The Ghost of Writing Past

Remember, I just reread A Christmas Carol.

However, the other thing that I am re-reading is my past body of work. Well, it’s just screenplays, and specifically just feature film screenplays written by me and only me. (I will revist the pilot and the collaboration at some point, but not now.)

I really want to sell something in 2013. The first step on that is to submit something to Amazon Studios and beg all my friends to vote for it. Actually, I think I will submit two (almost certainly Coulrophobia and Jade Mask), and then start trying to get an agent again. Before we get there, I need to go through and see what edits need to be made, and how marketable they really are, and where I am.

The thing I have probably never mentioned before here is that I discarded several journals growing up, because I would go back, read them, be appalled by how immature I was, and simply not be able to bear it. I should probably regret this, but I don’t really feel like these are lost treasures. Part of the problem is that often I only wrote when I was upset, because that was when I needed to write, so only my ugliest moments were captured. I don’t miss them, though I will agree that, on principle, getting rid of diaries is bad.

The other thing that I know, though it has not caused me to throw anything out, is that going back and reading old stories is awful, because one’s writing evolves, and going back and seeing how bad you used to be is painful. I have a short story, “Corporate Malfeasance”, that I would rather re-wirte completely than try and edit. I wrote something that stilted? I sucked!

Someone was encouraging me once to go back and try submitting my novel again, and honestly, for the market it would suit (people who read things by Jack Weyland), I don’t think it is marketable, so it is a moot point, but also just the thought of it feels exhausting. I was writing it in 1997. Not only would the writing itself be over a decade behind in quality, but even the technology would be an issue. One of the conflicts would not exist today, and it is not worth turning into a period piece, so I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

Knowing those things, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I started this. Maybe I would just decide that they were all terrible, and I was insane to think that I could ever be a writer.

Well, there has been some cringing. Remember, a big part of writing the comic book was learning how to do descriptions better, and convey the emotions of a scene, as opposed to just doing barebones dialogue and action as has been my habit. I will need to add things.

Also, some of it is too wordy. Everything I do starts out as too wordy, but then as I go through editing I trim and it works out. So then I wonder if I ever edited these, and I know I did, but okay, maybe I have just gotten better at brevity. Perhaps I get that from Twitter.

I have more recurring themes than I had realized. My characters seem to worry a lot about being useless, and take on more responsibility than they need to. I’m not sure where that comes from. They have different personalities and end up in different situations, so I hadn’t noticed that, but reading everything so close together, I can see it.

However, it is also not all bad. I will find nice little details that I forgot about writing, that showed some cleverness in my plotting. There are some pretty cool action scenes. I forgot about the sawdust and the glitter in Coulrophobia, but it is kind of perfect. Yes, I totally need to make changes, but I like what I have there. I have worried about that one specifically that it would need to be either darker or more slapsticky to sell, and maybe it does, but its voice is a good one, even if it’s not terribly commercial.

Also, there is some good emotional stuff there. Out of Step and Past Present made me cry again. There are scenes that are moving, and even if they can be improved, I did something right. Well, that’s subjective. If I want to make a career of this, I need more people than me to like it. Still, it’s cool that I like it. I feel good about that.

Three down, three to go, and much editing and hoping to occur in January.