my memory is dream memory
At some point today, I came up with a perfect title. Sometimes a title strikes you for an idea you've had kicking around forever, and just that key phrase can surprisingly unlock the entire way of approaching it for you. It's the missing piece between you and actually writing it down, working it into not just a story, but a cohesive narrative with themes and plot. Really, sometimes all it takes is a title, and today I came up with a perfect title for one of my oldest, biggest, most ambitious of story ideas, the one that started somehow as a germ of an idea, a short story I was supposed to write for a Science Fiction as Literature class at PSU in early 1998 (or late '97). That story never got turned in, and later I realized it was at least a feature film's worth of story, and I tried to develop it for a Screenwriting course PSU offered, sometime in 1999. That, too, never happened, because the more I looked at this I realized it was a novel -- and back then, I really wanted to write a novel. Anyway, now I look at this idea as nothing but a sort of Neuromancer-meets-Lost pipedream that, if I were ever in a position to pitch a near-future old-school science fiction television drama series (or at least long miniseries), I'd pitch this. If I was a name and could write a project and sell it to HBO or NBC or whatever, even the SciFi Channel maybe, it'd be this.
Anyway, I came up with a title that was miraculously the missing component, and I knew if I used that as a launching-off point I could write a couple of episodes, plot a long story-arc, a "season" or whatever, and either shelve it or, for kicks, send it to some contest or other. Try to get funding and make my own web series, I don't know. (I think the medium's ripe for something good but I've never ever seen the writing not suck.) But today was busy and I didn't bother to write it down. "I'll remember," I told myself. "You don't forget an idea like this."
For the life of me, I have no fucking clue what it was. I may go back and reread the couple of A.V. Club articles I read today (Kaufman, Office Space, Mike Leigh) to see if I can't spark that memory, because this is worse than a dream. All I have left is the impression of its impact, the sense of how perfect it was for my story. The actual title, the actual key to unlocking the story, completely gone. Poof.
Why didn't I write it down?
Anyway, I came up with a title that was miraculously the missing component, and I knew if I used that as a launching-off point I could write a couple of episodes, plot a long story-arc, a "season" or whatever, and either shelve it or, for kicks, send it to some contest or other. Try to get funding and make my own web series, I don't know. (I think the medium's ripe for something good but I've never ever seen the writing not suck.) But today was busy and I didn't bother to write it down. "I'll remember," I told myself. "You don't forget an idea like this."
For the life of me, I have no fucking clue what it was. I may go back and reread the couple of A.V. Club articles I read today (Kaufman, Office Space, Mike Leigh) to see if I can't spark that memory, because this is worse than a dream. All I have left is the impression of its impact, the sense of how perfect it was for my story. The actual title, the actual key to unlocking the story, completely gone. Poof.
Why didn't I write it down?