03 April, 2013

'Cause I Just Don't Have Enough to Do....

As mentioned in the last post, I have been considering - obviously for quite some time - writing a book about the experience of creating Beast of Bottomless Lake.

Well the damned idea isn't going away.  I thought that having no actual interest from a publisher would knock the notion out of me.  But why would it?  Not having a budget or a distributor or any of the myriad things that you really ought to have when making a movie didn't stop me from making one.  And in the age of digital self publishing, its possibly viable.  And tonight I kind of buckled.  I took all of the posts from this blog and cut and pasted them (as reference material) into the outline in the pitch document I sent publishers.  I'm already at 120 poorly edited pages.  Obviously, I'm going to rewrite practically everything, but the guide is there.

Like the movie, this probably won't be a fast project.  I have a lot going on.

- I've been serializing a truly massive novel online for quite some time - the going is slow there too, despite having much of the plot mapped out... those holes are hard to get past though.  If I ever finish, this one is going to be a door-stopper.

- I'm working on a screenplay about a truly fascinating aspect of deterrence theory (The political gamesmanship that has against all seeming odds kept us from nuking the hell out of each other for over half a century.) that has taken me way down the rabbit hole.

- An older project I created with Roger Haskett (Neville in Beast) may have once again found some legs - and if it has it could be pretty consuming.

- A TV project I conceived with another friend had some recent interest... but I suspect we've seen the last of this round of sizzle, so that's probably not a factor.

- I've finally acquired the means to go back into production on my video series "Best Picture" - which fortunately has no deadlines on it, but still... if I'm going to do it, I should bloody well do it.

- And I'm in the middle of researching a series of short fiction about the (very real) Galileo mission to Jupiter.

Not to mention carrying on contract work, a very part-time "day job" and not least of all being a Father.

But I just can't help thinking, that this project isn't going away.  I'll pick away at it in the gaps - Eg. some times I simply can't bring myself to get immersed in the psychology of gambling that everyone is going to play nice and not blow one another into radioactive dust, and in those times I need something else to write - something where I already know the beginning, middle and end.