Life is just a Hayride (and Hayrides weren't meant to last)

Hullo, Hallo. I suppose some of you are expecting some account of this mysterious trip I went on last week. Alas, no. Not here. Not now. This blog survives upon my whims, after all, and that's not what I'm compelled to write about right now...

No. Today, we're taking a detour and I'm going to write about what I normally don't write about here: the script I'm currently writing.

HAYRIDE.

Completely original. Not suggested by any producer, nor based on any play, book, foreign film, 80s horror film, YA or graphic novel.

I've been kicking this one around for far too long but I am finally making some real progress on it. I'm talking point-of-no-return progress. (That elusive point at which you've moved beyond the exciting opening moments of CREATIVE IMPULSE, and you begin to dig deeper into the soil.)

Let me preface this by answering that YES, I've been drinking—how do you expect me to possibly keep up with this blog if I weren't drinking?!—but that said...

"HAYRIDE" is the script that's going to kill "THE BUTCHERHOUSE CHRONICLES".

Or rather, it needs to be. It's what my goal is. And I don't think it's necessarily a difficult goal.

I wrote "The Butcherhouse Chronicles" as a stage play, and it honestly was only supposed to be a stage play (despite what the cynics may think, I didn't write it as bait for a screenwriting career). I adapted it into a screenplay for Paramount and I don't even know what it looks like anymore because they eventually hired a produced-screenwriter to do a rewrite on it, but that's neither here nor there.

"Hayride" is an original screenplay. Starting life as a screenplay, not an adaptation. I've done all my prep work: sketched out an outline and major character bios and the deeper meaning and all that shite.

The process of writing it (on spec) is always its own journey. Filled, variously, with hope, excitement, setbacks, self-doubt, self-aggrandizing... and ultimately sheer pig-headed determination...

But I am cautiously excited about it right now.

The trick is having an outline but not being afraid to stray from it. This may sound completely pretentious but the story begins to take on its own life and tells you what needs to happen. This script has genuinely surprised me as I've progressed in carving it out. Seeing where it goes and what the characters have chosen to do. I know that might sound completely batty to some of you—worthy of parody and ridicule—but these character take on a life of their own if you give them the allowance.

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH...

You are just going to have to trust me. This MEANS something to me.