I have a few ideas that are interesting movie ideas, but I don’t know how well they would do as novels. So, I think, if I can summon the energy to do so, I’m going to write a few treatments.
There is one currently semi-funny idea that if I could find a collaborator would be something akin to The Wedding Crashers.
And, yet, lulz, absolutely no one cares what I say or do. I could walk off the face of the earth right now and it would take a few weeks for anyone to notice what had happened.
But I do feel like forcing myself to go outside my comfort zone by writing and developing something other than this one story I’ve been working on for years.
I’m in full swing editing and rewriting the first act of this novel as I prepare to get into the second act and things are going surprisingly well. Thinking about what I know about this novel in my mind, the big takeaway is it’s just not scary or twisted enough to be directly compared to, say, Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” or Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With Dragon Tattoo.”
But, even I, who have EXTREMELY HIGH expectations for any story, have to admit that this is shaping up to be, if nothing else, a really entertaining yarn. It’s the kind of story that will suck the reader in pretty fast just because they will want to see how I have a part-time sex-worker solve a murder mystery, if nothing else.
But there’s one thing I know — you just can’t win. If you take any risks, you are BOUND to somehow, someway offend a small, vocal minority of the audience who will be mad specifically because a smelly CIS white male dared to do anything other than stare at the ceiling and twiddle their thumbs.
So, I press forward.
I still need to work on a backup novel or two. But it’s tough. It’s really tough.
It’s a lot easier to build out nuance when it comes to something like “part-time stripper solves a murder mystery” than it is in a movie.
My fear, of course, is, that if I actually manage to sell this novel and it becomes a success enough to catch Hollywood’s interest, that any movie would focus way too much on the stripper side of things and not that fact that my heroine is the owner of both a strip club and an alternative weekly.
But I think I’m overthinking things. I think all I should worry about is writing the best novel I can. Any thoughts of this novel becoming a movie are way, way, way, way, way, way too early.
Within moments of looking over the beginning of the third draft of the novel, I came up with a new, better (?) beginning. The key thing is I really get right into the part-time sex worker (stripper) element of the story.
I never know how much of these changes will stick and how much is just part of the “breathing” process of the novel where everything moves around for months and months until I FINALLY reach something I kinda, sorta like.
But I think if I’m going to do this editing and rewriting right, I need to calm down some. I need to be more methodical because otherwise, I’m just going to spin my wheels for months and months and lulz, nothing will ever get done.
Part of that is to be more active with my setting and descriptions. In past drafts, I’ve kind of been lack about shit like that because the point was to get something, anything down.
Now that I’m on the third draft, I think I need to give a lot more consideration to describing things. I have a feeling I’m doing all of this wrong, but lulz, I’m doing it in a vacuum and have no one to tell me “no.”
While things feel like they’re doing pretty well, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with this novel. But I continue to press forward. I also continue to think about how I need to give my life some structure.
Maybe my novel will be adapted into a movie one day.
I’m very grateful for this peculiar situation I find myself in that affords me the ability to — essentially — be a professional aspiring novelist, even if I have to live in poverty to do it. Of course this particular situation won’t last forever and any number of things that could happen that will, if nothing else, dramatically change the context of what’s going on in my life.
And I continue to grow unnerved with political events that are totally out of my control. Way too many people believe that if only we can defeat Trump at the polls that magically that will be enough to end the threat of MAGA.
My heroine looks a lot like this woman in my mind.
The events of January 6th, tend to make me believe that Trump could very well demand a National Divorce, and as such, prompt a civil war even if we defeat him at the polls fair and square.
As all of these thoughts fill my mind, I also worry about the possibility that AI will make all my hard work…moot…just as I’m preparing to query in late 2024, early 2025. But there would be something poetic if, rather than querying my novel, I’m dodging bullets from MAGA fascists.
But, who knows. It could go a lot of different ways. And, as such, I need to buckle down and work hard. Or, at least, a lot harder than I am at the moment.
If I was younger, I would pick a random celebrity and write a lot about them on this blog, just to see if any of their “people” noticed. But, you know, I’m just too old.
While, on paper, it would be a fun experiment, it also would be too easy for said “people” to take one look at this blog and think I’m some insane stalker. So, meh. I have better things to do with my time.
Well, apparently, there’s some sort of AI generated George Carlin special floating around. Such AI Generated Media (AIGM, pronounced Ayee-Gym,) is a sign of things to come.
What gets me is that it’s also a sign that we need to re-calibrate what we expect for AI going forward in regards to the arts. It definitely SEEMS as though within about 18 months….that human Hollywood…just might not exist as we think of it. AIGM will totally consume Human Generated Media (HGM) and…that will be that.
It might be a bit longer than that, given the US could collapse into civil war / revolution in late 2024, early 2025, but, still…the times, they are a changing.
I have to accept that it definitely appears as though — barring something I can’t predict — that my dream of pulling of a third hat trick with my life is a bit…delusional? I say this in the context of reading the big new book about The New York Times, “The Times.”
I always though that I had one big third act ahead of me. But, lulz, even if I sell my novel and it’s some sort of hit, it’s not like I will be, uuuuhhh, YOUNG when it happens. Everything will happen in the context of me being in my 50s.
It’s not like I can get my act together an one day work at The New York Times. I MIGHT be able to, like, hang out with New York Times people if I was some sort of successful — and eccentric — novelist, but work there full time….nope. Not only am I too old, I’m too bonkers and my personality just doesn’t fit working at such a high pressure gig.
Meanwhile, my other option — making it big in Hollywood — is just as delusional, but for different reasons. Yeah, I could probably talk my way into a three picture deal while drunk at a cocktail party, but, still, the whole context would be different from what I always imagined.
Rather than partying with 24 year olds, I would be this guy that everyone is stunned became a success 25 years later than everyone else. “So, how does it feel to be a success later in life,” is the chief question every reporter would ask me.
All of this is delusional, of course.
And I have to appreciate that barring something REALLY BIG that I can’t predict, I probably won’t actually be able to physically see my novel on the shelf of a physical bookstore until my mid-50s. (And by that point, a combination of AI and XR may have even made physical print bookstores rather quaint.)
Who knows. I don’t. But no matter what, the context of any success I have at this point in my life just won’t be what I expected back in the day.
It seems clear that Hollywood needs to accept that we’re having something akin to a generational “vibe shift” and they need to completely reboot all the major scifi franchises for a new generation.
But time in short. Very soon, AI Generated Media (AIGM) will make all of this very moot because the audience will be in total control of what they see on the screen — or the Vision Pro (or whatever.) Within, say, about five years, all of (human) Hollywood will be totally and completely disrupted and, lulz, the only human made movies will be but about .1% of the total seen by the audience.
That’s a rather dystopian prediction, but that seems to be the direction things are going, with only the timetable being up in the air.
But back to the subject at hand — before AIGM takes over everything, Hollywood should hard reboot the Alien, Terminator, Star War and Star Trek franchises. Do it immediately. It can be the last hurrah of the Olde Ways before AIGM totally disrupts and revolutionizes how we make and consume media.
I’m just about to sprint forward with the “Fun & Games” part of this novel. I’ve been doing a lot of constructive daydreaming the last few days in an effort to figure out how to game the rest of the story out. It’s been really, really tough.
But I do think if I just let this process play out that I should get to writing full time again pretty soon. I was kind of sweating it there for a moment until I realized what the problem was. There really wasn’t so much a problem as I needed to go into aggressive daydreaming mode so once I left it, I could throw myself back into writing again.
As all of this is going on, of course, I realize I need to do a lot more reading and watching of TV — and develop other projects. I don’t want to be left holding the back if someone — God forbid — should somehow steal a march on me story wise and I have to fall back to some other project from scratch.
I don’t know when everything is going to sort itself out, but it should be pretty soon. That’s the plan, at least.
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