THE STORY SO FAR:PART 300: FRIDAY

FROM BOOKS TO MOVIES—VICTOR THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Yes, I know I may seem to be wandering behind the scenes at present, but my current focus is writing a screenplay—and it is wringing blood, sweat and tears from my body (metaphorically speaking—I’m not actually sitting in an ever expanding pool of crimson).

Situation entirely normal, you may say—whoever promised writing would be easy—and I would be hard-pressed to disagree in a general sense.

Normal, it is not. Normally, I write books, which are very different things from movie screenplays. The transition from book-writing mindset to movie scribe is akin to walking through Alice’s Looking Glass.

You have, of course, read ALICE IN WONDERLAND and ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS? Of course you have. How else can one get through life without such invaluable manuals about the human condition.

The above illustration, by the way, is of the Jabberwock—a truly wonderful name which fascinated me as a child.

I’m actually not concerned about the amount of effort I’m putting into the screenplay. The aspect that worries me somewhat is time. I feel like the White Rabbit in that regard because while I’m focused on the screenplay, God alone knows what I am neglecting—but when I write, it is full focus.

You know when I was small, I had a white rabbit as a pet. Then, when I went to my grandmother’s farm for the first time, I discovered that rabbits were regularly trapped, skinned, gutted and eaten.

The world, I was to discover, could be a decidedly confusing place.