The Dark of the Night

I don’t know what wrong with me lately. I’m having the worst time sleeping. Tonight’s worse even than it has been. After putting down my book and turning off the light, I was suddenly seized by an image, a scene resolving itself into a story. I had no choice but to grab a notebook and write it all down. To ignore it was to risk losing a good idea or to risk losing an entire night’s sleep to working it out in my head.

Unfortunately, now I’m all worked up by the "brilliance" of my idea.

It actually is a nice little idea for a story and I think it would make a great animated film. It’s about a Prince who’s bored of being surrounded by fawning princesses and toadying diplomats. He’s heard stories about a maiden trapped by a cruel and wicked creature in the land beyond the forest. Thinking that rescuing the girl would spice up his life quite nicely, he throws some things into his saddle bags and sets out into the woods without telling anyone where he’s going. Anyway, without giving the whole story away, he finds the maiden, but she’s far from needing any rescuing. She rescues him and teaches him how to survive properly in the woods, as she’s been doing for most of her life. Her seclusion is entirely by choice and she lives in an old monastery where she grew up as the ward of her uncle. The Prince gives up his future crown and stays in the wood with the maiden who rescued him. It’s sort of a reverse fairytale and I do love a strong heroine.

The only problem is that I can see all of these scenes in my head, but I’ve never in my life written a screenplay, so I don’t even know where to start. I don’t even know if it would be different for an animated film as opposed to a live-action film. The people who run NaNoWriMo also run an event called ScriptFrenzy, so I may have to search that out and see what advice and guides they have.

Yesterday we had the Squadron Organizational Day. It was mildly amusing. Charlee picked me up and she was in an infectiously good mood because she just got offered a job at a bank in town, so she’s leaving Starbucks after 5 full years. We found Turkey Creek Ranch fairly easily, and the food was pretty good. Angelique was very welcoming and we ate with Kelby and Alan and Sgt. Schulz and his wife. Lieutenant Brand stopped by the table briefly. Holy crap! He is hot! I don’t know what I was expecting, but he wasn’t it at all. I think I was expecting someone more like Lt. Lincoln, who fits into the Army stereotype a bit better. For someone I know is from Texas, he looked like he could have walked off a corner in Greenwich Village. That he’s intellectual is a bonus. That he’s a conservative is something I’ll try to ignore while I admire the view as he walks away.

::sigh:: I do have a very hard time keeping my thoughts faithful. Even some of my behavior is a little questionable. At least it would be if anyone but myself knew the motivations for it.

Today we went with Charlee and Kelby to play tennis. And by "play tennis" I mean we can manage a brief volley before one of us has to go fetch the ball from the adjacent court or even the grass outside the fence. We’re not 100% sure of the rules so we just went with the fact that past the white lines is out of bounds. It was fun. Then we came home and zoned out to an NCIS marathon, which was kind of nice. We haven’t done that in a while. Alan’s been playing a lot of video games and even I’ve been trying my hand at Little Big Planet.

I also watched a few clips from the 25th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables in London. Excellent performances. Is it weird that I think it would be the most entertaining to play Madame Thenardier, rather than Fantine, Eponine, or Cosette? I like the comic relief. Although I do love "On My Own." It gets stuck in my head like nothing else… maybe because I so often live in my imagination as well.

Alan has CQ duty tomorrow, so Sgt. Schulz is picking him up in the morning. When we get our car situation settled, I’m going to make lots and lots of treats for everyone who’s given us rides these last couple weeks. Good thing Kellie’s pregnant… it means that Sgt. Schulz probably won’t be watching what he eats. We’re not quite sure how Alan’s going to get to work on Tuesday if the car isn’t done/paid for yet. Pez got stuck on gate guard duty for the next 6 months. It’s a shit assignment and mostly a way to get rid of people you don’t want to deal with for a while. Unfortunately, it means Alan and Pez can’t commute to work, which I was kind of looking forward to because it meant I would have an easier time getting the car when I need it. Oh well.

It’s 1 AM… what the hell am I still doing up?? I think I feel a bout of mania coming on. I really don’t need that right now.

~Liz