Muse and Mischief

Somewhere on an old hard drive are reference pictures from old paintings and a 140 page screenplay that I thought was going to change the world. 

I think every artist has at least one or two pieces they started with so much enthusiasm but eventually set aside. Whether it was because of a lost passion for the idea or they reached an impasse, work on that project simply ceased. I know I have left a handful of projects in my wake throughout my artistic journey. 

Unfinished paintings and partial manuscripts litter the metaphorical graveyard of past attempts at brilliance. I’ve made it a practice since I started taking my creative career seriously to revisit old ideas to see if they spark anything. Not many of them did, as I ultimately concluded they stopped for good reasons.

There is one though that I am glad I picked back up. Back around 2009 or 2010 I got an idea for a screenplay that was a reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale set in space in the distant future with a gender swap. This time it was the men who were captive. I thought it was an interesting take to explore so I set about to create my story. 

I was still very young in my screenwriting practice as well as story structure, although then I had no clue that was the case. But I dove right in and spent a little over three months writing the script until at the end I had a 140 page first draft. 

That sound you hear is all of the screenwriters collectively cringing. 140 pages is incredibly too long. The script needed work, a lot of it. Even back then I had the ability to tell that it had problems. 

While the main character, an artist named Arrow, had a fair amount of depth to her, the rest of the characters were rather flat. The plot itself felt trite and forced. Arrow really didn’t have any skin in the game and was just kind of there. Then there were the plot holes. So many holes one would think I was trying to strike oil. Well, I guess in a way I was, but not in an effective way. 

While part of me wanted to pick right back up and dive into it, I was a little burnt out on that story. I had nowhere near the stamina for writing that I do now. So I set it aside and went on my way. A divorce, promotion, and a move closer to work drew me away from writing and the screenplay, which eventually just became a lost effort. Sure over the fourteen years it would cross my mind and I would toy with it in my head for a spell before setting aside again. 

Then 2022 came. I was laid off from my job and to keep me sane amid my frantic job hunt I started writing short stories. A year later I started my first novel. When I wasn’t writing that, my mind churned on what my next project would be. My old idea bubbled to the surface and with the changes I went through over the past fourteen years, getting married, having a baby, and coming out as transgender, something hit different. While my story was riddled with problems, the concept was still solid. 

So I completely reworked it. Still set in space, I changed the circumstances. Instead of a female run society, it is one where men are the minority but the Christian nationalist government still sets them above everyone else. 

In developing the new world I got ideas on how to make the story multi-layered to be an exploration of social hierarchy, class division, and forced gender roles. I switched my characters around, with my new main character getting a complete overhaul from their previous incarnation. The excitement was high and I loved working through the planning phase. 

Finally on August 2, 2025 I started writing the first draft of this project that I am tentatively calling “Olympus” with the following logline:

On a caravan through space a young mother is accused of the first murder in 100 years, thrown into the fleet’s underbelly she must clear her name to get back to her son. 

While I was really excited about my first novel, I can barely contain myself when I am not at the computer writing this draft. As of this post I am over 30k words in and working towards the Midpoint. 

Let this be a lesson, don’t ever truly throw away an idea or a stalled project. Sometimes it wasn’t a failure as much as it was just the wrong time. Create a folder or a place to set your unfinished work or what you tossed aside for one reason or another. 

Visit it from time to time, if anything to remind yourself of how far you’ve come. Looking back on your past is a great way to see your evolution. Reading your old work and seeing how bad it was and why it didn’t work is a sure sign that you have grown as an artist. 

Do you have a project that was set aside that still whispers to you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.