Undead Monster Life Coaching
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--
DID I MAKE MY GOAL?
Last week, I committed to finishing the last 80 letters for Vote Forward!
Vote Forward is an organization that sets you up to write letters that encourage folks to vote. You print out a prepared letter with all the voting info on it and you write in a personal, non-partisan reason you vote.
This year, I’ve been writing the following:
“It’s easy to feel powerless. When I voted in a very close election that made a big difference to a loved one, I decided voting is power.”
It’s a true story! Also, after a while I realized I was underlining key words: very, big, and power. Then I stopped doing that.
Anyway, I finished the 80 more for my goal this week. This election year I had a big picture goal of writing a total of 200 letters. They’re all done, piled up, and I’ll be sending them later today.
As we’re heading into Fall and the conclusion of this long, joyful, stressful year, I checked in with my goals for 2024:
-Start Finish Your Monsters blog. Done!
-Make at least one short film. Done!
-Do a big show for my birthday. Done!
-Get a tattoo before my birthday. Done!
-Read 20 books/graphic novel collections. Done!
-Write 200 Vote Forward letters. Done!
-Film the film, Dead Media.
So now I only have that last one left. The tiny little task of filming an entire horror movie. Better get back to it.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
I set out to write this blog about the creative process. But each week I’m reminded how deeply daily life is intertwined with the creative.
That is particularly clear to me as I go into intense-must-work-almost-all-of-the-time pre-production for the film. My days are filled with hiring cast and crew, fundraising, tweaking the budget and schedule, writing contracts, zoom meetings, sketching prop and costume ideas, and on and on.
We had a big and good piece of news this week. After a month of sending out offers, we hired a great actor for the lead role in the film of Maggie. A 20something woman who is stuck in life and trying to move forward. Relatable! We can announce more once the long journey of SAG contracts are complete, but it was a great day.
My wife kindly offered to make us mini-martinis to celebrate and she happened to pick up a squirrel notebook for me that day, too. Squirrel kismet!
Anyway, I could go on and on about the creative and producer tasks I did this week, but I’m very wary of hustle culture. I think many of us have conversations that go like this:
Person One: How are you? How’s it going?
Person Two: Busy. Really busy. (Haunted look in eyes, possible sigh)
Person One: (trying to be supportive) Well, that’s good right? Better than not being busy?
Person Two: Yep, yep, yeah, yep.
(Awkward laugh of shared pain)
Being busy all the time is not a great thing. It’s just a necessity for people to function, strive for goals, try to keep up, etc.
So I’m trying to be very honest with myself that I have to do almost nothing but work on the film. But also be clear: it’s a choice I’m making because I want to do it. It’s not glamorous or ideal, it’s just necessary to accomplish this particular goal.
So when I sat down this morning to write this blog about creative adventures, I ended up thinking about life stuff instead. What moments did I carve out that were NOT working on the film? What moments of breath helped me recenter and refocus?
And the biggest one was this: Monsters that come to life.
I managed to make time to watch two movies this week while eating dinner. The classic Universal Monster movie, Son of Frankenstein and the modern Universal Monster movie, M3GAN.
I had not seen either of them and I enjoyed them both immensely. “What a nice break to just watch some fun horror flicks during October spooky times,” I thought!
Then, because this is how I process films, I thought about their themes, their messages, and how the two very different films from very different eras might connect.
And I realized Son of Frankenstein and M3GAN both featured zealous, exhausted protagonists obsessed with the completion of their task: Making an undead thing come unnaturally to life while ignoring the needs of their loved ones.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Daily life and the creative are always intertwined. And one of the best things I can do to complete my creative journey is stay very aware of my daily personal life. Even if it needs to be a little out-of-balance right now. Even if it’s only a five minute break, I need to take some deep breaths, spend time with my wife, and do not give life to monsters I am not prepared to handle.
Thanks for the pep talk, Universal Horror!
LIGHT PLUGS—
Oh, hey, I forgot to mention I also completed a short concept teaser of the film. I shot this on my iPhone back n Minneapolis. The actual film will be a full professional shoot!
It’s here if you’re interested.
ALSO!
We are hard at work closing a funding gap. So if you’d like to help out with the film now is a critical time.
I’ve set-up a fiscal sponsorship with Film North. They can accept one-time donations that will go directly toward funding the film! It’s like a Kickstarter where the rewards are A) a tax deduction and B) helping us make the film.
For full info, please check out the page for the upcoming horror film, DEAD MEDIA!
Or if you have any questions about supporting the film, feel free to reach out to me personally!
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
The most crucial time-sensitive goals for the film are all things I can take action on it, but they are dependent on the decisions of other humans, too: fundraising and hiring cast and crew. And I want to stick to my goal-setting goal of only setting goals that are entirely under my control. So I’m going to set the goal of carving out some time to make script tweaks that have been piling up. So by next week I’m committing to doing a quick revision pass on the film script.
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? Is it giving life to an undead monster? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week’s sketch is Frankenstein’s Monster thinking of a tiny little martini. Is it a gin martini? Vodka? Who knows? Life IS mystery. Anyway, I hope everyone has good creative and life adventures and enjoys their monster this week.
I have seven hours and seven minutes to go! I haven't been progressing quite as much as I'd hoped, but my graph is still above the par line, so I'm fine with it. I've been checking off scenes to work on in my notebook and I only have a few left. Once those are done, the next step is to compile the whole thing and read it through from beginning to end, with pauses for last-minute tweaks. But I just got through a pretty significant scene (the first kiss!) so I'm going to celebrate with a peach vodka and lemonade and watch some YouTube videos.
Amazing! I'm raising a mimed peach vodka in celebration right now!
Did I meet my goal from last week of finishing my chapter? Sort of… I wrote through the scene I had originally outlined as the ending point. But I also ended up adding a few more character beats and conversations that I realized would fit really well. So I’m still in the same part of the narrative, which I was hoping to move out of. But I’ve also made a lot of progress, such is writing I suppose. I’ll be on vacation next week, so I’m trying to avoid setting any hard goals since I likely won’t have the time. But I am hoping to get to do at least some writing on the plane, so I’ll set that as a soft goal for now. See you next week!
Thanks for the update! I'm concerned I've set a bit too ambitious of a goal for myself this week. But now I'm inspired to join you in plane writing and do the script pass I need to do on my flight. Best of luck and enjoy your vacation!