Malignancy Update

Well, a few days have passed since I first wrote here...

And I've been working pretty much non-stop at this script. Still have 6 scenes to map out so, I don't think I'm gonna finish it today...

As I write this this script is already 11 700 words long.

And, if all goes well, tomorrow a first draft for it will be ready - though I don't know if I'll read it all top to bottom then... I think I need a break!

(I'll work on another story!)

I think it's been going pretty well. A few scenes gave me problems the last few days. I didn't know how I'd visually recreate the intentions I had in my head but I think what's surfaced so far looks pretty good. The script is riddled with inconsistencies but all of them (or at least most of them!) are deliberate - I hope they'll build up on one another towards the sense of realisation I'm aiming for the reader to have when he/she reaches the end of this story.

Yesterday I once again rediscovered something that I'd found quite a while ago: it's easier for me to create panel/visual descriptions with pen and paper than typing them straight onto the screen (unless they're incredibly clear in my head, that is).

Yesterday I was blocked on a scene. Just kept staring at the screen over and over again and nothing came out. I knew what was going to happen - I just couldn't see it visually in a way that appealed to me.

So I just decided to pick pen and paper, shift body posture and see what came out.

I wrote during the next few hours 11 pages of panels and page layouts.

Of course, today I had to type it all up but it was well worthwhile!

Sometimes I think the hardest thing is to keep track of where our mind is - or wants to be!...

Anyway, the learning curve is working it's magic...

See you tomorrow!

(with a finished script...)

Peace.

Moving On

The last few months have been pretty hectic. Between job instability, failing hard drives, being ill, going on my yearly meditation retreat, going home to see my family and doing a great number of things I can't recall anymore, I have managed to write a few new things - with a clean slate starting point...

As soon as I came back from Myanmar I started to type up the ideas that surfaced during the retreat (and they were quite a few...). This is a task still to complete but, I'll get there in due time.

I started working on a couple of scripts, a series of short advertising scripts and a small essay related to food disturbances and meditation insights. Halfway through all these projects a friend mentioned that an animation company she works for was looking for some scripts...

Guess what I did?

Yup. I typed up some of the ideas and sent them to her.
I finished a first draft of two stories (Khanti/Forbearance and Second Sight), revised an old script (In The Wild) I'd sent to a couple of friends ages ago (god bless gmail...) and typed up a fairly detailed synopsis of another short one (Winter Snow/White As Snow/... I still don't know the title for this one...)

Good news right?

Well... perhaps not that good.

Apparently they're really interested in stories that reflect Portuguese culture in some way. And this is precisely one of the things I'm trying to avoid the most in the stories I dabble with. I want them to reflect the "inner culture" rather than the outer one. I don't want to tell tales just for Portuguese (or English, or French or whatever). I want to aim right at the heart and find tales that everybody can relate to, where that cultural backdrop is not crucial (well, for most of them that is...).

So, I don't really think any of these stories will be used by them. Still, these scripts have been completed somewhat and perhaps there will be other people interested in them... time will tell!

I didn't manage to complete the advertising and essay projects before I went to Portugal. They are both lengthy - even if in quite different ways.

I wrote very little in Portugal. For the most part I typed stuff.

And rested...

It was good to soak a bit in the sun and not do very much.

But now I'm back in London and things are moving once again!

I arrived on Wednesday the 23rd.

On Thursday I mapped out yet another story called Malignancy and today (Friday) I've been writing some more of the dialogue (and captions) as well as panel descriptions and page layouts. It's been slow but I'm happy with what I've done so far. This is a somewhat bizarre story and I'm trying to insert unsettling elements (mostly visual ones) throughout the script. It's important that some measure of confusion, of things not adding up, will be present in the tale practically from the onset.

I also wrote a bit on the essay I mentioned in the beginning of this post. I probably have it 70 to 80% completed.
(and there's still revision time to come...)

Apart from this today I joined DropBox and have started a new structure to file all these documents I seem to create all the time... I still have to learn how to synchronize that with my external hard drive but it shouldn't be too difficult.

Tomorrow I aim to continue working on Malignancy (that I'm hoping to send to a couple of friends, to see if any of them know someone that might be interested in drawing it...), perhaps type some more stuff and call/email a data recovery company to see if they can sort my external hard drive, and how much would it cost.

Hope you are well!

Peace...

The Post Wrimo Blues??!

What's that?!
At least this year I didn't feel them. In fact, I don't think I ever did feel them... I think I always go through the highs and lows during the writing process rather than afterwards...

I any case, this year's nanowrimo is over and i more or less managed to fulfill my objectives. It's Not Too Dark Here stopped at 56 198 and The Lost Years ended at 60 129 (at ten minutes to midnight on the 30th of November...)

I was really behind my schedule when I got to portugal on the 26th. But then I spent a few good days at a very good friend's house typing away and avoiding most of the grey weather and rain that struck Lisbon.

I'm very happy to the way It's Not Too Dark Here turned out. I think this was the first time I had quite a clear idea of where the book was heading from the beginning and that really helped along the way. If you have the direction it's always easier to stay on course...
What I loved was the way the story kept changing as I wrote it. I knew there had to be a major clash between this strange anti-hero and the forces of the outside world but the way I had initially planned it was almost entirely discarded.
writing is an odd thing because it feels to me like a mix of being in the flow but also deciding where it will go next. I simply try to be in the flow and, when I'm not, that's when I start deciding about plot, characters and so forth. Maybe this will change in the future but, for now, this is the way I feel more comfortable with.
one of the good things that I enjoyed watching as I wrote was this character I had based on a friend of mine.
We had had a good long chat in september and, after telling her of my ideas for November, she said I should write her into the story. I took the bait right there and then and my mind automatically started browsing for possibilities. Very rapidly I thought of what I wanted her to represent in the book - which was (and still is) her core attitude towards life and something that i needed in the book. But i now had a character to insert somewhere in the story that I hadn't envisioned from the onset.
She was going to be the voice of consciousness. The voice throughout the story that every so often reminds us that the setting is utterly insane and that, despite that fact, everything is still pushing forward at incredible speed. She is the observer of the lunacy of it all. She is one of the bridges between intentions, story and readers.

I did a first attempt to place her in the story. I wanted her to be there more or less from the onset you see.
but that didn't work out. I wrote a couple of scenes but they felt too forced and not really going anywhere. It felt as if she shouldn't be there.
So i dropped it.
I forgot all about i, actually.
But then the story kept evolving. And, after a particular important climax, she just came back into the game for a few very important scenes.

With The Lost Years the story was a bit different. I quickly realised that this book was going to be more than what I have initially envisioned and that I needed a lot more time to bring it to blossom. So, I decided to forget somewhat the research aspect of it (I didn't have the time or internet when I was in portugal) and focus on the drama.
But, even so, this was a story full of surprises. The characters really grew on me and I think that even if you were to read it now, they would grow on you as well. I think there's a deep sense of humanity through it all. But, to be quite honest, it felt as if there was still much to be said. This story is one that I keep having ideas about, getting clearer and clearer every time I think about it. It's a place where i feel comfortable being and I believe it's an important story to be told in this way.
I thought a lot about Nietzsche's Anti-Christ (that I read many years ago) and the vision of a more human Jesus (in his case, in defiance of more "orthodox" christianity). In a way I think the purpose of this book is to reconcile what seems to me to be misinterpretations of both orthodox christianity and philosophy towards Jesus's message.
And that's why I need a bit more time to read through both the bible (a new version that a friend of mine bought which is based upon the "original" texts rather than the string of translations) and some more material (which includes Nietzsche's final work).
I don't know why but I just feel an incredible potential with this book. I know it has been done before (and most surely it will be done again in the future), but I feel that it is important and that it needs to be said. I don't know why, but there is really a calling for this one.
And the strange thing is that, even though I consider Jesus a pretty interesting character, I am much more fascinated by many other historical figures.
In any case, I do not want to turn it into an essay debating the pros and cons of two viewpoints. Rather, I wish to integrate seamlessly into the narrative some answers to much of the debate still going on about this greatly misinterpreted historical figure. I believe that if Jesus was alive today he would probably disagree with much that is being said in his name. The book tries to convey this idea more clearly through dramatic exploration of particular scenarios but also allow us to more clearly see Jesus as both a man of his time but also ahead of his time. The keywords here being his incredible adaptability and compassion.

Still, I have stopped thinking reasons for this and instead simply accepted the way things are currently in my heart and mind...

If you are interested in knowing a bit more about this just go to wikipedia and search for Essenes or, even better, go to this website:

http://www.thenazareneway.com/

there you'll have a plethora of information and this will easily help you get a better idea of where this book is headed. Connect this with Buddhism (which is the root of the Essene teachings) and you pretty much get it.
So, the idea is simple. To recreate Jesus's journeys, both inside and throughout the world. Hopefully the beauty of his teachings will become closer to all those that read it. To me, much more important than the divine (physical) birth of Jesus (and we're all divine anyway so there's really no need to differentiate...) is that other birth, the opening into full divinity inside his heart. I simply wish that that journey will help us recognise that aspect of ourselves. And awaken us to it.

Peace

Word Wounds

It's the 20th of November.
I should be with 40 000 words on each of the books.
I'm with 38 000 and something on Nume and 31 000 on The Lost Years.
I can't seem to dodge that 11 000 backlog...
In any case, tomorrow I will be working but coming home early and sunday I'm gonna plough through the dictionary like a fever running wild...

But things are looking good. Preston Nume has managed to survive yet another trial (though he's got a few scars to show for it) but, even though he's getting ready for the next lot (he knew as soon as he got on that island that they had it in for him) he's not really expecting what's gonna hit him next...

Meanwhile in Egypt, Jesus and his two companions are finding out some of the awful and beautiful truths in the former land of the Pharaohs.

I've been tempted to just focus on one of the books, finish it off and then come back and finish the other one but... i feel that there's something to gain from moving from one story to the other. What I've been doing is more or less writing out all the sequences that I had planned out. When I hit a point where I don't really know how to move forward, I jump on the other wagon and see what I can do there.

But this has been a very different NaNoWriMo. Not just because of writing two books in parallel, or doing some research for them, but mainly because i have been writing the chapters in more or less the order they'll stay for the final version.
(I say this now...)
(who knows what's gonna happen when revision happens...)

Anyway, just a quick update.
And I've just realised that I haven't updated my NaNoWriMo webpage since the first day... shame...

Thanks for staying tuned...
(and happy writings for all of you!)

Peace

Wordy Weekends

Well, last thursday night, when I arrived home I looked at my word count.
it was something like 12 000 for one book and 18 000 for the other.

Then I thought
On sunday i should be on 30 000 on both.

And that means...

I've got to write 18 000 on one and 12 000 on the other... roughly...

In three days.

Which means 10 000 a day.
(a healthy diet)

Well, I'm now more or less on 27 500 on both.
Short of my objective but definitely much closer to what I needed doing!

And let me tell you, I struggled this weekend. I struggled because I wanted to watch films and relax and read and read stuff that could be quite important for the book (and i did do a bit of all these things, just not as much as I'd like to...) but I managed to stay more or less on track (yes, there were guitar playing sessions that lasted for more than an hour to chill and collect my ideas...) and do the deed.

And once again I discover that "this stupid idea I had for a book that is now so obviously proven doesn't work" (that was my down moment on saturday... a few hours actually) is somewhat wrong...

The Lost Years was more or less on track by friday/easrly hours saturday, so I spent the rest of the weekend focussing on It's Not Too Dark Here. After a while I knew pretty damn well which scenes I needed to write but I'd lost the will power to do them. It seemed pretty pointless.
I decided to call it a day on 23 or 24 000. I'd done my best, that was it.
Then I decided to just write the synopsis for what I need to write today (still). It was a scene where the main character comes face to face with a wild tiger (and yes, there are no wild tigers naturally on that island so some very naughty character must've brought it in...).
And there was going to be a clash there...
(this is a thriller after all... what better than tigers on desert island preying on unarmed men?!)
I just didn't know how they'd meet.
I was tired.
I didn't want to write anymore.
I wanted to sleep.
(bad!)
But the images about what was going to happen after they'd met were so vivid that I started writing them down.

I thought I didn't have enough stuff for the book.
And I might just have more than enough now...
And a few thousand words more for my word count that day. I wrote for another hour or two hours. I can't remember. I was in that mood where everything just flows. If I'd been more awake I'd continued to write until I'd run out of inspiration.
Unfortunately, these things only seem to happen when it's already 1.30 in the morning and I'm about to call it quits.
(I'm sure there's a pattern in there somewhere...)

This morning I wrote a bit more tying up loose ends. And I still have a bit more to do today when I get home.

But the most important part was that, a chapter that I thought was going to be quick turned out to be long but extremely exciting to write (and, I think, to read as well). A chapter that I thought was going to be dull and predictable, turned out to be almost central to the whole book. For me it turned it's direction around. And managed to do something that I'd wanted from the onset. Which is to make this character respected in some way by the audience. Make him human.
I think this chapter takes the bonding between reader and character to a different level. For the first time we see this aspect in Preston Nume. And it took me by surprise. But it made sense so I tried not to change it much.

I'll admit that, instinctively, a different outcome was present but, that's one of the pleasures of writing, you CAN turn things around and twist the story to your particular wishes.

In terms of The Lost Years, I'm on the doorstep of the Egyptian phase. I've been reading some stuff about Hermes Trismegistus (that existed a couple of millennia before Jesus - so he won't be a character, if that's what you're thinking...) and about the Egyptian Pantheon of gods.

And this is another of those chapters that I don't have the faintest idea how I'm gonna write it...

In an ideal world I'd spend a couple of decades reading books and learning Egyptian mythology and THEN write this chapter.

Because I live on Earth, Europe, UK, London, it has to be more like some Wikipedia on the diagonal side of perception, mix that with my very own and true to life experiences and ideas and start typing!

But seriously, this book isn't really about historical accuracy (though I have amazed myself at how much of that actually is there so far), it's much more about the spiritual journey of this man that was to become one of our most powerful myths.
Obviously it is a metaphor for any journey of this type. That's my objective. I want people to identify as much with the character as with the journey itself.
The fact that we have Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, Assirian mysticism, Hinduism and Buddhism (these are the next chapters, in that order) is merely to frame this with a sense of completion and UNIFICATION between all these different view points.

So I'm not interested in Egyptian mythology per se, but really more in the aspects it mirrors that day and age. It becomes a vehicle to create a better sense of time and place, of the obstacles that would be those living in those days and their own journeys.

In any case the penultimate chapter will be one of the most important (and one that I am incredibly eager to start writing... but it makes sense that I wait so that I can put all the previous chapters in perspective throughout that one...) of the whole book. This is where the journey achieves a first sense of completion, of roundness. Of true purpose and meaning.
It represents our true awakening.
Where the masks have fallen beyond return.
It represents the beginning of what many call the Christ Consciousness.

So, I'm sure it will be an interesting one...
(even though I still don't know very well what I'm gonna write when I get there... then again, what else is new?!)

Peace!

Two AM

It's 2am, Friday morning, small hours.
Been spending most of this night around my only manuscript in Portuguese. It's called Morto. And it's giving me more trouble editing than I had anticipated.

I think it's because of some of the characters. They're still not clear in my head. And whilst that doesn't happen, I'll have to struggle some more.
The rest will be easier I'm sure.
But I spent 5 or 6 hours today around a scene in a bar.
Ended up writing a short one, just with 4 characters in order to define them a bit better.
Also realizing that this scene will have to be moved around a bit. I'm in the beginning of this story but this scene will probably be better placed closer to the middle of the story. The reader will need to know some of the characters fairly well before we get to it.

The main problem is that there's 8 people talking. The talk shifts back and forth around this dead guy and the inability of some of dealing with it.
And I still don't know the characters well enough to have them interacting so fully.
Yet, at the same time, I feel I need to do this scene in the order it was placed. I know that when I finish this version of it all the characters will be much clearer in my head and this will help me a lot throughout the rest of the book.

This is what I have been doing during the last few days.
This and some comics reviews.

I want to have a second draft of this book ready before the end of the month so that I can try and send it to a publisher in Portugal. They're called Objectiva and are looking for new writers and ideas.
At least I think that the first chapter is already quite good.
But I want to have the whole thing ready before that.
I want to have a clearer picture of this book and its quality before July comes.

Peace.

Intimacy/TAF Update

Well, this one is more or less wrapped up.

I was home Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and managed to more or less finish off this script.
It was a tortuous one, I tell you. I wanted to create a kind of Bergman feel to it. Really dense in psychological arguing but also with some hope, with some light at the end of the tunnel.
To be quite honest, half way through I didn't really know how it was going to turn out because there was just so much bile going on that I was feeling that these characters never wanted to see each other again.

But I hope that they touched rock bottom.

That's what I wanted to show.

That sometimes you need to say all the wrong things, share all the truths you've kept hidden - however ridiculous and childish they may seem - in order to come back.
I think Micah and Danielle do this in the film. I think they are honest to one another to an extent they never really managed to before. Perhaps even to themselves.

Maybe there are things left unsaid that are still relevant but, if there are, there are still further drafts and polishing up for them to surface. In any case, there's just so much that you can say with words and perhaps that's something that comes clear in the script. We cannot always fully satisfy each others need for a total explanation of things.

There were a few moments that writing seemed to be going downhill, almost out of control. I could see them clearly in my head and hear the dialogue. Almost as if it were a part of me. Something I had seen at some stage in my life. A recollection feel and at the same time the knowing that this is the first time I'm seeing these things.

I was quite surprised with this script because I knew quite clearly the starting point and the end point. It was the middle, two people locked up in a house for weeks, trying to sort their lives out, that was going to be the though thing. No (hu)Man's Land...

There were several aspects to solving this.

First I knew I wanted a Ingmar Bergman feel to the whole thing. I wanted it to be deep and troublesome. I wanted to be rational but also emotional. I wanted the script to be able to point out problems clearly but also provide answers. On a direct way but also on a more subtle level.
I even considered watching a couple of Bergman's films but since I wanted his black and white period, his early days, and I didn't have any around me, I kind of put it aside.

The second thing was a talk I had with a friend. We had just seen THE FOUNTAIN and we started chatting about it.
She didn't think much of the film. I loved it.
But she raised a very important point. The characters - Isabel and Tomas - in the film aren't really explored. Their love, which is the central thing, isn't really explored. Darren Aronofsky is more concerned in telling us the plot than in talking about the characters personal history. For instance, if he had showed us a bit more of the Izzy/Thomas - in present day - relationship we would've felt a lot more for Thomas' loss, thus making the whole bigger than life journey trying to defeat death for the love of his life so much more powerful.
To me this aspect didn't affect me so much because I had read the comic and, in the comic, the rules of storytelling absorption are somewhat different. For instance, Kent Williams sketchy drawings actually pull the characters closer to you. The fact that you can't see much about their faces and you only a perception of mood more than anything else, makes you instinctively fill in the blanks. The writing works better in the comic as well.

(And there were a few lines in the film that I didn't really buy to be honest...)

But that got me thinking about characters really seriously.
I kept telling her that I didn't know what to write next.
And then I started talking about Micah and suddenly he became more fully alive. I told her the back history of that story (which I'm not going to share here, sorry) and what were the elements that I wanted to integrate and why.

By the time I finished (I must've talked for at least half an hour) I had already a few scenes to write for the next day.

And that's what I did.

I started writing them longhand because it felt more natural. And lo and behold: the pages started to pile up.

And this was the third thing that I picked up. That I really like to write scripts the best in long hand. I know it's a pain typing it all back and, in a way, a waste of time. But the fact is that I write more if I do it in this way. And I'm already revising the text when typing it back. Sometimes efficiency is not just using a computer. Efficiency is knowing how you work best and hone yourself in the process.

In any case, I have also found that if I'm writing a short story or ideas for a script I prefer to use the computer... If it's just text, typing on a keyboard seems to be the preferred medium...
Sometimes not even I understand myself...

So, on Monday and Tuesday I more or less wrote the remaining 40 or 50 pages of the script. I wrapped it all up and typed the final words on Wednesday morning and finished with 106 pages of script.

Done.

Well... not quite. I still need to do at least a scene or two more. I need a scene with their kids. A scene that will show the audience how their life together was before they got there. In order to make it all more believable. I need a scene that will establish their ongoing conflict, but also their love of their kids, the pressure that this creates on their kids, their decision that they need to sort themselves out.
And quite possibly another scene - even if it's a couple of shots with voice over - of their early days together. The happy days that now seem gone without a trace.

Hopefully inspiration will come before the month is over and I'll write these two scenes, add them to the script, organise it a bit and leave it at that before I revise it at some point.

And that's all I have to say about INTIMACY.

Now about TAF...

Yesterday I got home late, watched a couple of episodes of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (I'm hooked on it you know...) and proceeded to read and map out what I had done so far with TAF.

Not much it seems. Even though I already had about 40 pages of script... this one is going to be a lot longer than INTIMACY.
But it doesn't really matter. Since this is a comedy, it's better that I have more scenes than needed so that I can then choose the best ones and compress it all a bit.

My initial plan was easy. Show this crazy physical ed teacher's week. We start on the Sunday and we end on the Saturday so that we establish his routine very well.
Then on the Saturday "the event" occurs...
And everything changes and that's when the comedy side of it really kicks in.

I was on Tuesday and already on page 30...

So yesterday I started long handing it and, early this morning - I think with 12 more long hand pages - I got to Friday night. So, I'm hoping that by page 50 I'll be on the "Saturday event"...

After this it should be fairly simple because I already have a whole heap of scenes that I want to do. And these will be a one minute or two minute gags. Again, I want to have quite a number of them so that I can choose from them afterwards.

What I'm going to do today is type up the longhand pages and add them to the rest of the script. Then I'm going to write on a list all the other gag scenes. And a couple more that I've thought off in the meantime.
Then I'm going to organize them in chronological order (kind of...)
and start writing them, longhand.

Hopefully it will all work out in the end.
And soon!

Peace!

Scriptology

First incursion into this whole blogging affair.
I mean, I've been around, dabbled into other peoples stuff but never really gave myself the time to start something of my own that I'd want to pursue.
So here I will keep a record of what's happening with my writtings which, at the moment, are keenly focussed on comics.

Today I'm playing around with two stories.

The first is called A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN: THE ROAD OF NO RETURN and it's the second part of a fable about a King that wants to force a Monk to become one of his advisors. After having learned his lesson, the King now sits besides this Monk, ready to begin his lessons. But just how far they will go the King hasn't got an inkling...

Right now I still don't know exactly how this whole story will pan out. Initially it was merely a fable like comic. But then, after a comment from Ricardo Cabral, more ideas started to come through and a continuation actually seemed to make some sense. Then, just yesterday, while talking with Luis, the whole thing seemed to turn into a three episodes thing. Each of them having a different tone to them.
I still don't know what I'm going to decide to do in the end but I'm kind of liking this idea of having the first story being told by the King (or the King's trusty advisor), the second by the Monk and the third by the King. Possibly all of them being told to the King's young son, about to take the mantle of his father. It was Luis that suggested this and it makes a whole lot of sense.
So, my plan is simple: first to organise this second arc - which is what I'm setting out to do today - and then to write out all of the extra stuff about the kindgom's social problems.
(the third instalment is more like an essay on the decline of empires and possible solutions than anything else...)

The second thing I'm juggling is another story that I've been wanting to finish for quite some time. It's called THE SHIFT and it tells the story of a girl called Shahidah that survived a missile attack during the Gulf War in Iraq. The story follows her through life up to present day where she still struggles to survive. The whole story aims at observing the human psyche strategies with the exertion of continuing pain. It's not an easy read but I think it raises important issues.
Namely that we can never really know what's inside somebody else's field of experience. And that sometimes losing one's mind is the best strategy for survival.

So today I'm also looking at the full script and filling in the blanks. There're a few pages only with dialogue and I hope either today or tomorrow I'll write in the panel descriptions and organise the pages a bit better. I'm still not completely satisfied with the structure but it'll do for now. I hope after I've re-read it all and typed in all the missing bits that the structure will become clearer.

Actually, thinking a bit more about A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN, I think that all the stories should definitely be told to the young King. One told by his father's most faithful advisor. Another told by his father and the last by the Monk himself.