So when last we left René Garcia, he was in the doldrums of his writing career and, I dare say, his life overall. Well folks, I’m glad to say that I am more assuredly through that brief, depressing stint. Hooray! And here we are with another weekly blog. (I’m a little sad that my posts have dwindled down to once a week, but what can you do?)

I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve just been down this past week. What the heck is wrong with me? I have zero motivation to do anything. Usually, I can’t wait to get home, especially on the weekends, and just spend all of Friday night and Saturday day writing or working on my Web site (mind some minor adjustments in that regard, by the way), but not this week. Instead, I blew off my writing partner — I had a legitimate reason of course — and stayed in to finish Mallrats. Not the best movie in the world, though it has its charms. It’s the movie you were thinking of at the end of every conversation where you said, “This needs to be in a movie!”

As a freelance writer, you’ll probably run into a lot of fly-by-night publications that are looking for writers to supply them with content. These outlets are great for new people trying to beef up their portfolio with tear sheets or just get some experience. Typically, these publications won’t pay you. Most of the time, writers put up with it, because they usually have a day job anyway.

Once you’ve written a few articles, you can start being a little picky about which fly-by-night publication you want write for. Sooner or later, you’ll get picked up by a regional rag that actually has some good connections.

Since this is my professional blog, I made a conscious decision not to blog too much about work since the only reason to write about work on your personal time is just to complain. I submit to you that I’ve let slip a complaint about work here and there, but nothing that I thought was flagrant or would put off a prospective future employer. Recently, however, work has gotten me down — to the point of depressing me — and I just feel the need to get a few things off my chest.

I had the worse allergies today. The kind where I’ve sneezed and sniffled so much that it’s given me a headache.

It’s a quarter after 10 p.m. as I start this post. I have a fresh Venti Quad Toffee Nut Latte from Starbucks sitting on my desk to see me through the night. The cup has the old logo on it with the double-tailed mermaid modestly hiding her breasts from view. Did Starbucks cave to the small uproar over the new logo, which shows some nipplage? Did they switch back to the old logo? Someone is starving on the streets of New York and these are the issues that weigh heavy on my mind. Oh well. That’s just the way I roll.

Maybe it isn’t like this for all writers. Maybe I just do things the hard way, but I’ll admit that I hate writing close to 100% of the time. The process is laborious and I’m too slow at it. I hate that my fingers and my mind can’t keep up with the essence of what I want to communicate. Then, of course, there are the times that I have to look up the spelling, definition and/or exciting synonym of a word, which only slows the process down even more. And who can forget the rewriting process that can sometimes be longer than the initial writing? That’s not to say that I always hate writing. On the rare occasion, the planets align just as the Moon’s gravity waxes or wanes to the perfect complement and I’m able to string together a phrase that hits all the right notes and, more importantly, says exactly what I wanted to say.

I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600 when I thought I was gosu for being able to “dodge” enemy lasers on Berserk by letting the lasers pass through the pixels that separated my avatar’s head from his body. Damn, those little Psylon dudes were irritating, especially when you bumped up the Difficulty lever a couple of times and the bad guys fired an endless stream of lasers.

Of course video games have come a long way since then, but I’ve been there each step of the way, playing Nintendos, Playstations, Xboxs and finally settling on the PC.

I got my first credit card when I was 18. Or maybe I was 19. I’m a little fuzzy on the age, but I do remember having just started college and it was one of the credit cards that are supposedly “geared for students.” It had an $800 credit limit. I was going through a deep depression and working a barely-above-minimum-wage job in directory assistance at the time, so it was no surprise that I relied heavily on this seemingly “free money” to anesthetize myself regularly with cigarettes and video games. I maxed out that baby, right quick.

A couple of years later, working another Job of the Damned in retail, I applied for a Discover card. Surprisingly, I qualified.

MSNBC ran a story today about how U.S. colleges are campaigning to lower the legal drinking age in the country.

RALEIGH, North Carolina – College presidents from about 100 of the best-known U.S. universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus. (Read the original article)

Basically, that would mean that high school seniors would be allowed to drink legally.

A perfect movie — in the technical sense — probably doesn’t exist, but a perfect movie — in a subjective, creative and artistic sense — exists everywhere, constantly discussed over coffee on first dates, over beers while shooting pool and on personal blogs. To that end, this article isn’t meant to convince you of anything. If you agree with my choices, awesome. If you don’t, that’s awesome, too. In either case, I’d love to have your comments. In the end, perfect movies are those rare gems that don’t leave you wanting.

The day is just half way over as I start this and already it feels long. Typically, I enjoy my Saturdays, but today headed South real fast. I slept in, which means getting up at 8 instead of 6:30, which was nice. I worked out. It’s chest and abs day and I upped the weight by 10 lbs. I was feeling pretty good.

And then I made the mistake of immersing myself in humanity.

If you’re new here, see, I like to watch my movies at the theater as early as possible so as to avoid all of the crowds. Here’s a nice little article about Problems at the Movie Theater.

Rather than saying “The network is going to be down for a few hours while we fix the problems” the IT guys like it when I put together something more pleasant, like “Improvements to the Network will be completed shortly.” That idea just popped into my head since I’ve been making some adjustments around Working Author. First of all, I had to take down the “Most Viewed” section in the footer since it was breaking and I couldn’t upload the .htaccess file that fixes it while I was work. I’ll put it back up shortly.

I got up early this morning to watch Get Smart before it left my local theater, which typically isn’t a problem, except that I was up pretty late on Friday, writing with my co-author on this stage play that’s been in the works since ’97. Things are going well — extremely well — but that means inspiration can keep our eyes off the clock for hours on end. Then next thing you know, it’s 1 a.m. Throw in half a pack of cigarettes, overpriced, pretentious designer coffee and you can bet that my sleep wasn’t too restful either.

I inevitably fell asleep around 3 or 4 p.m. and didn’t get back up until around 7. No good.

I’d like to think that I budget my time pretty well. I do, however, have days where I don’t feel “accomplished” at the end of them. Today is one of those days. Heck, it’s a quarter past 11 and I haven’t even showered yet. I can feel that thin layer of grime coating my skin. No good.

That’s not to say that I didn’t do a lot today. I got up early to move my car out into the front parking lot of my complex so that the windshield guys could come out and replace my windshield. A rock or some other flying debris struck my windshield on the freeway a few months ago. I didn’t think it did any damage, but apparently it nicked my window just below my right wiper. Then the heat rolled in with summer and a nice, jagged crack started stretching across. Windshield wipers must create some microscopic grooves across the window when they work because every crack I’ve ever had or seen on a windshield has always been in this arc that follows the swing of the wiper. Just FYI.

The webzine layout is here! I wish I could take full credit for the new design, but this is actually just a lightly modified version of Michael Jubel’s “arthemia” layout. I gotta hand it to him; this is a pretty ingenious design. Furthermore, he’s even built in spaces specifically for ads – a byproduct of a revenue-driven Internet – which I’m grateful for.

Well, from top to bottom, we have the title space for the blog title, tagline and a banner ad. Then we have the main navigation bar, which also has javascript drop-down functionality. Together, both areas makeup the header, which remains uniform throughout the blog.

You know, whenever I write these campy titles, I always regret it once I start typing the post, because I know it’ll never live up to such a dramatic introduction. Anyway, I just wanted to prepare everyone for the dramatic changes that are going to place around here at Working Author. I’m changing the entire format of this blog and going for a more webzine kind of style. I think it’ll help making the site look updated more often. As such, the logistics are also going to change, especially with how I post to the different categories. So, for all of my RSS readers, you may suffer from an influx of old reviews in your readers. I apologize in advance. These are the pains of transition and I’m sorry that you’ll have to shoulder a small portion of it.

Rekindling the Love of Movies I gotta tell you, my love for watching movies in the theater is certainly rebounding since I last described my experiences. Just this weekend I’ve gone to watch movies in the morning around 10 am or so and I’m telling you, it cannot be beat. I have the entire theater [...]

You know, for all my complaints about work, things have actually been pretty interesting lately. It’s nice to know that even though my title is officially Copywriter, I get to do more than just write marketing copy. Most of my opportunities are still writing related, mind you, like working with SQL server to update the Web site’s database or proofreading some technical documents, but at least it breaks up the monotony of the daily rigmarole. And at the end of the day, that’s all I really need to get me through.

Actually, I never saw the judge. Luckily for me, I got to take care of my little jury eligibility issue while waiting in the jury lounge. Got my address updated in the court systems, so next time I’m selected for jury duty, I get to drive all the way out to San Bernardino, which, last [...]

“Some men, you just-can’t-reach.” Especially when they move, which is what I did, to a new county in fact. Got the address on my license updated and everything. Quick Tangent: While at the lightning-quick DMV, there was a very cute girl working one of the counters (14 I think). I thought that it would be [...]