Well, I'm back to part of my story where I'm leaving one climbed mountain and attempting to scale another. Only at this time and place, the new mountain is one I've been on and off for some 30+ years.
Time to put away the duckling script and pick-up the epic fantasy project and bring it to completion. Yeah, I'm going back where it all started back in the early 1990s, and am finally going to complete the Legend of Thars epic fantasy series: 5 novels and 3-4 adapted screenplays. Right now I feel real good about the first novel, and the 1st script adaptation is OKAY. All the novels are drafted. But the last two in the series definitely need a lot of work. I think it's been 25+ years since I did any work on them. #yikes
As I re-kickoff the project I honestly feel like I need to get back in a regular, writing routine again. Back when I was living in Washington I used to write for 1-2 hours a day BEFORE I went to work. Getting on that schedule wasn't too hard because I worked a 2nd shift job, 2:20 - 10:50 a night. But now I'm living on East Coast Standard time and doing a 4, 10s job (10 hours shift, days a week), that starts at 6 a.m. EST, which means I have to leave where I'm living at 5:15 a.m. to get there so in order to write 1-2 hours before work were talking me getting up at 2 a.m. or so EST.
To me a lunch box represents the fact you're going to work and have to say there so long that you get a lunch break. I think it's a pretty U.S. state universal law that after 5 hours of work, employers must provide a lunch period. Some employers mandate a whole hour off. Thankfully mine just does a half hour -- and their time clocks are rigged so can't log back in until you've had the full half hour off.
I think I finally get why it's been so hard for me to get back into the Thars series, that's because the plot's already done! So now I'm just left with the grunt work elevating the prose so it's good enough to read. Like I've mentioned before in previous I originally set this project down because I had an idea for a movie script. That script ended up being Give It Up For Chimpy, which lead to me wanting to try my hand a Planet of the Apes script, then I pursue a teen comedy which ended up being Revenge of the Fat Chicks, then it was on to the next script and the script after that. I'm now nearing 30 completed -- and unsold -- spec. scripts. Now there was a time in 2015 - 2017 that I did get back into the series for a while, that's where the first screenplay adaptation was made. But I didn't stick it out and finish the novels. I don't remember what took me out of novel writing. Looking at my chronological order I guess it was I got jazzed about writing When the Motorcycle Calls, which will always be one of my favorite stories because in it I got to write a better version of myself doing something heroic. Clark Rogers was one of the better protagonists I've wrote--and his character and arc was based a lot of my own life and past experiences. I SELDOMLY do that. Normally I figure I'm too boring to write about so I fixate on something else. But not so with Clark Rogers, he is E.C. Henry IMPROVED GREATLY!
A lot of writing is momentum. Heck, a lot of LIFE is momentum. And which way that momentum is taking you. But as people with free choice WE can dictate, at least in part, what we do. Making an effort matters. Lunch box matters!
Strangest "lunch box" picture I found when looking those up:
Lunch boxes more akin to when I was a kid in the mid 1970s :
But now it's back to where it all began for me. So it's not like I'm technically starting anew. Heck I have a rough draft all the way through the end of the series. But it's not up to par. It's not great writing. So it's on me to at least make it respectable. And it's not like I think the story's bad. Heck, it's pretty intricate with lots of diverse characters, twists and turns. Maybe it's the love interest that will do it for me. Two of the three are Taylor Swift types. YAY! Should make for some easy writing for me, as a few scripts back I based the Kathy Smith character off Taylor Swift and wrote So Go Back & Get Her in record time! Still, maybe it would be more mentally healthy for me to decouple off that, as it looks like T.S. is WAY OUT of my wheelhouse of accessability, which has cause some consternation for me in the past. But the third and final one was based off a girl I knew when I was working for Taco Time in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She's moved on, married, had some kids, and is settled in family of her own. But I knew her before she got married. And the take I have of her that I used to be the basis for the last love interest, which has a totally swoshbuckling, storybook romance came off vibes she gave. The girl I based this character off was SO ALIVE and vibrant. There's something about that: alive and vibrant. And who knows, now many years later maybe it's more healthy for me to decouple from her as well, and bring all three of these outstanding women into a fresh new realm of vibrancy free from my younger self's crutches. Anyway, writing women characters has always been a fun time for me, and should be the key that unlocks the story and fuels Thars series to completion.
So it's back to work. No more resting on my laurels. Time to pretend like I've never completed anything before in my life.
Each screenplay or story is a journey unto itself. Each screenplay/story ends up taking on a life of it's own. And sometimes by the end of completing them it doesn't even feel like I've written them, it's like that a world outside mine, that exist unto itself apart from me. It's a weird feeling, but I'm convinced that's the ultimate; to create something unique unto itself that exists apart from the one who created it. It takes a LONG TIME to get there. Hopefully it's not a mind cheat either, but it's the real McCoy.
Time to put in the work. Get in a regular schedule of writing again. And bring to completion a project I've been working on since 1992. Time to do some work, eat some lunch in between, and finish my opus.
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