Convalescence: The Waiting Game

It has been 33 days since I was hit by a car, dislocating my right shoulder and tearing 3 ligaments on my right knee.

In that time, my pain has gone from excruciating to tolerable. My shoulder and right arm have gone from constant pain and no movement to a general ache and partial, if temporary movement. In other words sometimes I can move the arm a little, but most of the time I can’t.  My knee has gone from not being to stand on it, to being able to hobble short distances without my brace, and being able to walk like Frankenstein’s monster with the brace. The knee will likely need surgery and rehabilitation, but I won’t know more about that until my next doctor’s appointment on March 28th.

But in the meantime, I have not been entirely idle. When I can hobble into downtown Raleigh, I surf the web for a little while, including checking my email.

And I write.

At first I didn’t feel much like writing, because the pain was blocking my creative juices, but as the pain has faded, my juices are once again flowing. I am very happy about that.

And since I have all kinds of time, I plan to write as much as I can. At first I wrote about my WIP, a semi-erotic sci-fi space opera, but today I started working on the Timmons Chronicles for the first time in more than a month.

I had the idea a couple of months ago, BA (Before Accident) of slowing things down a little from my original scripts and starting from scratch. I’ve seen series such as ‘Lost’ where the plot is so highly developed that you can literally lose yourself in the plot. Now, while I found ‘Lost’ to be a little too confusing for my own taste, I’d like to do something a little less complicated, yet still slightly more complicated than I had done earlier.

So in starting from scratch, I first came to the startling conclusion that my story takes place over at least two different timelines. Actually there will be 3 distinct timelines if I get my way. So first before the script takes form, I have to figure out what goes on in each timeline, and that is where I am at the moment.

What I want to do is not write a script that follows a particular story in each episode, but to write the different scenes that happen in each timeline chronologically, because many of them will occur simultaneously. It would be the ultimate shooting script!

Now, I know this isn’t standard, and it’s not likely to get picked up in that form, but what I’m trying to do is bring the series to as logical a conclusion as possible, by writing each timeline to its logical end. Once I’ve done that, I select the scenes I want to present in a final script form for each episode, including using some of the scenes as flashbacks.

I’ll be happier with the final product, I think, doing it this way, and probably will introduce some intrigue into the mix.

I’m likely to be laid up after the operation for up to 3 months, and I hope to get as deeply into the script as I can in the time. I’ll report on my progress as it happens, if I can get a steady internet connection