So Long Screenwriting, It's Been... Fun?

I’m getting off the old screenwriting merry-go-round for awhile. It was a fun 7 years. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to continue writing screenplays, I have to move on with my life and plan for the day I will no longer have my day job. It was nice to have that job because it afforded me the luxury of spending a lot of time on screenwriting. However, things change. I’m upgrading/learning some new and exciting writing skills over the next year and a half – something that will allow me to quit my day job and move on to the next phase of my life.

I must admit that I’ve become just a little frustrated with my failure to bust open the doors (or even put a small dent in them) of the spec screenwriting industry – nay, a lot. I could rant and rave about all that is wrong with it and how frustrating it is, but I choose not to. That, combined with the changes in my work life have forced my hand. I’m not giving up on my screenwriting nor the screenplays that I have written. I just need to get away from the revolving door of rejection and all the people who want to charge you to tell you how great your screenplay is for awhile. It starts to weigh on you.

As I start on the path to change my work life, I’m also going to embark on a new writing project. I just can’t stop writing – that’s a bad idea. So I’m starting a novel. My first project is an adaptation of my screenplay ’Postal’. Usually it’s the other way around – a novel gets written and then adapted for film. I think of all the screenplays that I have written, this one would make a great novel. It’s really a semi-autobiographical, fiction-based-on-fact effort.

I’ve also re-written and edited the short story that I wrote in 2009 to submit into this year’s CBC Short Story Contest. An original story I wrote in 2009, re-wrote in 2010, then turned into a short screenplay in 2013, I re-adapted (hmmm, I don’t know if that’s a word – sounds good though) it as a short story. I re-named it to reflect the script of the same name: ‘The Seventh Saint’.  I’m thinking that the next 18 months are going to get very, very busy – work, school, novel… We’ll see how it goes.