One of the things I wanted to do once I got home and into a routine with all the exercising I have to do was to get my teeth into an idea that I had while I was laying flat for 4 months in the hospital.
I guess you could call it a limited series. It’s now in its second draft stage and is a little over 300 pages in length. It tells a complete story about a clandestine operation by the US government to get influencers in the fossil fuel and manufacturing industry to start changing their ways and quit sucking so much energy out of the ground that people then pump into the atmosphere.
I wrote the first draft in about 5 weeks working a couple of hours a day, most days. Then I left it for a few days and came back and started tightening it all up.
While this is a story about the government trying to do something about the environmental catastrophe we are all facing, it’s also the story of a young Marine sniper who gets coerced into this mission when all he really wanted to do was leave that life behind and start a completely different one.
I was very happy with the way it turned out, mainly because I had the end already figured out, so it really kind of wrote itself from the beginning up to the end. I didn’t really make an outline or load up the scenes on file cards. I just let it flow out of me and counted on my experience having written a dozen or so features over the years to steer the way.
But over and above that, I was concerned about how much more than just my legs were affected by the surgery and all the drugs that were coursing through my system. So I was happy to note that my concentration and my intellectual stamina were not affected in the least. In fact, the 4 months break, I believe, did me a world of good.
After I was finished the series (Sword of Damocles), I started to do some research on production companies that accept unsolicited material, because the last thing I want to do is get into an endless series of revisions for some agent. Life’s too short, and I’m too old for all that. Surprisingly enough there are quite a few of them. But I will research them carefully going forward. Lot of crooks in the film business. I’ve already had one idea stolen and it was a real piss-off.
I’m just looking to sell this property to whoever wants to develop it and get it made.
While I was between drafts, I went back into my files and dug out 6 of my screenplays that were already completed, read them all over, and formatted them properly. I have to tell you, I was blown away with how tight they were. It would be arrogant to say, how good they were, because one thing I have learned about the film industry is that ‘good’ is determined by one thing and one thing only….the audience.
I had a really good time reading and messing about with these and was surprised at how little I actually needed to change in order to update them.
So, as you can imagine, there was very little time for blogging. There was, in fact very little time for anything other than what I was doing in movieland.
Today, I finished revising the brief synopses for each of the 6 movie scripts. The series treatment is about 3 pages long and about 1500 words. I will post that next week, once I finalize it.
All in all, I’m thrilled with the massive volume of work I have put out over the past few months. But more than anything, I glad that I came out of my surgery and rehab with the energy to do it all and do it in my usual high gear.
Most of you are writers and will know that the worst thing that can happen
