Monster Goals
This is the first edition of Finish Your Monsters, a weekly newsletter from me, Joseph Scrimshaw, about the creative process. The title comes from what I mumble to myself while working on first drafts. Just finish your monster.
First drafts, like many creative projects, are delightfully awkward--shaggy, bulbous, teeth in weird places. You can fix the flaws or fall in love with them. The important thing is to just FINISH YOUR MONSTERS.
Each week, I’ll share my creative and life adventures as I work on writing, filmmaking, growing my production company, Strange Path Productions, and try to broaden my diet from eating hunks of cheese over the kitchen sink as my daily lunch routine.
The newsletter will also contain some light, quick promo for things that will make my production company money so I can keep actually producing things.
Finally, each newsletter will conclude with a quick monstrous little sketch. I’m really excited to get back to visual art. I paid exorbitant student loans for a hideous number of years for my B.S. in visual art and this newsletter may finally validate that dubious life choice.
All throat-clearing aside, here are my adventures from the past few weeks.
CAREER ADVENTURES--
A lot of my energy in the early throes of 2024 has been setting up this newsletter. Like many people, I’m hoping to build a stable way to connect with friends, fans, supporters, strangers, etc as various social media sites implode, expand, collapse, and otherwise do things celestial objects do but in a far more depressing way.
When I was young, I was thrilled by the snow battle on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. As an adult, the truth behind the battle makes me sigh.
The rebellion had just got their new base set up. They weren't even doing their real work of fighting the Empire, just all the intensive groundwork so they could try to get their real work done. They were almost at the end of infrastructure week. Then, WHAM. The Empire arrives and knocks it all down and they’re chased to another system, another base, another long and lonely infrastructure nightmare.
The snow battle on Hoth is a rich zealot buying a social media site. It’s a lie that we all need to pivot to video. It’s a blog hosting site shrugging their shoulders about coddling hate-mongers. And, once again, we all have to load our escape shuttles, fire an ion cannon, and rebuild.
Hopefully, this base lasts a little while.
My other creative adventure this week is work on a feature film. The script is done. (It will evolve over time, but it’s in good shape.) Now I’m beginning the long road of pre-production with a fever dream goal of getting it actually filmed in the year 2024. I recently sent the first flares hurtling into the dark and I'm happy with taking those first steps.
LIFE ADVENTURES--
To start the year, a giant wave crashed into my plans and ruined them. And not even as a metaphor. My wife, Sara, and I planned to spend New Year’s Eve at a lovely little hotel on a beach, but then a LITERAL GIANT WAVE crashed into the hotel, smashing windows and flooding the first floor. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the hotel will be fine. We pivoted to going to hearing latin jazz at a nightclub in a Hollywood office building. Sometimes the wave takes you interesting places.
But the wave incident of late '23 was a great reminder that there is much of life we cannot control. All the more reason to grab the reins when they are available to us. Which brings me to--
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I’m going to use this newsletter to set myself (hopefully) realistic little goals. I want to get moving on making another short film. I've got several ideas, but I just need to pick one and knock out the first draft. All I'm committing myself to is a first draft. For a truly short short film. So by next Tuesday when I send out the newsletter again, my goal is to complete a draft of a short film no longer than 8 pages.
YOUR GOAL FOR WEEK--
And on that note, I’d love to know what reins you’re grabbing! Buttondown doesn't have a comments feature yet so feel free to reach out to me on social media and let me know what projects you’re working on this week. Scripts, gardens, reading goals, whatever. I want to help encourage you to finish your monsters.
LIGHT PLUGS--
All proceeds from the below go straight to my production company, Strange Path, and will help us continue to make films, podcasts, and more.
Multiple comedy albums and a cosmic horror tale on Bandcamp.
Strange Path t-shirts as well as art prints from my photography on Threadless.
Early access to films and other rewards on my Patreon.
A LITTLE SKETCH--
Thanks for joining me and I look forward to writing next week. I'm in suspense about it--will I make my goal??? Or is this hubris??? Is it both??? Find out next week! Until then, here’s a fun little monster celebrating the new year.
