August Will Be New Script Frenzy Month!

First off, a quick call out to my nephew whose birthday was last week:

Love ya, sweety!

Alright, back to business. Sorta.

I slacked off this week. I didn't even remember to check-in over at Writers’ Huddle for the summer writing challenge. I've been stalled because I can't seem to figure out where to go next with my story, and so I've been avoiding it all together.

On the plus side, I'm about 2 days ahead of my schedule to finish reading "Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer" on time. I keep teasing Ronoxym that Magnus is just a blonde-haired Boston version of Devon. The more I read the story the more I feel it's true. I find it so amusing that Rick Riordan and Ron essentially came up with the same character. On top of that, it's not like Ron was influenced by Riordan, since Devon's been around for over 3 years before Magnus Chase was printed. At least 2 years before Magnus was introduced to the public.

Speaking of Ron and Devon, Ron's still chugging away at his super Alternate Universe one-shot. Since in this reality Devon is an actual, psychotic Brotherhood member, Ron just writes that he's "Arson"; his Brotherhood code name as well as Street name when he was homeless. It's hard for Ron to even refer to this evil version as Devon, which is interesting. Anyway, he's been writing at least a little bit each night this past week; checking in with me on his progress pretty much daily. Hey, at least ONE of us is writing, right?

I'm excited to read it. He just finished up the first draft last night, but he says he still needs to go back and rework it since he doesn't think he got Trish right in the first half. Still.... EXCITED! You don't know how hard it is for me to continue writing this instead of hopping over to Google Docs to give the story a read through!

Now me? I think yesterday I finally broke my mental block. I gave up trying to figure out the opening scenes. I know more-or-less what I want to happen, but I just can't get the details. So, I allowed myself to just jump to the next scene I DO know the details. It's such a simple thing: allow yourself to NOT work linearly. Yet, it was exactly the sledgehammer I needed to get past my mental block.

I couldn't get very far before doing actual work at - gasp! - work! However, I at least decided to just write up an outline. There won't be a natural stop like in a novel or movie, but if I more-or-less know where I want to go in this "season" - as it were - of the comic then it might be easier for me to fill in the blanks. I know I want to follow the Devon storyline, so I'll write that up first. I'll then go back and put in the character arcs for Chayse, Willow, and Lia. Then probably go back through again to sprinkle in the redone Marvel-Canon characters, as well as Lucas and the concept of the Challengers of Heaven.

I feel like I'll be going back through my James Patterson MasterClass notes for this one. That, and any I make during my next class! For a birthday gift - BTW, Happy Belated to me!!! - my mother bought me another MasterClass for the second year in a row! This time it's screenwriting by Aaron Sorkin; best known as the writer for "The West Wing", "Sports Night", and "A Few Good Men". Such great timing! I start seriously working on a comic script and MasterClass sets up a screenwriting course that started THIS WEEK. Like, I'm one of the first people to ever take this class! So exciting!

A friend of mine is also beta-reading "Glitches" for me and is planning on giving me his notes later today, so that's just as exciting. We already discussed the pitfalls I managed to pick out in my obsessive read-throughs. So, I'm waiting to see what else he could advise me on. I mean, he already gave me one or two really good notes on things I never would have thought of myself due to the subtlety of it.

So, no, I didn't really do anything this past week aside from avoidance and obsessing. However, now I have all the tools I need to get me pumped again. I'm sensing a writing comeback. Okay, so I don't know HOW good of a comeback this SPECIFIC week will be, since Spink's wedding is this weekend, and so my free time is pretty booked. Still, August is looking GOOD.

I'm apparently also very modest....