Messin' with my brain

Or what there is left of it. "Place of Safety" has finally begun to let me move forward with it, again, but is tracking down a different road in the same journey to the same destination. And it's irritating as hell. I understand the whys and the wherefores of it...to an extent...but it has complicated the whole setup and one character has become all but superfluous. I'd drop him but he's fighting me AND the story isn't willing to let go of him, either. So WTF is going on? Where-TF am I going with this? I honestly don't know, anymore.

That's not to say I think it will change the final section. And reality is, my new direction may add meaning to the ending...if it turns out like I'm beginning to think it will. But we're having fun in the 70's, that's fer dang sure -- this part of the story takes place between April 1973 and sometime late in 1980 or early '81, then it's back to Derry.

As regards "David Martin" -- I have a 90 page screenplay about an 11 year old boy who accidentally traps some aliens in his iMac and has to help them get back into space before some bad aliens find them. Perhaps I could make that a story and use it as a companion piece with DM to make it long enough for a published book, something through Scholastic Press, maybe, or Ace Publishing. I dunno. That might not work. I don't own the rights to the script, anymore, because I wouldn't change it enough to suit people.

Oh...that's a fun story. I'd originally written this script to be live action and it did well in a couple of contests, coming in as high as second place in one, but it didn't fit the mold for places like Disney or Amblin, so a couple of friends suggested making it an animation script. One worked at an animation studio and got some notes from producers who worked there, and we made some major changes. Cut it down to 88 pages. Intensified the action and focused even more on the lead boy. They still didn't like it 100% so more changes were ordered, including getting rid of a major character -- and that's where I balked. I did 95% of the changes asked for, even though I didn't like some of them, but because I wouldn't do 100% of them, things deteriorated between us and I finally wound up signing the script over to the people I'd been working with in exchange for some cash that I'd been paid. So...they made the changes they wanted...and the animation producers STILL didn't go for it. No one has. Nor will they.

Something I'd finally begun to notice after way too many years in film was, nothing gets made in the film industry unless 1) you have a nearly foolproof chance at making a financial killing, or 2) it comes off a highly successful item like a book, TV Series, graphic novel or play, or 3) you have a producer pushing the project who believes in it so much, he or she will not rest until it's done and will everything they must to achieve that. There's no way in hell I'll ever get a #1 because my stuff just don't fit that mold. The chances of me having a #2 are slim but vaguely possible. And I've found that none of the people I know or aligned myself with fit into #3. And finally seeing that is what shifted my focus to writing books.

I still want to make movies. That's been the core of my existence for far longer than I care to admit. But now it ain't gonna happen unless I find some way of making myself into the personification of #3, and that just is NOT in my personality. So...I'm focusing on #2 and hoping someday that will help me achieve the success I want.

Question is, how do I do it? Because none of my other work is mainstream enough for film and POS won't be ready for publishing for at least a year. And it'll take at least another year to get it into print, and that's if I'm lucky. So...while I'm still moving forward and still have a goal...it still seems like centuries away and damn it's getting hard to keep focused on it.