Opportunity Knocks

Hi again!

This is an update in lieu of actually working on the thing, which I will return to shortly, I hope. I was making decent progress, up to about chapter six. And then it happened!

Part One - Diversion

A friend of mine and I were discussing how hard it is to do what you really really want to do, even when we work in an industry so full of people who are nominally and supposedly doing what they really really want to do. It's actually a lot less true than you think.

The conversation went like this.

"Man I dunno."

"Yeah?"

"Just hard to find time."

"Yeah."

"I mean if I had time.."

"Don't you?"

"Ehh."

"Can't you make some?"

"I doubt it."

"Isn't that an excuse?"

"Yeah.."

Long story and vague dialogue aside, I figured I'd help out. So 4 days later I wrote something for him to use in a short film.  Actually turned out pretty well, I think, and we're gonna try to shoot the thing in the coming weeks.

It was a cool exercise for a lot of reasons. Had never written a short before, had never done anything quite like this before, lots of "never before" scenarios. 

The cool thing about doing unexpected stuff like this is the results are as unexpected as the appearance of the opportunity. I am super glad and grateful that I decided to do it instead of saying "I've got other stuff to do." More on this soon!

Part Two

The book itself!

The snag I have now run into is what happens when history meets fantasy. It is a problem of realism. Basically I need to do more historical "scene setting" in order to ground the events that are outside the scene.  Which means research. Which means things will slow down as a result.

The scariest part for me is this:

There are two versions of this book, and this will lead, unquestionably, to a third. I know it will be the best of them. But. It will be a full rewrite, no question, and fundamentally different form the other two.

Maybe there is no way around this. It would be very easy, in theory, to swallow my pride and just release these extraordinarily imperfect books into the wild and say they aren't my problem anymore, here you go.

But it seems to me I should complete it properly. The issue as always is that it's competing with other projects and I have a very limited amount of time.

I don't think I can finish rewrites this substantial in a month, but I think I can target a month and see how far I get.

So here we go.

Best of luck!