Ah, the Writer's Life

Yesterday, I had the chance to interview Chuck Klosterman.  I really appreciated having the opportunity to ask questions to someone who asks questions for a living.  You can read the results here.

Really, though, this post is to let you know how glamorous the writer's life is.

5:30 p.m.  An unusually low level of traffic on Sunset allows me to get to Book Soup early.  I didn't realize that there's a lot behind the store, so I parked five blocks away in the structure that is usually $5, but today was $8 because parking attendants love arbitrary and temporary price hikes.

6 p.m.  I walk into Book Soup and hang around for a bit.

6:20 p.m.  I meet Chuck Klosterman and we go upstairs for the interview.

7:20 p.m. CK reads.  I take notes.

8:30 p.m.  Spike Lee is going to be here tonight too, so we decide to stick around even though an interview is totally not going to happen.  He won't arrive for another hour, though, so I meet up with the Weekly's photographer and an LA Times reporter and we walk down the street for pizza.  

9:30 p.m.  Spike Lee fields questions.  I take more notes.

10:50 p.m.  I come home.  I am tired.

11 p.m.  I start transcribing my interview.

12 p.m.  I realize that this interview was incredibly long considering that my max word count is 1000.  I think about fast forwarding through it and just transcribing the best bits, but it's all interesting to me.  I keep going.

2 a.m.  I finish the transcription and read it repeatedly until I can figure out what to keep and what to cut.  I figure that since the piece is about the event of reading from the book, I should stick to questions pertaining specifically to the book.

2:30 a.m.  I finish editing the transcript and start writing the intro.

2:50 a.m.  I fall asleep with my head less than an inch away from my laptop.  I blame this on One Life to Live's horrible plot lines.

4:30 a.m.  I wake up and start writing the intro.   I can't think, so I smoke a cigarette.

5 a.m.  I have stopped thinking about the intro and started writing it.  

5:55 a.m.  I send my editor the story as the credits for InuYasha roll.

6:10 a.m.  I fall back asleep

7:30 am.  I wake up for work.  Decide to sleep some more.

8 a.m.  Okay, now I have to get up for real.

3:30 p.m.  Get home from work.  I'm not really sure how I got there, what I did when I was there or how I ended up at home.  I posted something on MySpace earlier, but it seems like a blur.  I try to put on a Pink Dots album, but I can't find the needles for my turntables and I'm too tired to look around my room.  So I open up iTunes and fall asleep.

4:45 p.m.  I wake up either because a really noisy song came up on the cue or because I had to go to the bathroom.  I can't remember.  All I know is that I can't fall asleep.

5:30 p.m.  I decide to watch TV.  Bush is talking about the economy.  I'm still not sure what's going on.

6 p.m.  Eat dinner

7 p.m.  Decide that I'm not going back to sleep anytime soon, so I go to the gym and start reading Twilight while I'm on the treadmill.

8 p.m.  I know I have some things I have to get onto paper, but I can't organize my thoughts.  Wait, I can never organize my thoughts.  I guess this is starting to revert to a regular day.

9 p.m.  Watch One Life to Live.  It's still boring.  Man, I could write better story lines on two hours of sleep.

10:21 p.m.  Watching random anime that I have DVR'd.  Figured I would blog in an attempt to revive my writerly sense.