Last night, Wifey and I ventured out from the domain from spending the day celebrating Juniorette’s birthday to partake in a date night.
We went to a movie.
The movie we saw was The Words. Big picture, it’s a story about an author played by Dennis Quaid reading his latest book to an audience. The story in the book is about a struggling young author played by Bradley Cooper who just can’t get himself published. He finds a manuscript for a novel in an old satchel and get’s it published under his own name. Jeremy Irons plays the original author of the lost manuscript who tracks down Cooper’s character in order to tell him the story behind the novel in question.
As the story unfolds, it becomes readily obvious (at least to me) that Quaid’s character has incorporated various events from his own life into the story. In the end, we don’t really know if there was a similar old man which involuntarily donated a manuscript or not. Even still, there are definitely some elements there that go beyond being born of imagination alone.
I don’t know why Wifey liked it, but I know why I did.
I could identify with it; specifically with the incorporation of real events into works of fiction. I think I’ve only put three or four pieces of fiction here on TharpSter.Org which qualified as general story telling. I’m not talking about the gag news articles inspired by The Onion, or the endless soliloquies about my views on politics or things that have happened with the dogs. Instead, I’m talking about actual stories about bullies who encountered their victims many years after the fact, or mythical Pit Bulls who live on a mountain ravaged by earthquakes, or bird watchers who invent revolutionary computer hardware.
For the record I’ve written stories around all of those subjects, so I need to come up with more ideas.
Regardless, I came out of watching The Words with a few goals in mind.
Letters From The Past, which dictates that I publish a daily blog, is now on it’s last leg as 2012 starts to wrap up in a way that no other year ever could in my mind. There have been points throughout the year where it’s been a major bitch to publish something. Even still, I’ve learned a thing or two and picked up a few additional skills in my writing as a result.
There’s that little voice in my head which will needle me on December 31st about getting a blog ready for the next day, but I’ll fight it. I’ve already started an outline for the final installment of Letters From The Past which will run during the last week of December. I won’t go into a great deal of detail, but I’m thinking I’ll have Bette Midler out to serenade me when it’s published.
For 2013, I have an idea to write more fiction. I won’t say that I’ve perfected or mastered the blog. It’s been a wonderful experience over the last three years, but it’s time to up the ante.
Less blog, more fiction.
Easy as that.
It’s kind of like “less talk, more rock”.
I haven’t determined the volume or the frequency yet, but it will be on my mind in the coming months. I expect there will be more to come when I compose next year’s TharpSterlutions sometime in December.
That’s just one of the goals I came up with though.
I have a few more which be made public in due time.
