the write stuff, part one

int. office cubicle - night
jai, early 30s, is writing an entry for his blog instead of working. his team leader approaches and cuts off his arms with a chainsaw. his blood floods the office floor. a paper boat floats by, with two ants in the titanic pose. it is suddenly eaten by a great black shark.

seriosuly, i could really see myself writing shit like that for a living. not exactly like that but something that makes more sense. currently, i have about a dozen movie ideas and a bunch of random concepts gestating in my brain. i want to write them down, i really do, but:

1. i dont have the time. well, of course, i can make time but with a family and a job on top of my priority list, i just won't be able to make enough. all my film ideas, from beginning to end, every line of dialogue, every sequence, they're all in my head. and when i write them down, i have to finish because one of my flaws is the moment i write an idea down, it gets erased in my brain. i dont now why (maybe to make space for new ones) but i just forget them completely. ive tried it a couple of times, just writing the first act. but when i come back to it, i just cant continue where i left off because i couldnt figure out a lot of things and tend to edit too much that i cant move on. its like retracing my steps and going, wait why did go this way again? i also tried making notes but that caused even greater headaches, sitting down, staring at the overlapping lines and arrows, words and names with double underlines, and wondering, what the heck did these mean? the solution to this is if could just do that thing that stephen king's protagonists do, cut myself off from the world, take a vacation in a strange town and type away without interruption.

2. its sort of pointless. i used to write by pencil and actually finish short stories. but in relation to #1, when i read them again, there's so much i want to edit. some i even want to throw away and burn. i guess during those years, i just wrote whatever came to mind, not thinking about sense, purpose, or marketability. a few years ago i did a couple of pitches for an indie film to a friend. he said they weren't socially relevant. i never knew they had to be. since then, ive lost hope. i still dream of making films but ive accepted the fact that it just might not ever happen. no one's willing to invest in my ideas. i dont have the funds to do it on my own. i could still try and go straight to the big guys but we all know that requires connections and i have this fear that they would reject a pitch but use it anyway as if it was theirs. my last chance to penetrate this filthy industry and clean it up is to save up and go back to school.

i remember when i was filling out forms for college, i wanted to tick the checkboxes for film and literature as my first and second course choices respectively. my mom talked me out of it (she said i wont earn anything from them) and instead made me choose business administration. i dropped out after two years. now i cant really blame her. being the eldest grandchild, i was the principal candidate for taking over the family business. but i do think that my parents shouldn't have expected that i'd actually fit that role, having seen grade schooler me rip out used pages from notebooks to turn them into comic books at the end of every school year. they never stopped me but they didnt support me either, not until after college did they realize that maybe it was the path i was supposed to take. but by then it was too late. my mom said that i could have simply just switched courses instead of dropping out. but it still meant i wasted so much time away from honing my craft. that's like riding a bus to destination a, getting off at midpoint, going back all the way home and taking the bus to destination b. except that i had already missed the bus.

but like i said, i dont blame my parents. i have learned to understand that they just didnt understand me. they didnt know what to do with a boy who refused to go out and play with other kids so that he could live in his make-believe world. the most they could do with my "talent" was have me do my siblings' projects that involved writing or drawing. my mom took me to a painting class once which i didnt like because all we did was copy things. here's a photograph, clone it using a pentagraph. let's go to the park, paint that monument. no thank you, sir,  i want to create. (but also because im bad with colors)

i love my parents. i love them the way they are. if i could relive the past, i'd still pretty much want them the way they were. it would be me that would do things differently. i'd be more of a rebel as i should have been. i'd pursue my dream regardless of what they say. because it's a dream that should not be ignored, put aside, or shunned, like it's a dream of being a murderer and killing people (although it basically is, fictionally). it's a great dream that should be embraced, cherished and encouraged with fervor. had it been so, i would not be constantly tormented by ideas hankering to materialize right now. i'd probably be hunched over a laptop typing a screenplay or a novel at this very moment, instead of this blogpost.

and so, i close with a promise to fully support my daughter's ambitions as long as they have no direct negative effects to anyone, most especially to herself.