In my last post I detailed the negative of the past two
years. A habit that I seem to have fallen into over the past year.
Doom and Gloom do not make the heart grow fonder. At times over
these past two years it has felt like I've been on a train that has come off
the tracks. The unconventional way I have gone about things for much of
my life has led me to feel like that on more than one or two occasions.
I was asked recently Do you have any regrets?
I've made more than a couple poor decisions in my life, so I
had to think about the question for a moment. After I eliminated a few choices,
I told this person that my decision to leave California
was probably my biggest regret. While living in Georgia
has kept me close to my family, I miss the artistic community and culture of Los
Angeles . Don't get me wrong, I love Georgia .
And my time in LA was a love/ hate relationship. In the twelve
years I have been back in Georgia
there have been moments where I felt that I was part of an
artistic environment. However, those moments were because I either
paid to be a part of it, or had to give so much of myself that those moments
were of my own invention.
LA and the ATL are two different worlds.
My time in LA was about my attempts to start an acting
career. When I left I was tired of the scene, but I thought I would be
back. Life happened and that return was indefinitely postponed.
It's funny to think about it in context with what i am doing now. I
was planning to do research on Cipher when I left LA so that I might
write my first big screenplay. The world seemed to pave the way for me,
making my path back East as easy as could be.
What's funny is how much more difficult things have been while working
on Monarch--the story that finally delivers a version of Cipher to the
public. Like many journeys, things start off with a clear picture of
where one is going and the path is free of obstacles. The longer that
journey lasts, and the closer one gets to the end,
obstacles inevitably seem to pop up, altering the course or changing the journey altogether.
It was not my intention back in 2000 to write Monarch.
The story and the characters had not even been imagined yet. It
took the writing of twenty screenplays and several short stories, not to mention
taking numerous writing classes, attending several seminars and devoting years
to writing groups, to gather enough confidence to try and tackle a
novel.
I must confess that while all of the above was extremely
helpful, my most influential experience over the past decade was people
watching. People watching is an invaluable tool for writers.
If you can't pick things up about people, there is no point in trying to
write a story that involves them.
Like in real life, my characters are amalgamate of
their environment, their surroundings. They are also made up of large portions
of myself. I could go through just about every character I've ever
written and find a piece of myself in them.
With the end nearly in site...
Since I released Stage Two I've had to begin thinking about
what happens after the release of Monarch. For two years it was my
beacon and I followed it without question. The two J's, June and July,
have been tough months. I feared putting the cart before the horse by
planning too far ahead, losing track of the last two stages and their need for
release over the next few months.
