Thursday! 3-21: The Future of My Writing, In a Big Ol' List
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I thought this week, I’d do something a little different. Instead of writing something inspirational or challenging, how about I open up my Great Creative Wish List and show you some of the projects I have on my mind to make and release some time between today and the day God calls me home? I know that sounds morbid; I don’t mean it to come across that way. Every artist, no matter their age nor level of proficiency, has a bunch of things they thought would be cool to do. That’s not to say every cool idea sticks around, though. Some of them are flights of fancy and some simply don’t have the heft to them that’s necessary to support them through the creative process.
I thought, this week, I’d share a considerable chunk of my “someday” project list with you. It is my hope that one or more of these things excite you and you want to see them become real things you can have, hold, and share. Moreso, though, It’s my hope that you gather a little encouragement from these dreams of mine. These are things I think I can pull off. Most of them will require more skill and experience than I have. I believe, in time, I’ll gain what I need to make them happen. In every case but one, I honestly believe you’ll see them for real, and not just on this list. You’ll know the one when you get there.
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The other bonus is, this is the first time I’ve put all these ideas in a single place. I wrote the list first, before all this and I must tell you, it looks daunting, but cool. I’m glad you’re here to share with me. Feel free to tell me which ones you like and which you don’t, okay? That’s what the comments and “reply” button are for!
Here we go.
A book of poems similar to the poems you’ll see in just a couple of minutes, about animals that aren’t usually seen as deadly but which are secretly treacherous and murderous, with each poem illustrated.
A special treat for folks who are on board with my Patreon (and/or any paid subscribers if that’s something I do) where I mail out postcards, each of which has an original poem, unique to that card. That is, one postcard, one poem, and only you would have a handwritten, original. I might collect them later for something else, but the postcard would be the first one ever and forever.
A series of poems based on several of the Psalms.
A group of young superheroes called The Trouble Team, which consists of Exemplar, Gecko the Great, and Bee Sharp. I’ve written a couple stories about them: “Comes the Trouble Truck”, “Six Seekers Over the City”, and “Speaking of Pain”. It’d be fun to write more about their adventures against the Controllers, maybe in comic book form.
A determined but weary Detective Cotler, who lives in a world where mysticism and horror exist alongside the mundane. He showed up in “Into the Dreamlands” and “The Seventh Dead Warlord”. I think it would be cool to build Cotler’s world slowly, through a whole bunch of short stories that reveal some, but not all, about him and the shadows he investigates.
I’ve had a yearning to write some proper post-apocalyptic stories for a few years now, but I don’t quite have a handle on the world and, most importantly, the character we might follow through that world. The Lighthouse is an honest, though experimental, attempt to write that kind of story. I’d like to go back there, but I’d have to rewrite everything but the first story, “There Are 216 Steps to the Top of the Lighthouse”.
Speaking of post-apocalyptic stories, I’ve had one in the back of my head for a while about a barbarian warrior exploring the underground ruins of a lost civilization in search of rumored treasure. While there, he runs afoul of a mechanical demon run amok, intent on killing him, for reasons he can not fathom. Our modern eyes might well recognize the ruins and the mechanical menace and that would be a cool little bonus. If it works, this could be a series of stories, too. By the way, I LOVE this particular idea. It’s right up there with the poems and…this next idea.
Let’s not forget Red Deadnettle and his amazing companion Hosanna the cat. I did promise more of their story and I intend to revisit them soon. Remember their chess game?
I’d co-written a script for a short film about a creepy scarecrow that some folks were going to make as a pilot for a potential horror/sci-fi anthology series, but that project disappeared into the silent void without a trace and the folks who would have directed and produced it are quite busy on other projects closer to their own home. As part of that, I’d written “loglines” for several other stories I’d written that could have been episodes. I still have those summaries but….ugh. That one hurt and won’t ever happen. Still, it’s there if any miracles come along.
Those are some of the creative things I have in my mental “to-do” list. I like to think on quiet nights when I’m by myself, that I’d have done most of them had I started writing when I should have — back in my mid-20s. But I’m here now and hope that God grants me enough time to get them out into the world. As I said, I think you’d like them a lot. I know I’d love to see them in the clear light of day.
See you next week!
What I Wrote Last Week
Fancy a story or poem? Read all you want at JimmieWrites.
Buy my picture book of poems about werewolves and atomic monsters!
Read “The Paper Swans of Ellendell” in Postcards from Mars!
ONE LAST THING! Down under the footnotes is a little empty heart. I’d like it a lot if you’d click on it. There’s no guarantee it’ll do anything besides turn all red and happy, but you never know. Maybe Substack will tell more people about Thursday! if we all click the heart. Let’s see.
Wouldn't you know I forgot a few ideas altogether? I'll put them here instead of dropping them in the next newsletter, because that one's going to big packed full enough of *other* ideas.
1) A podcast called "Third Shift". A lone voice, the security supervisor on a massive space station along a well-traveled corridor where many species, human and alien, come together. The show consists wholly of announcements made over the stations public communications system. The supervisor fancies himself a very old-school DJ.
2) A podcast called "The Mystery of the Blue Dog", like "Tanis" but with less awkward interviews. The narrator is digging into one of the oldest legends we have in the United States, the legend of the Blue Dog. What she finds is far, far more than anything she could have anticipated. Mostly true history, with some fictional menace and possibly deep horror.
3) The last one I call: "Watership Down", but in space. We follow a small band of animals, who have gained human-like intelligence, on a vast Ark Ship traveling through space that has sustained some sort of catastrophic, but not fatal, damage. Humans are relegated to smaller portions of the ship and we rarely encounter them. The rest of the ship is the realm of the animals (and other...things) that have thrived and mutated and thrived some more after The Impact. I think we'll mostly follow rabbits, but there will be mice and cattle and predatory birds and odd alien species. None of the animals know they are on a ship, though. They have yet to learn that and might never.
So this is your idea of "not inspirational," huh? Well now I want to go make a list of my own. <hmph> Not inspirational, indeed...