So what does a wannabe writer do when he finds himself unemployed? I mean after he plays online poker for a few days and watches Oprah with the blinds drawn and eats 6 pieces of peanut butter rye toast for lunch? That’s right, he fucks around on the interweb for a few days. After that, well, then he starts thinking about getting back to writing again.

He takes out all the old index cards for one of his pet screenplay ideas and dusts them off, starts brainstorming to fill out the story, starts making notes, starts trying to restart the old writing engine. And just when the engine turns over and starts idling again — roughly, but idling nonetheless — just then he casually Googles the title for this unique idea … and finds out that it’s currently in production for release next year. And fucking SNL’s Lorne Michaels is behind it. Which means, of course, that it’ll be a total steaming pile of crap that makes a gazillion dollars and if I continue with my script it will look like I copied the crap.

Crap. It’s all about timing — or as Steve Martin called it in an old bit, “Tie Ming” — and mine sucks. I know I have marketable ideas because other people keep making them. What I don’t have is the butt-glue necessary to beat them to it. This is the third screenplay idea of mine that someone else went ahead and made while I was twiddling my thumbs, and I can’t count how many sitcom story ideas of mine magically appeared on TV while I was index carding them. But, hey, you know what? Those other writers did it while all I did was dream. They’re the big winnas, I’m the big wanna. It’s on me.

So this week’s project: butt-glue. In copious amounts.

(But my Blade concept was good, dammit. And that’s all I’ll say about that.)