Reay Jespersen

So here’s the thing, straight-up:
I’m putting the two book projects I have in mind on the back burner for the time being. I know I said I was going to focus and see through one project after another in order to get things done, but two events happened that required a re-evaluation of priorities.

1) I saw Narnia - Prince Caspian. I’ve never read the books, nor heard of events in them (other than overreaching concepts about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), but yet found a startling number of similarities between Prince Caspian and my one book idea. On the one hand, I get that there are similarities in fiction, and that such will always be the case. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to pour my heart and soul (to say nothing of time) into something which will undoubtedly bring about derivative comparisons to Prince Caspian. I pride myself on my creativity and only want to work on ideas that are my own and stand apart as distinct from other ideas. I simply wouldn’t be able to keep working on that book as it stood and not have a constant reminder in the back of my brain saying that what I’m writing had already been done - and probably done better than what I was doing. This isn’t to say that the one book idea is totally dead, but needs a serious re-hashing.

2) The next Pitch Expo is coming up in a couple of months. I attended last year, and found it to be pretty well done. Not only were there a good number of agents and movie/TV production company reps in attendance, ready to hear whatever ideas people had to pitch them, but it will likely be bigger and better this year. And frankly, I want to go with something fresh to pitch. Which isn’t to say I’ll not bother with the ideas I pitched last year (which still have amazing potential), but I don’t want to show up without something newer to present, as well.

While my abandoning the book projects for the time being in favour of other projects goes directly against what I said I’d do, the fact of the matter is that one has to be practical. Pushing through book projects which are open-ended, as opposed to focusing on other material for a pending deadline that could serve me very well, doesn’t make sense to me.

Thus, I’m intending on working on a new screenplay I’ve had in mind for a while, and perhaps revisit an animated kids TV series idea I had a few years back. And hopefully my focus will be sharp enough that it’ll get some new, polished material finished come September.

Stay tuned!