Down the Rabbit Hole

NaNoWriMo's been over for a bit now, but I'm only just beginning to feel the slump. After a month of spending hours with my characters, researching the perils of deep-cave exploration and the mechanics of spelunking, and not-so-patiently explaining why I wouldn't be making that baseball game with friends after all, the relative quiet of January is, well, a little disquieting. I'm a little sad to be honest!

Still, one thing that's bucking me up? Knowing that Script Frenzy is only a few short months away. NaNo came first for me, and is near and dear to my heart, but Script Frenzy might be a footstep nearer and dearer. I was a literature-writing major at UC San Diego, and chose a focus in screenwriting for my last year there.

My now-dusty portfolio consists of a spec script for The Office, in which Michael Scott discovers Facebook and demands to know why Pam won't friend him back (wow, remember when people were "discovering" Facebook?), a feature where a boy decides he will resurrect his recently deceased older brother, and a pilot script that examines the sometimes sordid, less than magical lives of the workers inhabiting the princess dresses and mouse costumes at the non-copyright-infringing "Fizneeland."

Still, I can't seem to shake this last novel off completely, to the point where I'm thinking I might just adapt it into a screenplay this April. Even though the final product was pretty beastly, there are hints of a strong jawline and glinting eyes buried somewhere underneath the hairiness. I can excavate something yet. It's the setting, really, that's inspiring me. Caves! Journeying underneath the earth's crust! Stalactites and stalagmites, and still pools of water, hollow echoes and eyeless amphibians! The thought of it all makes me hop, and I'm glad to have reason to keep exploring as I look ahead to Script Frenzy.

What about you? Looking back on all that hard work this November, what is most exciting to you about your novel? Anyone else adapting a NaNo novel for Script Frenzy?

– Tim

Photo by Flickr user Bernt Rostad