Creative me

As promised, more on what I have been up to. First of all, you may have noticed that I am actually starting to blog on a regular basis now. I had gone quite a while where I kept meaning too, but ended up doing more journal writing or letter writing, because there were things I needed to write about privately before I could do it publicly. I thought the big blogging catch-up would be what would free up my story and screenplay writing self, but I need to catch up in the journal to free my blogging self.

One thing that I am doing differently now is that I am writing multiple posts at once, and so I don’t necessarily have to blog daily to post daily. It was initially mainly a decision based on time, but it has been working well in terms of having some time between writing and posting so that I can take a second look. If there are thoughts that were not clearly expressed, I can clean it up, and if I am running on so long that it makes the post less readable, I can separate it into multiple posts, like yesterday and today (I’m working on this post on music that has this hydra thing going on).

I am happy to say that it is working, and I am getting flooded with ideas for things to work on. A lot of it is more development on previously existing ideas, but I know things that I am going to do for screen plays and for television pilots and even old songs are coming back to me that I will work with at some point. It feels very exciting, and although I am not done with the blogging, I have started one new screenplay, sort of.

Now I generally don’t like to mix up different projects, and with a writer’s normal tendency towards procrastination and Attention Deficit Disorder, it is important to complete one project before starting the next one, or have some sort of framework to prevent scattering. In this case (blogging versus screenwriting), I don’t worry about it because they are different types of writing that I do at different times.
What about that “sort of”? You know, it’s a little embarrassing, and it is not anything that I will try and sell or share with anyone, but I am going to write about it happening, because it allows us to address some other things.

First of all, it started with some music videos. I am obsessing over My Chemical Romance right now, which will probably get its own post at some point, but they have a couple of videos (Na Na Na and Sing) that are very cool on their own, and very modern, and at the same time kind of reminiscent of the 80’s where many videos were set during post-apocalyptic dystopian futures with oppressive regimes (not always all at the same time, but sometimes).

I would often add plot and details to videos then. I would take off on movies and television episodes too, but music videos were ideal because they were short features, where there was a lot of room for embellishment, and then you have whatever emotional impact the music adds, and they were something I loved and watched a lot of.

I don’t know if it was the decline of the videos that caused the video channels to move towards other kinds of content, or as the channels moved more towards “reality” programming then labels put less resources into videos. Maybe the decline is because the music quality declined. Regardless, finding cool videos again is a plus, and MCR really does put a lot of effort into videos, and they come up with compelling ones. For these two, I found my mind returning to these videos again and again, turning them over and filling things out, and there was a story.

Like any person who does not want to be a narcissist, my first thought was why am I even doing this? They don’t need it. They’ve got their own material, and I think there might be a graphic novel coming out. But the thoughts keep coming, and it’s not like it’s hurting anyone so I was just going with it.

The next question to arise, which was more like a series of questions, is why was I taking it in the direction that I was taking it? I may blog about that at some point, but that part is quite personal, and still pretty raw. Basically there was this nagging why, and it led to a lot of journal writing and soul searching and some mourning, actually, but I dealt with some things that I apparently needed to deal with.

Yesterday I was writing about general creativity, and what I said there could be true for anyone. This one may just be me. Not just my career hopes, but my mental and emotional wellness and a lot of my recreation comes from this time I spend with the page. Months ago I wrote about how I cannot pass by a path or trail without wanting to go down it. Writing is like that for me, I guess, where I need to see how things turn out, and what else happens if one thing happens. That also leads me down inner paths. Why do I feel that way? How did I get this way? And off I go.

Having already had some major breakthroughs, it tends to beg the question of whether I now need to actually write the story out, or if I am done with it. I think I have more to learn from this material, so I’m sticking with it. Maybe this will be a good transition into getting at some of the other writing projects that I actually do hope to sell or produce. It has been fifteen months since I have even been actively using screenwriting software. There are technical skills to that, and there is skill to balancing a scene between multiple characters, and keeping the right pace.

There is actually a lot of good ground here, because we have different types of action scenes (fist-fighting, car chase, building raid) on different scales, family scenes, flashbacks, seemingly unstoppable villains (seriously, I have no idea how the good guys are going to eventually win; it’s really improbable), a love story, and a wide variety of things that I haven’t been dealing with since I became steadily employed. (Unemployment was scary and depressing, but I was really productive.)

So far I only have about nineteen pages down, but just to start with I have already had to deliver some exposition, and make it not clunky, and do that while you have three of the five people in the scene regaining consciousness, and not all at the same time.

Best of all, I am excited about it, and can’t wait to get back to it and write more. It feels good to be in the middle of something again, even if right now I am being derivative and unproductive. I mean, I’m basically writing fan fiction (except that none of them will be sleeping together). And yet that is almost exactly the point.

I have accidentally stumbled upon across a small amount of fan fiction on the internet (not for MCR, but for different video games and shows and actors). It’s probably not enough to consider myself an expert, but I’m comfortable with not doing anymore research. Anyway, the hang-ups of the writer clearly come through. Whether it is misogyny, or a need to be special, or a need to have someone stick up for you, you learn a lot about the writer without even having to read that much (certainly more than you would learn about the subject). Actually, that can be pretty true of other types of writing as well.

I absolutely don’t mean to denigrate any of these writers (except maybe the misogynists). Those are real issues, with real pain attached, and if the writing the story provides some comfort or relief then that’s great. Even better, though, might be to realize there is a hang-up, and that maybe there does not need to be.

That’s what I am going for. There is definitely the pure joy of writing (and the compulsion to do it), but also there is that search to polish my rough spots, till my weedy patches, and pull the skeletons out of my closet so they can bleach in the sun. It’s therapy with a rock and roll soundtrack—literally.