Decision Points

Posted on January 2, 2012 by A.C. Heron

Well, I skipped a whole month of posting here to end 2011. In truth, last year was the most packed work and travel year of my life. I visited the UK four or five times and Germany and France once each. One upside? I finished a second novel and a screenplay mainly thanks to long plane rides.

Of course, video games continue to be a huge drag on what could be creativity time, but since that’s my day job, I have a hard time not spending a large portion of each day on them.

2012 isn’t looking less busy for sure. At work, I could very well be going from one “ship year” right to another, which I’m not sure I’m exactly looking forward to. But that’s why I make the medium bucks!

Outside my day job, I’ve been putting off trying to figure out what to do with the two novels and the screenplay I’ve spent the last four years worth of true free time pounding away at. I don’t have Hollywood connections. I don’t have an agent. Do those things even matter anymore? I don’t know. As I’ve posted before, I’m still leaning towards having a chapter at a time of the novels proofread and then posting it here to start building a following. So will I?

I’m not sure. There’s a part of me (the fretful creative part) that has crippling doubts that the two novels are fiscally viable in their current form. Maybe the world isn’t in the mood for epic space opera right now? I’ll admit, that worries me.

So much so that I’ve even been thinking about breaking the current content out into a series of short stories (in as much, it would be closer to what I initially imagined Rolo would be…a series of space adventures more akin to Star Trek then the epic it shaped up to be). The current novels would land somewhere near to the middle of a new story arc, in that case, which would mean writing a lot of new material from scratch. Not a bad thing, mind you. I like writing. But there’s a part of me that worries that I am just subconsciously sabotaging myself. Keeping myself from taking a chance and just posting what I have and seeing where that takes me.

If there is anyone out there reading this other than spambots, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2011 by A.C. Heron

What I am not thankful for: stupid idiot spammers who still somehow think I am going to approve their probably auto-generated comments.

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Screenplay done!

Posted on October 2, 2011 by A.C. Heron

Sometime last Spring I started thinking about writing a screenplay. At first I started transforming Rolo into a screenplay, which actually helped me refactor a little bit of book one to move more quickly. But, I pushed that aside to write Follow-Up.

On a whim though, that summer, I decided I wanted to work on something collaboratively with my Sunday Writing buddy, Brian, and I had the concept for a different screenplay stuck firmly in my brain. It actually takes place in my Rolo-verse, but in a significantly different era therein.

So we kicked off. Brian was supremely helpful in the early stages brainstorming the overall structure of the film we wanted to build. He provided a significant chunk of the central character relationships that give the movie form as well as the distinct voice of an minor, but important character.

And then we discovered, given our busy schedules, how hard it would be to actually collaborate on the writing. So I mostly took it upon myself to write the first draft.

Which then got set aside as I finished the rough draft of Follow-Up over the Winter. So, this Spring and Summer, during the rare moments where I wasn’t working OR playing video games for my day job (and achievement illness) — primarily on flights — I was working on finishing the screenplay, dubbed Untouchable (a working title). Brian provided course correction more than once that make the rough draft that much better. I am deeply grateful.

Untouchable is 141 pages long (which, going by standard conventions of a page per minute, is a tad long) with 14 voiced characters, two of which are the central focus of the film. I kept speaking parts to a minimum, actually, so I don’t think that’s too bad. I do think that I have included far too much action description and can probably cut that stuff down. I may lose a scene. But overall I am very happy with this rough draft. Happy enough to hand it over to Brian and see what he wants to do with it.

Next steps, beyond polish? I have some ideas that may allow me to get connected to an agent. Until then, I won’t be sharing any additional details on plot or character, sadly. But I am happy for close friends to give it a read.

Otherwise? I will go back to Follow-Up and do some polish on that. I will probably start looking for a professional editor for Rolo so I can start my grand plan of rolling that out chapter by chapter in the new year, when my work life slows down.

So that’s my monthly update. I hope to get back to more blog posts if I can find some reader-editors for Follow-Up and this screenplay. We’ll see.

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Another writer draws near!

Posted on August 30, 2011 by A.C. Heron

Just a quick note that another friend of this author is writing and blogging (and tweeting). I’ve known Jessica for a very. VERY long time and also know of her all-consuming passion for reading. So I am very interested to see where she will take us (her future readers).

So welcome Jessica Salyer to the wide world of authoring. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Ze Tweetz
Ze Blog

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What is AC Heron Up To?

Posted on August 14, 2011 by A.C. Heron

I’ve made some tweets about this, so I thought I would talk a little bit about what I have been up to since I finished the first draft of Follow-Up (aka Rolo Book 2).

My day job is still kicking my behind. In fact, I am traveling more than ever (just hit 100,000 miles on the year, with up to three trips to Europe to come before Thanksgiving) and beyond that my work project is entering the crunch months. So there’s that.

But outside of work, I’ve set a second draft of Follow-Up aside to work on a screenplay. I’ll get back to Follow-up after some readers dive into the rough draft. But the screenplay had come up as a thing, so I am collaborating with a college chum (the other half of the so-called Sunday Writing meet-up) to get that first draft done.

Why am I working on a screenplay? Well, several reasons, honestly.

First, I’ve always wanted to write one. The formatting constraints alone make the craft of writing a screenplay an interesting challenge. CeltX has been my tool of choice for this and is a great free toolset for it.

Second, I’ve got a great movie idea. It happens to take place in the Rolo-verse*, though many many many years later, which makes it a cool thing to put to virtual paper (for me).

Third, it’s kind of nice to work on something that can be finished (in rough draft form) in a tenth of the time of a novel. It’s entirely possible I will be able to finish a rough draft of this screenplay in the next set of flights this week. If so, then that means that I’ll have written 2/3 of the thing in about three weeks. That’s pretty awesome (to me, anyway).

After that there will be plenty of polish work, formatting minutia to take care of and my collaborator will have plenty of feedback to incorporate. But still. About a month for a finished thing. Yikes!

By contrast, the first draft of Rolo took somewhere like 9 months and Follow-Up about a year (I think, since I was writing less often for various reasons). The polish drafts of Rolo alone took another year above that 9 months. That’s a lot of time to spend for an old fart like me. ;D

Anyway, I will talk more about the screenplay here after I finish it. For now, I’ll be reading some great scripts (The Dark Knight, Toy Story 3, American Beauty, etc.) to make sure I have a handle on formatting and finishing Act 3 roughly simultaneously.

So that is what I have been up to.

When work isn’t holding my head under water, anyway. Til next month!

*Yes, I know the Rolo-verse doesn’t exist yet. Let me have this one!

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