electric mist

divided

I am at a crossroads of sorts, writing-wise. The thriller I was mentioning down a few entries is going really well. It is the kind of story that's a fast moving script with very dark twists, which is a good follow-up to the current script the agent has. The divided feeling I'm having is that I can see this story being a thriller novel. Again with the dark and twisty, but in the novel, I could play around with a couple of subplots and with internal things I just cannot show in a script. Both avenues for this story appeal to me, and I cannot make up my mind which way I want to go.

If I'm being honest (and Tamar is going to bop me on the head for this), (and I mean that in a funny / loving way because as a good friend, she's had to suffer through me babbling this angst probably too many times before) then I have to admit that one part of the appeal to going ahead and continuing the story in the script format is because the action comedy is currently with an agent, she is going to take it out next month (so far as I still know), and having a different script that shows some range would be a good screenwriting career-type of move. Let's set aside the little fact that the actual business of film drives me batshit the majority of the time, I have to ask myself if the reason I haven't gotten further with any one particular writing field is due in (large) part because I get bored, or I don't focus on just one format? Am I considering the idea of following up the script the agent has with another script because I want to write a script... or because I don't want to be caught without something new / fresh should the one the agent has get people interested in meeting me again? Since I don't know what the business of novel-selling is like yet first-hand, I have nothing to really compare that screenwriting-business-hatred part I feel, though I have a couple of published friends who describe the woe of trying to get PR for their books, trying to make sure the books have shelf-time, have some sort of backing from the very publisher who put it out, who writhe in agony when so many people drop the ball and the book dies fast because no one was willing to spend a dime to alert the potential audience that hey, there is a book here they would love...well, the process doesn't sound any prettier on the other side of the fence.

I started off wanting to write novels. That's what I went back to undergraduate school to do -- to go ahead and finish that degree (when the boys were very young), and get the kind of background reading / eduction that helps a writer, well, write. (Notice I didn't say "get published.") Then for reasons that are long and for a different entry one day, I got sidetracked into graduate school for screenwriting and loved it for various reasons. First, I really had to learn structure and so many writing lessons, and screenwriting is a very structured medium. Second, I could write scripts faster than a novel, so I had more things people could read more often -- a sense of gratification when writing has so few, if any, and so far in between. Third, people tended to give me strong positive feedback on the scripts (and then since I could write more, there was more stroking to be had.)

Writing the novel is far lonelier and isolated. It doesn't pay nearly as well if I sell (but just going with the odds, it is far more likely that I could sell a novel than a script since there are thousands of new novels published every year and only 400 or so films made, and maybe only a couple of thousand of sales, if that many, a year, most of those going to established screenwriters). On the plus side, writing is far more peaceful an experience to me, and I enjoy the freedom of the form immensely. I was at my happiest writing when I was working on the novel before this latest round of script stuff.

But am I just hiding from fear of failure if I decide to write this as a novel? I dunno.

One way I had been answering this is to just work on it in both formats, but I'm at the point where I probably should choose one over the other one, because it's going to affect how the story develops, since I could do a lot more within the novel. I'm worried that if I keep trying to divide loyalties, I will manage to get no further in either career (novelist vs. screenwriter). Unfortunately, neither form is feeling like the absolute right choice, and so I keep dividing my time.

Anybody with a reliable crystal ball handy?

Posted by toni at February 25, 2004 12:48 AM