Of course nothing earth shattering but its a start…

No, this won’t be a discourse on crossing busy streets or dodging potholes/dog poo. I can hear the collective sighs of sadness even as I type*.

The danger which I speak of today is letting your mind wander and create more potential projects when you are supposed to be working on something else. Which is basically what happened this morning as I strolled into the office, trying desperately to block out the chilling wetness that was soaking through my shirt onto my neck and back region. For some reason – and I don’t know the trigger – my imagination took over and decided to inject yet another idea into my already swamped artistic consciousness.

This time, it started tempting me with a concept for a TV sci-fi/drama series, within 10 minutes I had the concept and came to the quick conclusion that if it did ever exist, it would run for one season and one only. The way things started to map out on my journey, I really couldn’t see it having any legs to stretch out more than a dozen episodes and even then that might push it.

Now it has a working title of “Fundamental” and thats all it’ll be for a while. Notes have been captured and it’ll sit there while I work on the more formed ideas. It’ll come back every so often and tickle me when I least need it to – when I have a self imposed deadline, or perhaps there’s a scene I’m struggling to nail – but it’ll have to wait.

To be fair though, I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Really, if my brain wants to keep throwing out ideas then great because the day they dry up I’ll just look stupid and you’ll all stand there pointing and laughing at me. No, better to cage the creative beast and let it out every so often than smack it on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and tell it to go lie down.

In the meantime, I need to try and force thoughts on current projects as I walk to ensure nothing else creeps in there. Or maybe I should put on my Zune and crank up the volume and drown out the creative process.

If you would like a piece on the potholes and dog poo in the future, let me know in comments section and I’m sure I can accommodate.

* Which of course is odd, because you’re not reading this as I type unless you have control of my machine and running some sort of key logger. Apologies, I watched “Enemy of the State” 5 years ago.

I have to admit that The MacGuffin Trilogy was stumbled upon by accident really. Maybe, in years to come,  I’ll look back on it as divine inspiration or some true destiny, played out as if it was planned all along and not just something which happened because I have a problem finishing what I start.

Why, two posts about procrastination in the past week? Whatever can that mean?

Anyway, the real reason for The MacGuffin Trilogy existing – or the name at least –  is because there are 3 distinct novels that I want to get finished, all drawing me into their mythos and demanding that I give them equal attention. Which of course I couldn’t because of other things such as life. But, fundamentally each spoke to me in a way that made me want to keep going, and tell the central characters’ stories.

As I said, timewise it wasn’t really working and I found myself flitting from one story to another as scenes and dialogue for one popped into my head when they really needed to live in one of the others. It was confusing and in the end I was getting nowhere. Fast.

Finally I sat down and took a break. I had to come up with a way of being fair to all three, making sure they understood that while I did want them to exist, some would have to wait a little longer than the other(s) to get there. It was simple after this late night heart to heart – and once the emotions were let out – for us all to move on.

Then of course, I had the idea of a framing scene which would link all three together like the triplets I know I couldn’t cope with. This scene, played out in different times in each novel’s narrative, seems to serve as a way to have a shared universe and perhaps make the whole thing seem more real.

All that was then required was a title and what could be more appropriate for a fictional shared universe than the term MacGuffin?

Indeed.