What this is
While doing some spring cleaning I tore into a huge pile of books, notes and old writings. I separated everything into neat piles with these little 3x5 card labels - “Short Stories” and “Screenplays” and the like. I separated all of the notes and pages of writing from all of the notebooks - some had a half page, some three scrawled pages, some more. I was left with a modest stack of “stuff” - the dreams and ideas I walk around with on a daily basis. And the rest, a mighty stack of unused notebooks - a sad testament to my, what should I call it - resistance? Fear? I hate the word “lazy” - I don’t think I’m lazy, I’m just opinionated about my free time.
See, I should really start at the beginning, 30 years ago. I received a typewriter from my grandparents, and someone said “You should be a writer” - I guess I must have had an active imagination. So I dutifully fed paper into the little white plastic typewriter and proceeded to type out a Snoopy book. Not write it, but type it, word for word, the little book opened next to the typewriter and me transposing every word. Writing got into my head and my heart like religion or sex or the dogma that all fats are bad for you.
So then years later I wrote pieces of stories in my daily English journal in high school and told people I was a writer - but I could never seal the deal on a story. I went to college for English and thought about writing, but never really did it. I wrote the first chapter to a dozen science fiction novels but no more. After college I got into comedy, so I wrote some sketches. The only things I ever finished were things I had to because of deadlines; set a date for the show and it damn well better get written before hand.
Over the years, especially recently, I’v had a thousand ideas and I’ve put more things on paper than I have in the past. But nothing solid, nothing real, nothing even close to finished.
In January of 2008 I had this idea - I would create a science fiction web series about the crew of a starship at the center of a galactic drama. A Tiny Epic Space Opera. Write it, produce it, direct it, the whole nine. I ran around town garbage picking vacuum cleaners to be used as laser cannons and old snowsuits from the thrift store to become space suits. The story is in my head, and damn if I wasn’t writing it! I had a very solid outline, probably ready to start writing the actual script. Then January was over, and something clicked and the project went away. The energy and enthusiasm I had was palpable - people around me knew something was up but what was it? What’s he got going on? I was energized by my idea, my dream. Then it got shut off. No real reason. Maybe I did bite off more than I could chew, sure, but it starts with a script. Why couldn’t I have just kept at it?
This blog will be a repository for all of my writing - my screenplays and short stories and novels and everything. I’m going to hopefully put it together here, in a forum for people to read and give me either encouragement or constructive criticism.
This is might be a gimmick that gets me off my duff. This might fail miserably and you’ll see the next post in three months. But I owe it to these notes, fragments, dreams and worlds to be brought to life.
Here we go.
