The Big Thing After the First Big Thing (AKA The Season of the Writer)...

As you know "Something to Hide" will be going into production very soon. (We're talking tomorrow night, folks!) That means my schedule will begin to open up and my life will return to normal... if you want to call it living. (If you want to call it normal!)

For months now, I've had this great idea in the back of my head. I think it started around Christmas. It was this - actually, it was just a feeling, not yet a germ, not yet a seed, not yet a seedling to take root to turn into an inkling that would later grow into an idea.

It was a tapping on the back of my cerebellum.

All I knew was that it would be really need to have a guy interviewed on stage. In fact, there'd be no interviewer.

This wouldn't be a monologue.

But what would it be?

Months passed.

"Something to Hide" came along. Then, I was inspired to write "Falling Together", my first screenplay. It looked like my course was set for the next few months.

That was until last night.

The feeling dropped into fertile ground, took seed... and grew.

Now, it wasn't just one guy on stage. He was still there, under a light. Then, there was another light... and many other people. (Yes, I'm intentionally being vague.) I've always been interested in minimalists... mostly because I think it's a stupid way to go. Stupid people must intrigue me.

Now, I had a format but it certainly wasn't a play. Not by a long shot. There was no story to be told.

That was until this morning.

Of all the things I miss about being with Rosa, one of the things I miss about myself from back then is my books. I wrote seven novels, and though none of them were published I always I thought they were quite good. For all of those novels, there were an innumerable amount started and never finished. One of those was called "Happy Landings". "Happy Landings" was the third in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels, two of which were never finished. The first, "My Side" (based on a newspaper column, after which this Blog was so aptly named), told the story of Francis Ell, a person who paralleled my own life up to Kelly Johnson, a girl I was desperately infatuated with in high school; it was my first completed novel. The second, "Havings of a Have Not" dealt with my fears about success and marriage, started shortly after Rosa and I were married - never finished. The third, also never finished, was called "Happy Landings"

"Happy Landings" came to me shortly after I nearly died in a plane crash... that nearly happened. It tells the story of a man who meets the love of his life and dies shortly thereafter in a plane crash. Then, he watches as she slowly puts her life back together. He narrates the story.

I started it a few years into my marriage and it was ironic, considering how things ended up with Rosa and I. (In point of fact, if the main character had broken the woman's heart by cheating on her instead of by dying, it would have predicted the outcome of my marriage very nearly perfectly.)(Which raises the eternal question: Is kissing another woman when you're married the same as having sex with another woman?) Of course, this book could never be turned into a play. It had too many locations, too many characters, too many asides, too many tangents... it was, very much, your typical Ken stream of consciousness.

It could never be turned into a play... until today. For you see, now I have the format and now I have the story.

My first play, "Everything Changes", stole the title from one of my unfinished novels. Now, I'm ready to steal both the name and the story from another.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm still as itching to write "Falling Together" as ever. It just so happens, I'm also itching to write this as well.

I'll let you know how that goes.

When I plan to fit in ever important video game playing time is beyond me.