Today is a disturbing day. A day of dizziness, and I can't get started on my science fiction screenplay, plus fecal incontinence threatens. Instead of sturm und drang, I'm suffering from shite and stress. Ah, well, it's a good excuse to put this writing day in the can (double meaning there) and unwind, maybe finish reading Craig Lesley's Winterkill. He lives in Portland, you know, just across the river from where I type this. He was born in 1945 and is 8 years younger than me. Makes him 70 or approaching 70 or leaving 70 for 71, depending upon the month.
Plotting my science fiction movie has been giving me fits. I want certain things to happen and certain feelings to be aroused, but I can't quite focus on the necessary steps. I'm trying to imagine, instead of writing toward (as in fiction) certain frightening moments, but I can't grasp them imaginatively. A blank. It's old age and a failing imagination, or a case of plain old writer's block.
Speaking of feelings, a friend of mine put the e.e. Cummings' photo and screed on my Facebook page, and I'm sharing it here. Feelings are wonderful. Younger, I suffered for many years with the near absence of emotions. Severe depression. A cold dead sensation. Without emotional guidance, a man makes awful mistakes, tries to make decisions based on rational premises. Only sociopaths are successful at that.
I'm not making the suggested every other day entries in my blog. That pace is supposed to keep people interested in my bucket list quest to get someone other than myself to publish one of several novels I've written over the decades and recently rewritten... before I die. I'm still sending out queries while I continue to work on a nameless, so far, science fiction screenplay. Looking into buying software for script writing, but some appear to be so loaded with goodies they'll create a slowdown while I learn yet another software program. Slugline is quite simple, but it must be downloaded into a more complex script writing program to prepare it for electronic submission. Frustration, then I came across a simple macro-enabled format that will give me what I need to create a script for electronic submission... I hope. I'll have to become more familiar with macros. I've used them in the past, but not recently. I've had some really powerful internal moments lately that feel like the attitudes of a successful writer. Now... will that come true?
Reading: just finished Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask and have commenced to read a change of pace novel, Craig Lesley's Winterkill. Mask is a first person interior monologue while Winterkill is presented by a third person narrator. The first is full of confessional abstractions, the other full of concrete details. Thank you for checking in on my progress whoever you are, and if you're on the same quest as I am, good luck to you.
Here I sit at McCord's Toyota, getting our Yaris an oil change and tire rotation. Here's my next set of writing tasks. A movie script. I've got a good central idea, and I picture Morgan Freeman in the film too. It'll be science fiction, and, of course, that means some technical problems and plot difficulties to overcome in order to create plausibility. What I'm doing now is writing down ideas and problems and certain interesting moments in the plot and asking myself questions like: "Why does X kill Y?" "What is Morgan Freeman doing in that town?" "Where did he come from?" "How do I show the viewer this complication?" This is the fun part for me. For Ghoul World, I was aflame with imagination for about 3 days before the hard work of writing came into play. Then it took 2 years to get 555 pages done and rewritten three times. Photo is me in McCord's.
