Anything Goes

Wishing you ALL have the Best Year projected perfectly in the New Year!! Miss ya Maurice!!

When I was a teenager I had a tradition where I'd review the entire year on the last day of it (even more traditionally it would be the last hour of the year). So here I will try to bring the tradition back since I have less time on my hands now than I did back then lol:

At the start of the year I knew Finding Elpis would have a part 3, and all I knew for sure was that it would have more heavenly elements. I schedu RoP, part 2's table read as a birthday present to myself and the first draft was chaotic as all hell and yet so much was born from it. Not long after I wrote TER, part 3, and sent it in for its table read where I finally found the perfect actor for Iesu, the character who gave me the most trouble because he's all I can't be; someone who's more concerned about being a good person than an artist, and 100% willing to trust in a higher power's plan for him, while I doubt every single thing I both did and didn't have a hand in. No one ever had anything to say about him during the table reads until his actor, who said that he was a very loving character and I did a great job on him. It made me happy knowing that it paid off finally. Sure enough, by the end of TER, I knew there would be a part 4 with the inclusion of Phi as well as Starman's decision, nevermind that there was still a bunch of loose ends lol

Somewhere along the way I decided to write Glass Waltz as a short script because try as I might, all I knew about it was that Rylie loved Richard but he wouldn't let go of Rachel, who happened to be her sister, even though she was dead lol. I decided why not try a short script even just to see if I can do it? Turns out, I can lol.

Several times I found myself getting tired of and discouraged by the pitching process and decided I was done, only to once again be faced by my complete inability to know when to quit and actually give up lol. It's still something I'm not particularly good at so I hope y'all can forgive me for it :p

I also don't remember when it happened but the idea was planted into my head to get into directing. I wasn't into it because writing is challenging enough, but with the way things are going and how allergic I am to completely letting go of my world to let someone else take over... it's not a bad idea after all, so it's a possibility that yours truly will be a director in addition to author, screenwriter, and artist, one day.

And then in the summer sometime, I got ready to start BoFS, part 4, and even before I started, I knew there would be a part 5 lol. The series was looking more and more like a hard sell but dammit, it's my world and I don't need someone else's permission to write it :p all the same, I knew I had to clear up the issues in both Finding Elpis proper and RoP because I knew where the later entries were going for the most part. So I took it upon myself to go back and cut huge chunks of both scripts and inject all the subtle and more blatant foreshadowing that I could, and so when I finally decided it was time to write BoFS, I managed to finish it before November was even done. Somewhere along the way, the writing gods blessed me with two very big visions that I split into three and Finding Elpis at long last became a heptalogy lol

Then came December. I learned from Charlie Osowik that romcoms are in right now and rifling through my pool of ideas, I realised that Lunar Window is technically one even though it's a social satire. I initially wanted to get it halfway finished but the writing gods decided I will finish it before my birthday, even the end of the year. It bottlenecked several times where I had to step back and untangle little narrative knots that belied strong currents, and even now that the draft is finished I wonder if I missed a couple. The story started off very different, where Cass was constantly daring John to do impossible things to win her over like Princess Kaguya was known to, but in the actual writing she became much more of a kuudere who started warming up to this normie who's nonetheless capable of amazing things. It's a romantic comedy the likes of which only I can write, and it also turned out much more personal than expected so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified of anyone ever reading it. Nonetheless I decided to send it into one exec in particular who scared me the least of the ones I liked reading it (is this even proper English lmao), so once again my inability to give up when I really want to strikes XD

All this to say... 2025 has been a pretty big year. I got a lot done, lots of emotions were had and are still being had, so if superstition prevails, I'm bringing all that nonsense with me into the new year. With any luck I'll get even more done, not just Finding Elpis's three remaining sequels but I'll return to Seed and from there work on Iron Rain in earnest, and also rewrite Metal Garden as a screenplay using the setup I'm most comfortable with (dual protagonists and predominantly random-events plot). Maybe I'll even be brave and risk more of my works being seen by even more people. Either way, I'd say it was a good year and I'm curious to see what's next.

Hope y'all also have an excellent 2026~

https://youtu.be/5Zit-08rtkE?si=zgPXuniDRA0olhsO

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I've made between 5 and 10 New Year Resolutions. Some are writing goals, others are personal goals, but always a handful or 2... not out of some big sense of overaccomplishment --> it's so I can be sure at least ONE will get done! 

Except 2025. I failed at them all! Let's take a look:

1) Get my weight down to 215 lbs. NOPE! I ended 2024 at 235.2 lbs. I just did my final weigh-in of 2025, and I'm 245.2. So the goal was to lose 20 lbs, but instead I gained 10. 

2) Earn $100/month in passive (or non-passive) income, beyond my day job money. NOPE! Instead, I hemmoraged money every month, worse than any year in recent record. 

3) Get a graphic novel version of EDISON'S GHOSTBOX completed and published. NOPE! I wrote the g/n adaptation of my award-winning screenplay... but sadly, the artist I was working with ended up having to get heart surgery and had to bow out. 

4) Discover a new hobby or skill (preferably both fun and potentially profitable). NOPE! I didn't do much of anything this year, to be honest... and finding something new to try and love never happened.

5) Get repped. NOPE! Sent TONS of queries, but nobody was interested in me. 

6) Buy things I want without being wishy-washy or having buyer's remorse - If I want it, can afford it, and have somewhere to put it, just get it! SORT OF? I bought lots of cool new things with all the Superman stuff that came out this year (probably a major contributing factor to losing money so badly every month), but a) had a lot of buyer's remorse on some things and b) DO NOT have anywhere for a bunch of it to go. Which means I kinda broke my own rules for this one.

7) Make pitch decks for all my scripts. NOPE! Not even close. I think I made them for 5 or 6... out of DOZENS of scripts I have available. 

8) Improve my chess.com rating to 1500. NOPE! Oh, I watched lots of chess videos and studied openings and played thousands of chess games. But as of right now my ratings are: RAPID - 1141, DAILY - 1116, BLITZ - 832, BULLET - 700

9) Create and complete a will and an "If I Die" binder. NOPE! After my sister died in 2024, I decided I need to make a will ASAP so my loved ones don't have to go nuts trying to figure out what affairs I have to put in order... but I still just haven't gotten around to doing it. 

Hi Everyone! ☺️

I have been wanting to focus more on my singing and possibly getting together with other creators to produce some music, but I have no idea of where to start!

While I love acting and plan on still doing it, singing has always been my favorite when it comes to performing arts. I know I definitely need to get a set up for when I want to record at my house if I can’t make it to the studio, but I have no clue of what to get!

And regarding the producing and making music, that’s something that has been a struggle for as long as I can remember because I am my own worst critic just like everyone else is with themselves! I feel like if I was able to communicate with others already established in the industry and get some advice (or even a lovely mentor), it would help out a lot with getting started.

Thank you to anyone who is willing to help, it is appreciated more than you’ll ever know! :)

I made this song with our creativity and passion in mind. We make things and we give them away to be loved or forgotten. Either way we go on to make more and inspire the creation of more things. I hope you like it and your holidays are filled with love and inspiration...

How useful would AI be? Can it be used to do writing, I know it's good with art. But are depending too much on it? How far are we willing to go with AI if we can create artificial people?

https://youtu.be/QAw8WdsuJ80

Checkout my thoughts here and do share yours as well. What do you think of Ted?