I’m changing the way I’m approaching this new project about centaurs.

I’m strongly considering changing my approach to this centaur story that I’ve been working on lately. I still have a great concept (no, I won’t divulge it fully) and there’s a lot of humor that I could infuse into the writing. However, I don’t think that a screenplay is the way to go with this. A good concept doesn’t necessarily carry over a ninety-page script. Looking at the outline I made I have a few too many vague plot points that only act as padding. Perhaps I could have rushed it—I have a tendency to do that—but I don’t know if I could come up with anything better. There are too many parts where it felt like I have point A and point B, but extra points in between.

I’m going to try this as a short story instead. Who knows—maybe working on it this way will give me ideas on how to make the screenplay better. Still, I think I want to try this more as a prose piece. I also want to keep it concise. Like I said, I have a great concept, and there are a few solid points in the outline. Besides, while I have a few funny ideas here and there, I’m not a comedy writer. I don’t know if I keep the laughs going.

A part of me feels bad about this, like I’m abandoning the project. I have to remind myself that I’m not, in fact far from it—I’m simply adjusting the project into something else. If anything, I can think of this as part of the drafting process. And I’m not abandoning the other screenplay. When I started that one my initial thought was to do something more along the lines of my college degree. I still have that goal. And there will be more screenplays. But sometimes a particular project isn’t working out, and you have to either adjust the project to make it work or abandon it completely. I’m hoping for the former option with the Centaur story.

I have another shift in my approach planned, and this has to do more with writing in general. I still intend on writing on this blog six days a week. I know I haven’t been good about that over the past few months but life has settled down for me lately. I’m still planning on doing my Monday Book Reviews, as they are enjoyable and seem popular. (Although I should note that I may have to delay next week’s review again.) But as far as my creative work is concerned, I look back and realize that I’ve been generally more productive if I focused most of the work on the weekends.

Lately my intended routine is to write after I get home from work and enjoy my time off on weekends. However, I keep losing focus or I’m too tired to work on writing on weekday afternoons. I get distracted and come up with excuses for not getting anything done. I’m going to now try working more on the weekends but with some other writing sessions throughout the week. I don’t want to only writing two days a week. That could be disastrous to the writing quality, not to mention that it would take longer to get something done.

Then I could spend more time throughout the week relaxing after work instead of cramming all of my entertainment on the weekends. I recently listened to an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain that dealt with tunnel vision and focusing so much on a life’s problem that other aspects of life fall by the wayside. I had to wonder if that’s why I wasn’t getting anything done. I was stressing so much over how little I was doing I was making it harder to concentrate on doing it. Having the weekends off completely should come once I have a full-time writing job. Besides, why should I dread writing on the weekends? Isn’t writing something that I’m supposed to enjoy doing?

Getting caught up on a few things before the RPM Challenge 2017 begins on Wednesday.

Yesterday was the first day in nearly two weeks which I had off in its entirety. Therefore I spent the morning and afternoon doing errands and some chores around the apartment and then treated myself to a night out. I’ve been busy and tired all week, not to mention going home angry a couple of times from work. In short, that’s why I haven’t been writing so much on this blog and sadly, the screenplay as well.

And I can see that I’m not going to pick up the pace with either any time soon. February, and therefore the RPM Challenge, starts on Wednesday. I’m thinking that I’ll do what I’ve done in the past and report each day on my progress with this blog. However, I’m not going to try to inflate the blog posts so they fit a minimum word count. I’m only going to recount what I have done and then stop. This may mean that February is going to have some really short blog posts. But I figure that’s better than nothing. I do intend on picking up the vampire story that I’ve been writing as a series of flash fiction pieces.

The new screenplay has gone well when I have been able to work on it. I don’t see myself working on it again until maybe Tuesday, and then probably not for a month. (I promised that tomorrow I’ll meet a friend who is going through some hard times right now, and I’m clearing the evening for that.) Who knows—I may wish to take a break from the album from time to time and revisit Tom the Centaur for a while. But I don’t intend on picking up the thread full throttle until March.

I’m going to try to hook up the recording equipment to this laptop again to see if I can remember how it works. I haven’t used it until I recorded the album for last year. Cubase has an odd habit of reverting back to its initial settings if I haven’t used it for a while and I don’t always remember how to get it back to where I need it. It belongs to a friend of mine, whom I can call if I need help. That’s why I’m going to work on it today as opposed to the first day of the Challenge. I won’t record anything yet, other than maybe as a test. I won’t cheat.

Now the only question is, What do I do about alcohol? I was planning on cutting back on it as I really have been drinking too much lately. However, it’s supposed to make one depressed, and I write dark music. Would it help if I drank more this month? Probably not. I wouldn’t write this music if I didn’t already have that part of my psyche to tap into (and it’s not necessarily depressed, either). But it is an interesting question to ponder.

Still working on the screenplay for the rest of the month.

I wonder if it’s a good or bad sign that I was laughing at my own stupid jokes while writing a scene in my new screenplay. Either I’m tapping into something that people are going to like or I’m the only one that finds it funny. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to push on. If I enjoy what I’m doing while I do it, then I guess that’s the important thing at the moment. If I need to clean out the bad jokes later I will. But so far the people in my inner circle to whom I’m revealing the plot love it… which is why I’m not revealing it to the public yet. Why give away my first great idea this year?

So, yes, I’m still writing. I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. Yesterday was inventory day at work, which is a big to-do in retail. I ended up having to work all weekend, doing some stressful stuff in preparation for yesterday. Things have finally calmed down today. Not only was inventory over, but due to inclement weather business was incredibly slow. I got caught up with my work with ease and left without stress or fatigue. I’ll be able to work on the new screenplay for the next week.

Of course, February starts a week from tomorrow so I’ll be working on my new album for this year’s RPM Challenge. I’m going back to Shadows of Immurement this time around. I wasn’t too fond of the “anything goes” approach last year. I just wasn’t into what I was doing. Plus, I kept finding myself wanting to go back to the darker music that I’ve produced in the past. That doesn’t mean that I’m ruling out working on a Popkin-Salvador album again if Mike is ever up for it. But it doesn’t seem like he is this time around.

I’ll work on the screenplay as much as I can over the next week without killing myself. I think I might still take it easy. Like I said before, I was considering a break from any creative work for the rest of the month to begin with. My goal of getting caught up on the bulk of my personal library this month flew out the window, too. But that’s something I can keep working on while working on the album. I can’t spend the entire month making the next Shadows of Immurement album… can I?

Started working on the new screenplay while editing the old one.

I started work on the new centaur-centric screenplay today. I only got as far as one short scene because I was at a coffee shop during my writing time and the battery on my computer didn’t have much life left. But it’s better than the nothing that I’ve been doing lately. I wish I got more done, as I thought I was going to have more time earlier in the day when I had more time (supposedly—I’m still having fatigue issues but I’m trying to work through it). I did some errands which took a little longer than I had anticipated. But I’m still happy that I got what I got done. I have to start somewhere.

I got plenty of feedback on the other screenplay that I’m working on from a published writer friend of mine. It didn’t seem like she had any problem with the plot or flow of the story, which is a good sign. Her notes were mostly about character development and the nitty-gritty grammar and spelling stuff. At some point I have to sit down and address those issues. Perhaps I will be able to sell it sooner than I thought.

So, what was this I was rattling on about before about taking a break? Well, of course I’m going to during the month of February in order to work on my album for the 2017 RPM Challenge. I’m going to work on these screenplays through the rest of January, and if I need a break after making the album then I’ll do so. I still intend on restarting the book reviews in March, however.

Researching centaurs for my new screenplay.

I normally don’t put much effort into research for my works of fiction—I like to cite intelligent reasons, such as “I don’t wish to constrain myself by other people’s established lore” but a large part of it is also laziness—but tonight I decided to hit the library to do a little research into centaurs for my new screenplay. I only looked at a few books that provided a general overview, but I took away three basic premises:

1. There aren’t that many stories involving centaurs;
2. What stories there are usually only provide one type of characterization for them;
3. And they’re intelligent yet violent creatures that also frequently rape when they lose control.

None of these things are particularly traits that I want my characters to have… at least not the main characters. But this can be useful. I only wanted to research the topic so I could flavor the writing in order to please the mythology nerds out there. Now I’m finding that the flavoring could help explain why my characters are more varied and peaceful (most of the time). At some point I’m going to have to address the fact that the lead centaurs in my story isn’t violent unless he gets drunk (and even then, he’ll probably be violently pathetic). The centaurs I’m writing are playing against type and I never would have thought about that unless I did the research, as basic the research was that I did.

Unicorns, on the other hand, seem to be harder to find information about outside of fantasy novels. Granted, they play a much smaller role in the story but it would be nice to find something for the lead to strive for other than the magic that would come with his missing alicorn. Then again, the guy starts out as a bit of a dimwit. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.