28
It’s been so long since I’ve been to the site, that my cookie for WordPress extinguished itself (I had to log in for the first time since February). The summer is setting fast - with the days flickering by like the broken resemblance of light you see when you blink-blink-blink to get the eyelash out. I’ve done nothing that I set out to do this summer, except launch the animatic. I’m hoping a few more things fall in place within the next couple of weeks.
Adrian’s been having to call me to let me know when he’s posted something new. He’s said people are looking for me, wondering if I was dead. I’ve seen less of him in the last 6 weeks than I probably have in the last 5 years. Finally, I was my old self again for a few heartbeats a few days ago. This is what putting in approximately 65 hours/week for work does to you.
My goals of late have been away from Myst. I’ve been clearing me head. After transcribing tens of thousands of words from our journals to tell the story of storyboarding, I’ve wanted nothing to do with any of this. Wasn’t planned that way - just kind of happened. I’ve had some financial goals that I’ve been missing for the last months, and I’m trying to rework a script I want to shoot before the end of warm days.
I finally reconnected to Myst last week after I sat down and reread all 230 pages of the script. I have lots of notes of what to cut, what’s gone missing - strategy for the next draft. Ms. Troy has told me not to admit to this, but Adrian knows it’s coming. This thing is going to top over 300 hundred before it’s said and done, and it’s going to be painstaking to enter the first face of major edits and discussion. Without a doubt, though it is beautiful.
The truth is that creatively, I’ve been feeling like the wicked stepmother. It was designed this way. Knowing that writing a feature length screenplay requires a flexibility that I’m simply not capable of right now, we decided long ago that I would take on other tasks within Mystmoviedom while Adrian pounded away. I haven’t written one word. One sentence. Nothing. I’ve eagerly awaited pages for the last year like everyone else has. I sneak over to Adrian’s on Friday nights to steal the laptop and see what’s new. I wait for PDFs to be e-mailed. After spending years carefully planning so many aspects of this project, it’s finally getting to me.
I’ve been somewhat hounding Adrian about the script as of late. Not because I don’t think he’s working hard enough, but because I’m nervous about how much longer it will take. Though I do want to see this get into the hands of our agent before winter-fall just like him, mostly I just want to get back to the old days, when we’d work together on the creation of things instead of being locked in our respective pseudo-cubicles doing our own thing. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve had nothing to do with the story - most of the conceptual material was crafted long ago by both of us. But now, when it’s actually go time - it just feels like the universe has gone away. It got away from me. Or I got away from it.
At the end of day, it’ll be okay. He’ll get there, we’ll start working together again on edits - and I’ll have my shot at penning from scratch with TBoA. He’s already told me that after this, he wants nothing to do with that one.
1:22 am
Jul 28 2008
Welcome back, Patrick!
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“I’m trying to rework a script I want to shoot before the end of warm days” - this is For Travis Preston, right?