Bastard re-write!

After 8 long, sleep-deprived, booze-addled months I am nearing the final draft of my new (and first!) play. Even though I have been a writer for over 20 years I was wholly unprepared for how fucking intense and angst-inducing this project would be. It now seems somewhat naive of me to think that I would be finished by my birthday (August); even working 7-days a week it seemed to be a task with no visible end: re-write, re-write, re-write; endlessly chiseling away until each monologue, joke, rant, philosophical tangent was perfect. Primarily being a screenwriter, gag-meister and music writer I am still dazed by the degree of insane detail that goes into constructing a play! (Some of the monologues took weeks to perfect) The truth (always an unpleasant taskmaster) is that regularly writing for prolonged periods about something so personal, and so mind-scrafingly deranged demonstratively took it's toll on me emotionally and physically. Spending hours, upon hours creating yet-more obscenity for this main character to indulge in, ultimately became entirely wearing. Misogynist, cannibal killers think bad thoughts; all the bloody time! There's no break in their routine of filth and degraded perception. Incorrigible swine, they are. While this piece is ostensibly a black comedy, the black; goat of mendes! The black began oozing out of my pores like rotten Indian ink. Can't even write about it anymore, no catharsis to be found in wordplay; no cure for alienation; I clearly cannot write my way out of soul-withering loneliness; it's like having icy deposits permanently and incessantly grinding away in your delicate bone marrow; going to bed each night alone has it's very own singular coda of misery; with no one to mop your sweaty brow, or coo soothing words of encouragement into your exhausted ears, one seeks a fools solace in alcohol (abject lunacy!) and guess what? Sobriety isn't much better either. To paraphrase a friend of mine ..."Sobriety is overrated" Indeed; but yet again it's another case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.   If this is the kind of head-fuck shit Hemmingway went through each day, it's somewhat miraculous that he didn't exit sooner than he did.