Hello, friends, family, friends, enemies, and strangers alike! I had meant to update this blog more often for the sake of consistency. However, it seems the goal of a monthly post has become a quarterly post, which isn’t terrible when I think about it. I talk and ramble so frequently in the outside world, how can I possibly continue the conversation online with myself every month? Maybe someday, if I have something worth telling y’all every time.
As for this post, I have big news! Throughout the last two years or so, i.e. the Pandemic Years, I’ve been thinking about other creative ventures. I’ve always had my dreams, ambitions, and schemes of starting a band, writing a book, painting again, designing clothes, branding, etc., all stored away in various files of my brain. Most hope to see the light of day but will inevitably be stored away to remain dreams. There simply isn’t enough time in the day, or in a lifetime, it seems. I won’t go into the existential dread and hopelessness for the future living through the initial terror of a worldwide pandemic and surviving throughout has caused, especially before turning 30, but in short, I’ve been thinking of the long-term for once. I’ve begun to think of how I can realize those locked-away dreams, how I can create to fulfill my own needs, and ultimately how I can make a difference, an impact in someone else’s life, while also preserving my own voice.
Long story short, while photography has always been my outlet for expression, I’ve been revisiting my dear friend, writing.
I wrote a handful of short fiction and poems in my youth, and a handful of research papers written in college which are irrelevant save for my final paper that can now be found in the Grand Valley State University’s ScholarWorks archive concerning my first major photo series, Ever Present. Writing a novel has always been in the back of my mind since high school, but has always taken a seat on a high-up shelf, with other projects and things taking precedence; I admit that this largely had to do with the terror of such a long-term project, a commitment to something so intimating requiring so much attention. Last year’s nosedive into the viral pandemic led me to take my first steps into the world of writing again. I began taking notes, creating narratives, and inventing characters and falling in love with them. At some point, I was blathering about my ideas to my partner at the time, but complaining that I didn’t know the best way to capture them. Should I write a book? A series of books? Should I make a photo series instead? Or a movie? She answered with another question, and while I don’t remember precisely how she put it, I remember it like: How do you see it play out in your head? I told her that I see it as a film in my head, with scenes, a soundtrack, dynamic shots, the whole shebang. With that, I answered my own question. They have to be filmed. Thus, before they are filmed, they must be written in a screenplay.
If I may break the fourth wall of my own blog post here, I must stop the ramble. Remember when I wrote “Long story short,…” only to continue the long story? Nice try. I must try to get better at keeping things concise. The point of all this is, I’ve completed my first screenplay. LAST FIRST DATE is a short film I wrote this month that I of course meant to have completed months ago. The logline:
A budding romance is threatened by flesh-eating party-crashers.
A gay zombie punk-rock horror romance. Everything I loved shoved into ten pages. Regardless of if anything ever comes of it, having it written and complete is another weight taken off my eternally-procrastinating mind, another dream given the gift of life. I love it.
Let me know if you’d like to check it out.
