Thursday, February 21, 2013

Writing is a little like flying–or what I imagine flying entails, at least–in that you’re searching for the perfect draft, invisible as it may be, to carry you aloft. It’s ugly, initially. You start with nothing, a blank canvas, and you try to fill the void by flapping your wings furiously. Eventually you take off, maybe even glide a bit, but what you really want is to find your stride and hit that current of ideas. Once you do, you soar, and you ride that current for as long as you can.

I mentioned, obliquely, how writing for reals was on the docket. This project began in earnest last week, and it’s frankly been hard, though not in the way you’d expect. General decisions have been made. It will be fiction, for one thing, and absolutely not of the fantasy or sci-fi variety. Expectations have been set about workflow: plot arcs, character profiles, storyboarding, concerns like that. The premise, however, continues to elude me. I’m searching for an idea that’s compelling to consume, sure, but also to create. We’re assuredly in the flapping phase, grinding it out as we freewrite on stark white sheets of paper.

What fires me up, though, are the scenes we’ve discussed, moments grounded in reality that are truly unique. I’ve never witnessed them in any of the media I’ve consumed, yet I can picture them clearly, both on the page and in, like, a teaser trailer, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In a way, some of the meat is already there, and it just needs a skeleton, kind of like a genetically engineered cow on a Taco Bell farm. We’ve already employed a tortured metaphor tonight, so I’ll stop there, especially since this one may actually involve torture.