total farce, but I think Scott and Warren out-farced me at times, and now it seems like a competition of who can out-farce the other person in the most epic way. Characters introduced by Scott would immediately get killed off when Warren takes over, and when Warren tries to introduce new characters, I kill them off, and so on...

On June 11th, 2009, when I finished my part and sent it to Scott for him to take over the script, here is the email he sent to Warren and I:

"Alright, yeah, that's it...I'm out. This is...I...what the fuck is wrong with youse guys? I don't want to have any part of this anymore. So I'm done. I'm out. This is just...really? Come on. I would like to take my name off of the credits and disown the both of you as friends."

We told him that if he stopped, he's not a real writer, we may have threatened him a little bit, and he reluctantly continued the epic script. Fast forward to today... 

Unfortunately for him, the epic script is still going, and worst of all...Warren and I are still his friends.
 

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The Diary of a wannabe writer - The financial fuck myself experiment....

My name is Jeff Ching and lately I’ve become one lazy fuck.  There was a point where I had a crazy amount of drive, and I had written 3 feature length screenplays in one year...but that was a time where I was unemployed and too fucking lazy to look for a job.  Now I have a job, but I’m too lazy to write screenplays.  As you can see, laziness is a part of my DNA.  Can I use that excuse?  A lot of people like to shit on lazy people, but...if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be lazy.  It’s God’s fault for putting that shit in my DNA. 

It’s also an unfortunate reality that all of us film school graduates have learned which is that the film industry simply sucks a lot of cock. Maybe I’ll save that for another blog, this isn’t going to turn into me bitching and whining. 

Anyways, it’s been a year and a half since I wrote anything.  I have a massive well of ideas, but I can’t seem to focus on one.  What also doesn’t help is having access to the best DVD collection in the world (yeah yeah, I’m sure people who’ve been over to my house will dispute this, but fuck you guys!! I have the best DVD collection in the world) often leads to getting home from work tired, and just wanting to watch something good. 

I need to do something about this.  Making a living off my screenwriting is still my ultimate dream, and not writing anything sure as hell isn’t the way to achieve it.  So, to give me some drive to get back into writing, I’m doing a little experiment on myself.  This is the financial fuck myself plan which makes more sense than America’s sequester plan.  So, I made a deal with a friend of mine.  On March 17^th, I must deliver either 30 pages of a feature length screenplay, a short film script, 3 episodes of a webseries, or the pilot of a sitcom, and if I don’t deliver on this, I have to buy a quarter ounce of weed and give it to my friend for free.  For those of you non-stoners, that’s $65 I’m losing if I don’t deliver on this.  Perhaps I will do this every single week or every two weeks. 

Hopefully these financial threats will light a fire under my ass.  Who knows?  I made this deal with my friend on March 3^rd, and I haven’t started writing anything yet.  In fact, this blog is the first thing I’ve written.  With that being said, I think I’m going to force myself to write one blog a week...I can’t guarantee they’ll be good.  I just want to write something honest about my quest to make a living off writing.  While I may have very few talents, there is one thing that I’m good at, correction...I’m fucking good at and that’s writing comedy.   Don’t get me wrong, I would trade my ability to write dick, poop and abortion jokes any day to be able to understand quantum mechanics, and be able to look at a mathematical formula and be like, “Ohhh...so that’s how the universe works.”  But, this is the talent I have...and perhaps putting on awesome laser shows, but uhh...I think I’m going to stick with my writing.  On March 18^th, I will offer closure to this anecdote. 

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