So it’s been a minute. I haven’t made great progress forward with Red Valley. I came to a scene that’s nearly thirty pages long and that alone felt too daunting to even attempt to turn into a chapter. That, coupled with the fact that I’m doing some re-writes on LP and have started crafting my next screenplay, is why I haven’t updated in a minute.

This is usually how it goes for me. Once I’m in the middle of a project and it starts to feel boring or like work (and Red Valley has, since I’m not discovering anything new or creating the story from scratch), my mind starts wandering and exploring the possibilities of other characters and stories and scenes. And I can’t be mad about that. I’ll listen to the muse whenever she wants to chat. You have to.

But I also know splitting my time between three big stories is a lot, and I wind up spending more time just feeling overwhelmed and staring at the whiteboard than I do actually writing, but so long as I’m writing in my head then I suppose that’s okay. I recently joined the Central Coast Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club, so hopefully that will not only give me a shot of motivation but also give me a chance to pick the brains of other writers and learn and grow and wank wank wank.

Anyway, I’ll eventually finish all three of these projects. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself the last few years it’s that I can finish a story. That’s the hardest part. Anyone can start one, and lord knows I’ve started many many more stories than I’ve finished. But Red Valley and LP simply require me to sit down and do the work, which oftentimes is the hardest part. They’re already finished works, I just need to finish them again.

The other project? Once I actually spend time sitting down and crafting it it will come together. I just need to actually put in the work. Whether it’s any good or not is an entirely different thing. It may very well be shit. But at least it will be complete. I’ll take a shitty story that’s completed over a brilliant first act and nothing else any day of the week.

But that’s just me.

Cheers.