I’ve decided to chill out until November 1st when it comes to the novel. I’ve been running hot and I don’t want to burn out and grow discouraged. As such, I’m going to (hopefully) spend the next 48 hours bootstrapping myself with screenwriting.
I have learned a lot about how to start a major creative project through all the hard work I’ve put into this novel, so I have a sense of what works well with my personality. I do think I’m going to probably pick something like The Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as my “textbook” and really read it and study it to get a sense of how a master does it.
But I (hope) to read a lot of other screenplays as well — especially Star Wars.
A lot is going on all at once when it comes to my nascent efforts to figure out how to write a screenplay. I pretty much have an entire plot nailed down when it comes to a screenplay based on the real-life events that took place when I went to Lonely Beach in Thailand some time ago.
But, remember, I’ve talked a good game about this sort of stuff in the past, only for me to lose interest and for me to focus all my attention on writing a novel. So, lulz, who knows.
Here are some basic existing things that I’m using to game out the ultimate demise of the “passive Web” by, say, the end of the decade. (Excluding a pause to get the outcome of The Fourth Turning sorted out, of course.)
The first is the growing power and popularity of Large Language Models. Another is the growing power of computing hardware in general. Another is the fact that there is some techno-cultural determinism in LLMs solving some pretty basic problems with the Web as we know it. And last would be improving XR technology.
Ok, with all that in mind, it’s pretty easy to imagine that we literally could live in a Her movie-like future pretty soon. Everyone will wear a earpiece that allows them to have real-time conversations with a LLM digital assistant. The LLM’s dataset will be the entirety of the Web. The LLM will be finely tuned to your specific personality to the point that all of today’s bitching and moaning by conservatives about chatbot “bias” will seem quaint and silly.
Instead of searching Google, we will have casual, personal conversations throughout the day about whatever it is we need to know. Websites will no longer exist — or will no longer get the (human) traffic that they get today. And here is where XR technology fits in.
Instead of the passive use of a “browser” to read a New York Times article, you will actively be presented the contents you’re interested in by your LLM — probably displayed as a multimedia AR experience at your demand. The connection between AI and XR is not as obvious as maybe it should be. It seems to me that the two will feed on each other so that both are trillion dollar industries by 2030. (Again, baring the United States collapsing into civil war / revolution because of fucking ding-dong Trump.)
The thing about it is, all of this could happen really, really fast. Within just a few months, content on the Web could collapse into a Singularity with little or no direct human interaction with it. An entire genre of media will no longer be relevant at all.
Even all the microblogging services that have popped up might no longer needed because the real-time news element of the services will be replaced with you having a really interesting, personal conversation with your digital personal assistant.
Or, at the very least, what you might previously get via Twitter or Bluesky, you will see via a XR display that you wear most of the time.
Besides the obvious historical and political obstacles to this happening, there might be some human resistance to what seems to make total sense today. As such, maybe it’s not 2030 that no one reads The New York Times website anymore, but, say, 2033 or later.
But it’s coming. I just don’t see how the Web continues to exist in its present form.
I think I’m going to print out a chunks of the screenplays for Star Wars and The Enteral Sunshine of The Spotless Mind to use as a my screenwriting “texbooks” pretty soon.
I have some other screenplays that I can study, but those two screenplays seem to be represent the sweetspots of what I want to do with any “screenwriting career” I may have.
But, remember, I’m an old, poor coot in the middle of nowhere. I’m really going to need some Hollywood magic to cause this to be anything more than just one of my usual daydreams that go nowhere. (Though, to be fair, my dream of being a novelist is progressing quite well.)
I have really been spinning my wheels the last few weeks with the very first few chapters of the third draft of my first novel. I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit burn out. There is a very arbitrary structure in my mind about how the story progress and because I just can’t get it where it needs to be, I keep reading then revising the novel’s first three chapters over and over and over again.
As such, I think I need to give myself something different to piviot to creatively whenever I feel this way. At the moment, it seems like it’s going to be delving into the icy waters of screenwriting.
But this will happen in the context of my main goal still being finishing a mystery-thriller that is an homage to Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. My novel is so different that pretty much only I would notice any similarities.
Most of what is similar to Stieg Larsson’s work is structural in nature or the result of “form follows function.”
I will freely admit that my novel just isn’t as good as the novel I’m using as my “textbook” — The Girl That Played With Fire. That novel has a lot of heart. But that is, in general, what I want people to think of on an instinctual basis when they read my novel.
If they are fans of The Girl Who Played With Fire, they will feel like they’re putting on an old brown shoe. It will feel very cumfy and familiar, even if my novel is totally, completely, it’s own thing when it comes to subject matter.
That’s my goal, at least.
But I’ve studied Larsson’s stuff so much and have come to see some of his editorial decisions on a macrobasis as “the right way,” even though there is no such thing, I keep revising and revising and revising.
This is wearing me out. So, rather risk total burn out, I want to be able to pivot to screenwriting as necessary now and again.
It will be interesting to how long this plan lasts.
As I continue to spin my creative wheels with the first act of the third draft of my first novel, I find myself pondering yet again a second creative track: a screenplay.
I already have the infrastructure to do so — I have Final Draft. But the thing that stopped me from plunging into screenwriting remain: there is a sharp learning curve when it comes to writing a screenplay. So much so, that I honestly feel like just redoubling my efforts with my main creative track of a novel.
And, yet, I’m not getting any younger and I’ve progressed far enough with the novel that I think maybe it would be fun to piviot to writing a screenplay whenever I feel overwhelmed with the main creative track of the novel. I think, in general, what’s going on is I’m ready to expand my creative horizons beyond just one novel that I keep tinkering with.
I’m very much in a put up or shut up moment. I have GOT to finish something. But there are a lot of problems with a second creative track being screenwriting.
I’m Too Old I’m just too old. At 50, I’m so old that I fear that any hope of being a screenwriter is kind of an even bigger delusion than being a novelist. But, lulz, it would be fund to just tinker around with screenwriting despite my decrepit age. I’m a Kook This is a problem because I have no friends and no one likes me. If I was “normal,” I could maybe find a creative collaborator who could help me develop a screenplay. I Live In The Wrong Place I really live in the wrong place. I live in BFE Virginia. But, lulz, it would be fun to have a few screenplays done so if I ever happen to find myself in Hollywood I might be able to pitch them.
The upsides to screenwriting some on the side as I progress with writing a novel is that I could flex a different creative muscle or two in my mind. I have a few really great scifi concepts in my mind that would be fun to explore. I think what I’m going to have to do is do treatments for these screenplay concepts before I sit down to actually write anything.
The temptation will be, of course, to simply use those treatments for novels, rather than screenplays. But, lulz, as long as I’m being creative, I guess that’s all that matters, right?
At LAST, it’s possible that I MAY have something akin to a stable first act. A lot of my problems with the first act are bullshit and arbitrary. From what my Beta Readers have told me, the issue for most people is they just want the story to flow and make sense.
My heroine KINDA looks like this.
All this futzing around with the specifics of scene sequence is not something that most readers notice or care about. They just want to be able to read the novel all the way through.
Now, issue that I’ve found myself worrying about is the number of spicy scenes in the first act. Too often, I’ve leaned into the nature of my heroine’s personal life to show some sexual activity and I just don’t know how much people will tolerate it — especially in the first act.
But I’m doing all of this in a vacuum. I just can’t keep spinning my wheels. I have to, at some point, realize that the point is to get this third draft done so I can go through and edit it.
So. As such, I’m trying to write as much as possible as quickly as possible now so I can get out of the first act by the end of October, 2023.
I’m a nobody at the moment. Sometimes, I feel like I could walk off the edge of the world and it would take a while — if ever — for anyone to notice. So, ANY attention I get is of note to me. But I’m not going to complain about how I have one stalker(?) who obsessively checks this site.
No, I’m interested in those curious instances where someone looks at this Website, but clearly doesn’t want me to know where they’re really coming from. It’s no big deal — whatever — but it is curious that anyone would care enough to hide their domain name.
There was a moment in time, when such things really got me excited. But, now, not so much. I just don’t care. It’s no big deal. The idea that someone of note would be interested in me and would go out of their way to hide their URL is intriguing.
I will note that I find it really interesting when it comes to celebrity’s relationship to social media. I think there is a spectrum, with one end a celebrity being too busy doing dope shit to worry about social media and on the other end you have very insecure celebrities with a lot — A LOT — of burner accounts.
One of the most curious situations is people who not only come out of nowhere, but they find some random link deep in the site. It’s very curious. I sometimes think there is a lot going on in my Webstats that I’m not seeing. I think some of it comes from my Webstat software mistaking some people looking at this site as robots and, as such, I don’t see what they’re looking at.
Or something. Something like that. But, in the end, it’s all value free. It is going to be very interesting to see on the backend once I start querying. Of course I’m going to see a deluge of normal people with real careers and real money look through all the drunken ranting I’ve done on this site.
But I know this novel is getting really, really good. And that’s all that matters.
The only reason why I even bring any of this up is I’m a bit intoxicated and I want to see if my FBI agent monitoring me for any mention of Alexa Chung swoops in to look at this. Anyway, it is amusing to me that the heroine of my first novel definitely looks — in my mind — like someone in a fuzzy continuum that ranges Olivia Munn to Alexa Chung.
What can I say, I have a thing for brunettes with vaguely Asian looks.
Anyway, the thing about Alexa Chung for me is her personality. While it’s her appearance that catches my attention, its her witty personality that causes me to linger. I’m well aware that she’s rather vacuous all things considered, but, yet she still in interesting enough to make her my celebrity crush.
And, yet, I have to admit that as I grow older, the very idea of having a “celebrity crush” seems rather…quaint. I just don’t care. Any potential interaction with someone like Ms. Chung I want to happen on my own terms after I blow up with my DJ money for having written a break out hit first novel.
So, in essence, I just don’t care anymore one way or the other about Ms. Chung. Live long and prosper. I am WELL AWARE that if any of her “people” became aware of my low-grade infatuation they would freak the fuck out. At the moment, at least, I’m the quintessential nobody.
And, if you really wanted to be honest, I’m the quintessential freaky weirdo nobody. I am who I am. I am — at least in my own mind — rather harmless, but, lulz, everyone is hateful and judgmental.
I did not finish the movie “The Creator” — I walked out. But I do that all the time, so it’s not that big a deal. But I saw enough of the movie to get some sense of it and why I couldn’t sit through the whole thing.
One issue I didn’t like was what I saw was clearly anti-American. The movie seemed to say, with a wink and a nod, “Look at those ignorant Americans, unwilling to embrace the future that is AI.” I also thought the plot was rather turgid. It seemed like I was watching a B+ TV movie, not “real” Hollywood movie.
But I will say that the premise of the movie was very cool, even if the world building associated with it was piss-poor. They just didn’t give the concept much thought, it seemed to me.
In general, however, “The Creator” hopefully will be “The 13th Floor” to another, much better movie that will be an AI “Matrix.” Or something. Something like that.
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