My Hot Fuzz

So there's this movie, right? And it's called Hot Fuzz, and I'm watching it, you know, and I'm like WHOA. And then, and then, there's this dude. And he's like "get out of my village" and he's like, punchin' and kickin' and totally beating the shit out of this other guy, and then the other guy like CATCHES his fist, and then he's like POW, and he's like "it's not your village anymore!" And I was just like HOLY SHIT.

I actually really liked Hot Fuzz. I thought it had a nice balance of comedy and drama, and intriguing mystery. Seriously, I was right there with all of you thinking WHOA MAN, IT'S TOTALLY SKINNER! And then it wasn't! This weekend was one simply loaded with movies, so many, in fact, that I'm sure IMDb is like "God, will you ever stop looking up trivia?" That answer is no. No I will not ever stop looking up trivia. I'm a sucker for the homage and the reference. My writing bears so many obscure little suggestions that I'm sure someone could write an IMDb trivia page purely based on the Fall Out References. Which reminds me, I've been trying to write again.

I say "again" because well, it's been a while since I picked up a pencil and produced anything worthwhile. Call it a lack of experience, call it a lack of inspiration, I'm going to stick to my guns and just say that I'm not good anymore. The thing is, I don't really believe that I'm a bad writer, necessarily. But I don't want to become one of those writers who only once wrote anything interesting. If I haven't mentioned it before, I wrote a book a few months ago. It wasn't published by a big company, or picked up in a magazine, or even more than short story length. This story, The Crash and Burn Chronicles, was/is sort of my baby. I wrote it as a release from all the plaguing memory of sixth and seventh grade. Truly, this book is the memoir of a what-if situation. It tells the story of a boy who ran away and did all those things he wanted to before realizing that all he wanted was back at home. And that's not in the "he realizes how much he loves his family! aww!" sense. It's kind of complicated, now that I think about it, and really it was for me. I didn't write it to be public, or to stop suicide or runaways. I wrote it so that I could look back at what I didn't do, and I'm incredibly proud of myself and those pages.

But you see, that's the "problem." You write your masterpiece straight off, you're bound to get disappointed. I look at Crash and Burn like my first-born child. I love it, I'm proud of it, I don't want to ever let it go, but God, do I want another. I want to hold the pencil again and write for those same hours. I remember the writing of the first-born, when I could write on end based off what I actually saw for those characters. Now, I write and feel empty. I don't feel the characters I'm writing. I connect their wires, but there's no spark. I know their stories, but I don't know their stories. And that's possibly one of the most disappointing feelings in the world.

Right now, I'm chewing over a character to be thrown into a story, based off the same person who inspired a lot of the feelings in Crash and Burn. I'm not sure if I want this character to be male or female, major or minor. Whoever you are, I hope you've got a tale to tell.