Sunday, April 26, 2015

Return to Blogging

My wife was in the hospital from mid December until a week ago. I dropped all of my other activities to help her. Now that she is home, I think I can get back to my creative projects.

Wife's Health

When my wife went into the hospital last December, my top priority was to help take care of her. I dropped all work on this blog, my films and my writing projects. While she is home now and things are stable, we still have a way to go before she is healthy again.

While she was in the hospital, I visited her every day. I took her home cooked food; the hospital food was not to her taste. I know I am fortunate to be able to drop every thing else and just focus on her. Many other people don't have that luxury.

Now that my wife is home and more capable of taking care of herself, I feel I can start to work on my creative projects again.

Normally at the start of the year, I write a blog post about my plans. It is well past new years, but it is time for me to do that again.

Blog

I want to get back to my blog with a post every week. Until last December I had only missed a few times since the beginning of 2010. I hope to keep to that schedule again.

My Most Difficult Case

This project has been on my to-do list since the early 1990s, and I finished it last year. It is nice to be done with it. I do need to try to promote it. I have it posted on a pay per view site. I think that is the way to go with my films. This is an experiment to gain some understanding of the process.

Website Theme

In December I started to work on a new theme for my website. The old one was not mobile friendly and a bit clunky. It was a version of the Core theme that I had fiddled around with. I set up a test site using Bitnami. I did some preliminary work, but didn't get far with it.

A few weeks ago I discovered that someone was injecting a spam link into my main page. I didn't have time to fix it, so I tried a different theme: Candour. It took care of the mobile friendliness and the injection problem. It doesn't look exactly the way I would like, but I don't see a need to do anything with it for a while.

Summer is Too Short (and the Rabbits Ate All the Seeds)

This is a short movie I worked on last year. Everything is shot, but it will take a lot of post production to get it ready. It will be finicky work.

Felix

I had started a rewrite of this story, but have left it for a long time. I had planned to do that anyway. It is time to get back to work on it.

The Barrier
I have a version of this movie done (version 0.6), but I want to do some more work on it. There are some changes I'd like to make to some of the dialogue, but the big change is to replace the "robot" voices with actors. Xtranormal can do that, but the status of the program is still up in the air, so I'm reluctant to start.

I don't think a movie about transportation planning will find a large audience, so I don't want to spend too much money on it.

Pete's Plan

I'd written this short short story a couple of years ago and submitted it to a few Science Fiction magazines. I had rejections from all of them. I had planned to submit to some others, but got side tracked onto other projects. The main comment I got was that it read like a treatment for a story rather than a story. While I like what I did do, I think I should try a rewrite in first person. I'm inclined to post it on my website rather than try to submit it to magazines again.

Bright Freedom

I'd done this as a movie script, but then decided to redo it as a novelette. I got a 17,600 word draft done and started to make revisions to it, but put it on hold. I'd like to get back to it and get it into shape to have some other people read it.

Another Story

When I reviewed where I left off on my projects I came across a post: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/another-story/. I talked about a new story idea, but didn't say anything about the story itself. I could not remember anything about it. I managed to find the material I wrote up. It is a short detective story.

A New Transportation Planning Story

About a year ago I did some work on the outline for another transportation planning story. I'd forgotten about this one too. I had a look at the outline this week and developed it a bit further. It still needs work, but I think it has potential. For a story like this, I think I should spend much more time on the outline than I do on the story itself.

Ancient Astronauts

When I first heard of this idea I was convinced it was true. Later, as I learnt more about it, it all seemed to evaporate in smoke. There was nothing there.

I still find the idea intriguing, but there seems to be very little serious study of the idea, even though it is plausible that aliens visited Earth in the distant past. The field has been taken over by people who recycle old claims that have been debunked.

I would like to do something with the concept. Initially I want to write an article that takes a serious look at the idea. Then maybe I can develop a story.

My Priorities

My wife, of course, is my top priority.

I find it hard to pick one of these projects to work on first. As a start I think I will do some work on Summer is Too Short and then work on Felix. Then we'll see where that goes.



This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog