Updated on the writing front

Another Monday night passed another Monday Night Raw not watched. I haven't watched RAW in weeks. This is for several reasons, none of which are that I've lost my love for the "sport" of professional wrestling. First, the product isn't enjoyable anymore. There are no new angles, no new characters that are fun, no new storylines that develop anyone. One of the one bright spots in the last few months was when Edge won the title, but that was quickly squashed. Second, the wrestling blows. Outside of a few matches here any there, the wrestling (which is the most important thing to me) has been lackluster at best. I can sit through dumb angles, stupid gimmicks, and a bad TV product if the matches are good, since that's what I watch for, but they haven't been. Lastly, lack of importance. Nothing on the show seems to be important anymore, everything is a hot shot angle. The slow build end up being slow because creative didn't know where to go with them. I just get the feeling that the long term planning is second fiddle to "shock value" aspects of the program at this time.

 

On the flip side, I have been writing a lot lately. My current project, a quasi sci-fi psychological thriller is moving along nicely. There really aren't any "true" sci-fi elements to it, meaning no aliens, spaceships, or anything "weird" but it does deal with some scientific concepts a bit, and some stuff that may or may not be possible in real life. At any rate, I had laid down 85 pages up until last week, just sort of letting my brain take me which ever direction I wanted, when I realized I was way in over my head. There was too much going on, too many subplots, to many characters that I just didn't have time to establish or flesh out. I also realized that I had gotten away, drastically, from what my main idea was to begin with, what happens when you wake up and you are someone else? So, I dropped about 40-45 pages, backing up quite a bit. I kept the first 25-30 pages pretty much change free (I am very satisfied with how it starts), and made some slight changes to some content in pages 30-40, and am pretty much brand new from page 40-65 right now.

 

I think it's a much stronger product because I've kept it simple and true to the point. I think this is a pretty original idea too, though some will compare it so a TV series that ran in the late eighties and early nineties called Quantum Leap, those comparisons are superficial at best. I've developed some interesting twists that will play out over the last 40 pages or so, things I wanted to accomplish from the get go but had strayed too far from in my initial draft. I'm now able to lay the ground work for this stuff again. Hopefully I can complete this before my friend Ryley heads off to Spain. I'd like him to take a look at it and let me know if the idea works or not. My first draft has everything very out in the open, but with some tweaks later on, I think I can keep people second guessing enough to not know what is really going on.

 

Started a new lifting program yesterday. I've worked out for about a month and gotten the rust off, so I'm going to get more serious again. I can already see some results but that's due to diet as well. Hopefully by mid summer I'll be close to where I was at the start of last year.

 

-O