I once made a full-length feature film, based on a novel that I had written and turned into a screenplay.

Ok, I didn’t actually write the novel.

The story was mine, and the intention was there, but the actual writing of the thing never happened, because I realized that the time I would have spent writing the book could have been time spent on filming the movie version, so I skipped over the book-writing part.

It wasn’t necessarily laziness that kept me from writing my book, it was the realization that I had limited time to work on my idea, and writing, editing and publishing a book was bound to eat up all of that time.

By skipping the book, I had plenty of time to work on my film. The idea was to draw the scenes out in a storyboard so that my film crew could easily see how to capture my story, so that while the movie-makers were preparing to film the scenes, I would be writing the script, perfecting the flow of the words that would enhance the pictures.

Ok, I didn’t actually draw out the storyboard.

There was just no time! I could have scribbled out something quickly, of course, and the expert film crew that I was going to hire could have easily decoded my scribbles, but I hadn’t come up with a good opening scene for the movie, and kept getting stalled on that first frame.

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

I struggled with that opening scene in my head for hours, and each good idea was followed by a better one, so that I didn’t dare start work on the project. It would be silly-- I thought-- to begin filming a scene when a better one was due to pop into my imagination any second.

Great ideas would dance past, and while I admired them, a superb notion would sweep into the scene, obliterating the previous ones with it’s grandeur.

Stalled again, I began to feel the frustrations of the film industry. Time was ticking away, and I had filmed nothing, drawn nothing, and written nothing. Movie making is hard!

Finally...

The solution to my dilemma was elusive, but finally, beat and disgusted, I resolved to get my movie idea out into the world quickly-- out of my head-- so that I could get on with my life, and maybe even pursue other interests.

Ok, I didn’t actually get my movie idea out of my head and into the world as planned.

Things came up, and there were circumstances that prevented me from fulfilling my dream of making a movie. Having been kicked to the side so many times, my idea had become skittish, and began hiding from me in the shadowy corners of my mind, afraid of me, and afraid of being rejected again.

I felt a twinge of pity for my movie idea, and realized that I had been hard on it, with my expectations always exceeding the abilities of the story, and always my desire to make something great would squash any potential progress, as I wanted perfection.

Ok, I didn’t actually make a full-length feature film.

I thought about it, but after struggling with the logistics of the whole thing, and realizing that I had no budget, no film crew, no script and no story, the troublesome project finally transformed into a whole new idea.

At last, I stood up, then sat back down. I had made a decision, and with some excitement, I began work on the new idea.

I would write a post about writing a story, and trying to turn that story into a movie, and in the post I would go over the reasons why the film never happened, and why the story was never started.

This is that post.

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Coming soon to a theater near you, the film about this post-- you won’t want to miss it!

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