Still nothing. Instead of watching any of the films I mentioned last week and in lieu of beginning my next long form project on the Coen Brothers, I’m still being as random as possible. Easily distracted, that’s what they call it and that’s what I am — no question. But, you may ask, what have I been doing?
I finished my novel and that has been enough for this week. Countless revisions later and now I am…comfortable with the book. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully satisfied with anything I write but there comes a point where you have to ship your little mutant baby off to school. My novel began as an eighty-eight thousand word screenplay, twenty two years ago. The title was so pretentious that I am not going to share it here. A production company in England told me it read like a mashup of Conan The Barbarian and Animal House. I thanked them. They told me that it wasn’t a compliment. I worked on something else. The story always stuck in the back of my mind but I left it for awhile. Then, Muse released their album, The Resistance, and closed the album with a three part rock symphony called, Exogenesis. A spark ignited. I pulled the screenplay and made changes — many, many changes. The screenplay was dead and in it’s place appeared a one hundred and twenty-five thousand word novel. It sucked. I knew it and anyone brave enough to read it, knew it. Time to make changes. I chopped some nonsense from the novel and then had a one hundred and ten thousand word beast. I called my agent to see what we could do about this but found out he’d apparently died in between my projects. The agency wasn’t looking to represent literary writers, only screenwriters. My goose was cooked. Time to make some new rounds but to no avail. Something with the novel still bothered me, something was missing — I wasn’t saying what I wanted to say and didn’t know how to say it. I shelved the novel. I returned to writing short stories and making blog posts. Writing depression set in as I’d given up a writing gig that was beginning to pay in order to pursue the novel and I’d failed. I couldn’t see the way out.
The way out is through — always.
We can fast forward to the year 2020. I found myself again giving up a good paying job in order to move clear across the country — from New York to El Paso, Texas. Time to write. I finished two short stories quickly and then set my sights on a new novel. Going to my file of ideas, I started picking one which connected. Nothing connected right away but something unexpected wormed its way back into my brain. The Violent Winds. I began writing short stories involving my main characters as a way to better understand them. This method worked wonders and my voice finally found itself. I knew how to tell this story. Blasted out an outline. Completely scrapped all previous versions of the novel and started over from word one. I wrote like a demon and then revised. And then revised some more. And then revised again. And then thought maybe I’d revised too much so I revised again. I’m done and it’s pretty close to how I always wanted this story to be told. It’s me and it’s from me but it’s also a bit of itself and it’s weird in a way I didn’t initially expect but it’s a lean and mean eighty-two thousand word reading machine.
So that is, as they say, that. We’ll see what happens. First things first, I need a new agent.
Segway aka what I originally thought I’d be writing about today.
I watched the 2019 French film, Les Miserables this week and thought it was pretty good. An interesting story about police brutality. I also re-watched several favorites like Hot Fuzz, On The Rocks, and Heat. All great but Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood really stuck out for me this week. Now, I saw this film twice in theaters and have probably watched it six or seven more times since then. I love the film and now I know exactly why: it represents exactly the type of movie which no longer gets made. I miss movies that are movies. I miss not being sold something by some giant corporate entity while watching a movie. QT makes movies about people and movies about people living their lives, ending up in interesting situations. I miss those the most. So, here’s to you, movies not trying to sell me shit and only being about your own shit, I salute you.
Next week, who knows? I’m about to start a new novel. Two ideas have raced to the front: a crime novel and a memoir. A memoir? Lmfao. Well, I am an idiot and I’ve done some idiotic things in my younger life and when I wrote all of those things down, I thought maybe there could be something there. We’ll see. I’ll probably begin writing both at the same time because, like I said, I am an idiot. Until then, love each other.
Open Mouth Insert Words 