Did you know that if you type "voyage to mars" into Google, this journal will be the sixth result down, out of a possible 408,000. That's four hundred and eight
thousand results. So if someone's searching for, say, information on a real rocketship voyage to the planet Mars, they'll find this journal at the top and click on it, expecting to be forwarded to, oh, NASA? Instead, they'll get this journal. My God. How sad is that.
Type in "ragnar", on the other hand, and I'm the
seventh result from the top. Go figure.
(If anyone else finds weird Google-searches that list this site, send us an
e-mail. It's for a good cause, mind.)
It's currently 1 A.M. and I'm sitting in front of my laptop with three Microsoft Word windows open (in addition to the Blogger-window, of course), working on two different stories, both screenplays. One's called "The Dark Places" (and, yup,
www.thedarkplaces.com is mine), and I've been working on that one on and off since, oh, '95? Too long, I know, but there you go. I finished a long first draft back in double-oh, but it didn't exactly
sing - more like a croak (and it got a rather average mark in a screenwriting contest, which I'm still sore about) - so I went back to square...three. And started working. Why not ditch it? Because it's got potential. It's a good story, and I want to at least get it right before tossing it into a dark closet and shutting the door.
The logline - one sentence description of the story - is currently this:
"A young woman – haunted by the death of her brother – returns to her roots to learn about her family’s history, and finds that some dark secrets are better left forgotten."
Loglines are hard, because you have to compress one hundred and twenty pages into one sentence and twenty-five words (or less - and I know mine's more than that, but I'm working on it). If you can't, the idea goes, the story's too complicated. They may be right, but not really. Loglines end up being less about the actual story and more about simple marketing. There's nothing wrong with marketing - in theory - but when decisions about scripts are made based on loglines, and not on the script itself, it's problematic. Lots of good, complex, well-written scripts are probably passed over because their loglines were too confusing, or too dull. But it's something you got to do, so do it I...do.
As for the script itself, it's being submitted to various places at the end of February (I've got a very real deadline on the 28th of that month), thus I'm up late. I didn't really get a lot of work done during my vacation, for various reasons. First, I actually needed three weeks just to have enough energy to start working again. I was wiped out. Big time. Second, there have been so many different family gatherings and parties and dinners, that it's been hard to find the time to sit down by myself in front of the PC. Third, when you're stuffed and sitting on the couch, it's a whole hell of a lot easier to put on a DVD and watch a good movie than it is to get up, stretch those creative muscles, and start working. Ironically enough, if I had another two or three weeks of vacation time right now, I'd get a lot of things done. I'm rested. I'm eager to start writing again. I'm in a creative mood. But on Monday it's back to the office, back to my "real" job. Lots of writing to do there, too, and all of it great fun, but it does mean I'll spend all of my energy on other things than my private projects.
I guess that's the way it is for a lot of us, for a lot of you. Our jobs take precedence. Good or bad, that's the way it is.
But, regardless, I have a deadline, the script's moving forward, and I intend to get that Dark Places website up-and-running within a few months.
