I’ve only been putting off writing for my blog because I’ve been trying to sort out what I will write for this year’s Script Frenzy. Last year’s attempt was a screenplay titled Between—a neuotica thriller mean to be Inception meets American Splendor. The furthest I got with it was 10 pages and a really good diagram of the plot. But that was last year.

This year, I tried to keep my options open. There was always the opportunity to improve on last year’s. There was also a nagging urge to adapt the book The Alchemist for the screen. (I read on Wikipedia that Harvey Weinstein is supposed to produce a screenplay that was approved by Paulo Coelho. But that news is from 2008, so I could still write a script.) I also had an idea for a romantic dramedy that would be Revolutionary Road meets Dirty Dancing. I’m afraid that if I made a romantic movie funny and serious, it may end up like Just Married when I’d want it to be more like Garden State.

I also have an idea for a novel that I’m dying to get out. It’s a not-too-distant-future idea about a government run completely by a successful retail CEO. I could make it into a script, but where would I start? It would be sort of like Equilibrium but without the action or Chuck Palahniuk’s Survivor but without the isolationism, repressed sexuality, and suicidal religious nuts (which doesn’t leave much, I know).

Finally, I have the urge to just start writing a stage play. In my last creative writing class, I had to write two plays, and they were a hit with the class. In that case, I wouldn’t need more than half of an idea to get me going. Maybe something like a man in a coma is aware of what’s going on around him in the hospital so he has these monologues and thoughts and feelings, but his family comes to visit and says horrible things and they don’t think it will matter because they don’t think he’s conscious.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think I’ve found my script.