March was a lost month for writing.  I was disappointed, sure, but I also realize that everything in life has its ups and downs, ebbs and flows.  Considering how many months I had been productive with my writing endeavors, a slow month was bound to happen eventually.  March was that month.

So far April has been better, thanks primarily to the unexpected arrival of a movie script.  Last summer I was approached by a film maker from India, Sairaj Reddy, about turning my story “Still Life Through Water Droplets” into a short film.  After a brief negotiation, we settled on a deal and Mr. Reddy headed off to work on the script.  To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear anything more, so I was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Reddy contacted me again around the end of March and sent the script, asking me to look it over and to help with some of the dialogue.  I’m not a script writer, and I don’t even pretend to be one, but I agreed to help out, and the two of us reworked Mr. Reddy’s original script based on my story, and I think we’re close to something that both of us like.  The process has been fun and exciting, and I’ve learned a lot about what Indian film audiences like—non-linear story telling with twisty endings!

In addition I’ve gotten back to story editing, and I’m nearing the end of revisions on a story that’s been sitting on the shelf for a long time.  It’s set in the same world as one of my first and favorite stories, “Thief of Futures,” but isn’t a sequel or prequel or anything along those lines.  I hope to have that one out the door in the next couple of weeks.  Finally, I spent time one afternoon brainstorming ten stories ideas in ten minutes—calling it, cleverly (or not), ten-in-ten.  While I suspect more than half of them are lousy ideas, I’m excited about 2-3 of them, and I’ve been mulling them over in my head as I work on edits.  I think they will make decent stories, and I’m looking forward to fleshing them out more in the coming weeks.

So March is over (rejoice!) and April is here with promise of new stories in the submission queue, a movie script that should head into production soon, and some story ideas that I can’t wait to put into words.