A few avid readers of this blog (ok, just two people) emailed me recently and said it would be interesting to know what a normal day was like for me. I must admit I also enjoy asking people I know slightly or even better than slightly but don't see often what is a normal day for him/her?
If I am working during the day, I get up around 7 a.m. or earlier if I plan to do some walking (I try doing 5 miles a day at least). I go to work for however long it takes me to do what needs to be done. After that, I write, watch TV, play video games or go out. Almost every day I write. If I write in the morning it's usually poetry. My mind works better along those lines in the morning. In the evening I want to write fiction. I read before I go to bed and read about two books a week. I have been trying to force myself to socialize more and meet other people. It's not that I don't get out and meet new people already but I want to try different venues.
Add to the mix above nowadays while writing a fiction project I am conducting research on The Jersey Devil for a screenplay I am collaborating on with a friend. I went to see The 13th Child about two years ago starring Cliff Robertson. This story was based on the Jersey Devil legend. I should say, it was LOOSELY based on the legend. I was so disappointed and appalled by the movie (it suffered from bad everything- bad script, bad direction, bad acting, bad concept, etc.) I left about 45 minutes into the film. Even more depressing was that I went to great lengths to find and see this movie in the theater.
I have a steno book full of notes along with the notes and research from my collaborative partner. Sometime in the next month we plan on spending the day in the Pine Barrens of Jersey to see the sites associated with the legend. I already have ideas about how to approach the film but the spine for the script is not fully conceptualized yet.
Somehow, someway while researching the Jersey Devil legend it occured to me how much fun it would be to make a documentary about a television show I used to watch as a kid called Dark Shadows. There was an aborted documentary started for the program a few years back and I could obtain the filmed and accepted material. The producers hired to make the documentary took an expected tabloid approach to the documentary which infuriated the surviving actors of the show and caused the license holder of the series to pull all rights to using clips or music for the documentary. So the producers were essentially fired and the footage that was good is sitting around untapped. I might tap it so that's an idea on the burner.
I keep a box of index cards and the box is labelled IDEAS. Inside the box there are categories: PLAYS, SCREENPLAYS, DOCUMENTARIES, SHORT STORIES etc. That's how I keep all that organized.
I'll bet you were dying to know.
I'm getting tons of inspiration for poetry by reading Salvador Dali's book "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali" which is a pip to read. His use of the language makes it apparent to the reader how his paintings came out so . . . odd. But I love them. On any given day I will pick up my coffee table reference book containing pages and pages of Dali's work and seem as if I've gone off the deep end, and loving every minute of it.
Maybe I already went off into the deep end and now I have to write up to get this published.
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