Category: The Write Stuff

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How’Zit Goin?

The Screenplay

With only one month left to complete my 2021 goal, I’m on track. I’ve “finished” the screenplay. After much effort, it’s finally below 120 pages, currently at about 116 pages.

You’ll notice the word “finished” is in quotation marks. Is a creative work really ever finished? Generally, no, because the creator will tweak the work until the very last minute. (Eric Kripke said he continuously rewrote a key scene for the pilot of Supernatural until they filmed it. And he still wasn’t happy with it.) But my reason for not being done is less esoteric.

I’m trying an alternate beginning, based on feedback from my screenplay course instructor. It’s still exposition-heavy, but I see no way out of that because the sci-fi world has to be set up quickly. The alternate would just get into the action a bit more quickly. The downside is that some lovely prose that Dark Space author Lisa Henry wrote would be lost.

But my biggest struggle is the ending: it’s pretty weak. I didn’t mind the book’s ending (although a few reviewers on Goodreads did), but it won’t do for a movie. For one thing, it violates the first commandment of Robert McKee‘s 10 Commandments of Screenwriting: Thou shalt not take the crisis or climax out of the protagonist’s hands (or, no “deus ex machina” endings). So now I have to come up with an ending where Brady is the master of his own destiny, or rather, gets himself out of the jam the other main character put him in.

Continue reading “How’Zit Goin?” →

As Charlie Brown Would Say…

Good grief!

Summer is almost over and I forgot to post my summer header pic. And it’s my favorite of all my header pics! So, for now, you won’t see a random header when you travel through the site (which mostly means reading individual posts). You’ll just see a boy enjoying his own summer in the best possible way—jumping into a stream. (Or any other swimmable water source. “Swimmable” is a real word. I’ve just made it up.)

Here’s the full picture (resized, because it is HUGE). It was a bitch to edit to fit the header dimensions.

Boy on a rope swing

See You at the Movies

One writing goal for this year: write for an hour a day. The other writing goal for 2021: write a screenplay.

How do you read a novel? Do you skim through the words to quickly get to the next point? Do you savor each word or phrase for its meaning? Me? I’m a visual sort of person. So when I read a book, I tend to play a movie in my head.

For the past few years, I’ve been a part of the m/m romance community on Goodreads. I’ve never been a big fan of romances, so my interest in the gay subsection of the genre surprised me. I discovered some excellent authors and some really great books. A few of those books have stayed at the forefront of my mind. They are so entertaining and visually descriptive, I think they’d make terrific movies.

The cover of the book Dark Space
The book cover

One of my very favorite books is a science fiction “space opera” called Dark Space. (I am a big nerd science fiction fan.) It’s written by Lisa Henry, an Australian author of gay fiction, who has become one of my favorite authors. I first read the book in 2018 and its sequel Darker Space became one of my “top 7 books of 2018.” (Dark Space would have made the top 7, but I had to limit my list to 7, and I liked the sequel even better.) In the summer of 2019, when I broke one leg and then fractured and dislocated the other—requiring hospitalization, surgery, and rehab—I re-read both books while in the hospital because I needed something to enjoy and savor.

The story is by turns funny, heartbreaking, and absolutely frightening. It’s entertaining on so many levels and told so vividly, it’s begging to be made into a movie. It won’t of course, because there’s little room (i.e., money) for gay romance in Hollywood. Hollywood might buy it if one of the main characters were female, but that would negate one of the main premises of the story.

Continue reading “See You at the Movies” →

One Hour a Day

The other day I was poking around the website, and what did I find? That I’ve written only one post per month for the past few months. Wow, that’s pretty awful.

Which leads me to contemplate my writing goals. It certainly wasn’t my intention to post just once per month. Granted, I didn’t have a specific frequency in mind (maybe once per week?), but I’m a far cry from whatever that goal might have been be.

It’s not like I don’t have things to say. I have plenty to say. Currently, it’s mostly political stuff. I’m not a great follower of politics in general, but the past few months have made me care very much about this country. In the wake of January 6th, I’ve pondered questions such as “What defines a patriot?” Then there’s my curiosity about whether we’ll see an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among Texans and spring-break participants in the coming weeks. And let’s not forget all the ways Congress sucks.

Books by K.J. Charles: The Magpie Lord, Think of England, Slippery Creatures
A few of K.J. Charles’ books: 1) her first & most popular, 2) my personal favorite, and 3) my next read.

The problem is, whenever I try to write down my thoughts, the words fail me. Posts I’ve so eloquently organized in my mind just disappear. I envy people like Jim Beaver and K.J. Charles, who seem to be able to easily discuss even controversial topics in meaningful, intelligent ways.

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Why Is WordPress Life So Hard?

How do bloggers do it? Not only provide content every day or so, but upload photos and other media with seeming ease?

I came to the blog today yesterday with the idea of writing a post, although I had no idea what to write about. Despite having 11 drafts, I’m just not inspired. Chalk it up to mid-winter and pandemic ennui. So I thought I’d spend some time organizing the website. Ha.

When I changed themes (last summer?) I created new stream-themed headers. But I had trouble loading them. Today Yesterday I decided to load one of a winter scene. Of course, the winter pic was one I hadn’t yet made, so I had to create it. That entailed resizing (not hard) and improving its general appearance. I’m not good with seeing optimum results, so I have to create several versions and decide which one is best. This photo entailed improving contrast and sharpness, both of which provide me with nearly infinite options. So it takes a long time for me to find those optimal results—and it eats into my writing time.

Then I screwed up and managed to “hide” all my headers. That required searching for a way to undo my mistake. The WordPress dashboard gave no option to “show” hidden headers. So I searched for an answer on the web, only to come up with nothing. Bummer. Through some trial and error I managed to show the one picture I’ve uploaded. So it will show on every page. I hope.

Eventually I’ll load more headers, but one is enough for now. As part of organizing my blog, I need to update several things. Like the copyright, which I first have to find. And categories and tags. And access to pages, which I’ve now realized isn’t obvious.

Perhaps I need to dedicate an hour or so to blog maintenance in addition to an hour to writing. But… but… it interferes with my game-playing. Yes, retirement is wonderful, with all its extra free time. But it can lead to an unscheduled life. And with above said ennui, that’s a slippery slope—which I have managed to slide down.

At least this stream of consciousness post (hey, it is the title of the blog!) has given me ideas for new posts: writing goals, retirement thoughts, and time-wasting games.

Now, if I could only find a picture to post. Ah, here we go…

Natalie’s dishcloth, which I STILL haven’t mailed.

Oh good God! How do I resize this damn thing? Once again WordPress has modified its dashboard and now I can’t find how to edit and resize this photo. (I finally gave up and resized it in my graphics program, but I still can’t find how to properly edit the photo, so it’s going out as is.) See? WordPress life is hard!

Now, if I can just figure out how to add categories and tags in the new interface…

All for Naught?

Remember that book I was reading with the atrocious grammar?  I finally finished it.

I’d picked the book Heroes & Ghosts, specifically because it had 535 pages (nearly twice the number of pages these types of books usually have) so that I’d need to read only one more book—and a short one at that.  After reading the book, I had read a total of 4837 pages.  Which meant I had to read only 163 more pages to finish the challenge. Yay!

Notice the use of the past tense there?  Yeah.  That’s because when I moved around the gameboard (see pic) after rolling the die, I went the wrong way.

Continue reading “All for Naught?” →

Well, that didn’t work

Goodreads gives you the opportunity to copy your book review to your blog. I’ve never done it before, so I decided to try it out. Basically you just copy & paste the html—and it comes out looking like crap on WordPress.

I spent quite a lot of time trying to reformat the damn review, but decided instead to just show it as it comes out. As you see (after the break) the spacing is wonky, the text size is inconsistent. And honestly, I’m too afraid to to even try one of the links.  Hell, the GR “spoiler” tag doesn’t even work here, although it dares to show itself.  What a mess!

But I’ll leave it as it is for now, because, 1) I’m lazy, and 2) I’ll likely be changing my theme soon, and it’ll all look different again. Maybe even worse.

(Incidentally, the book is about the folly that was the Crimean War, with a [literal] demonic twist.  I loved it.)

Continue reading “Well, that didn’t work” →

Opps!

That’s how I spelled “oops” for many years.  I recently came across it again when reading a self-published book, and had to laugh.  The book has hundreds of errors, including my #1 pet peeve, then for than.  But in this case the author also consistently uses than for then.  And for added measure, the notorious effect when she meant affect.  It’s obvious she’s not a great grammarian because she also misused apostrophes and commas ad nauseam.  Apparently she had no beta readers.

Anyway, all that is a prologue to say that “Oops, I forgot to post on Sunday.”  As for Saturday, I didn’t forget.  I knew I missed the day.

So, three.  Three days of consecutive blog posts.  I suppose the next goal is four consecutive days.

One Down…

…Three to Go

Goodreads tells me I’ve met my reading goal for this year—or rather my personal reading goal.  Then again, I aimed low, aiming for 50 books.  AT least that’s double last year’s goal.

I can’t take all the credit, though.  It’s mainly the result of the three challenges I’ve signed up for.  Two are annual challenges, one is a bi-annual challenge.  (Goodreads also have monthly and quarterly challenges.  And probably more that I don’t know about.)

Continue reading “One Down…” →

Shall We Write?

This blog needs some fresh blood, yeah? So how about a new theme? That’s the problem. There are so many themes available on WordPress.com, it takes a long time to sift through them to find just the right one. I end up spending so much time trying to pick a theme, I become overwhelmed. And then I don’t write anything. That’s back-ass-wards!

The blog needs new content! That’s more important that a new theme! But what’s there to write about? I’m not particularly interested in Outlander any more. Now, if Starz decided to do a Lord John Grey spinoff (he does have his own set of novels), I’d be there in two shakes of a martini lamb’s tail. But I’m afraid Lord John is destined to be just another Jamie Fraser fangirl.

I’m amazed at how commentators always find something to talk about every day. (Well, every weekday.) Granted, this is the nation’s capital region, so the federal government usually provides fodder for discussion. But oftentimes, the commentators discuss the frivolous. For example, one spent some time last winter discussing the weather, and how we mid-Atlanticans are wimps, complaining about 20-degree temperatures when Minneapolis boasted something like -30 degrees. (The commentator even chided himself for being a wimp, especially since he’s from Iowa and suffered through University of Wisconsin at Madison windchills.)

And see, right there? How I get sidetracked? Happens all the time.

I had an epiphany today. Why not try to write something every day this month? Yes, there is such an animal. It’s called NaBloPoMo, and I did it once, six years ago. But since today is May 1, it’s not too late to start this month, right? Heh. We’ll see how long this notorious quitter lasts.