That means that in the month of waiting to find out if it’s getting bought or not, I can have a plan ready to go the second I know definitively what’s going to happen.  In order to feasibly make this movie on our own, we’re breaking it into parts. The story takes place over about 9 months, so we’re going to shoot it that way. We’ve also broken the script down so we can shoot six days worth of interiors in Los Angeles over the winter, to save on travel costs. However, the timing of the first week of shooting is vital – monsoon season in the desert. We need to be ready to go by September. Monsoons in Arizona can be destructive forces that come out of nowhere – a beautiful sunny day ruined in a moment. Tragedy strikes the same way. Such an event happens to the two main characters in the story, leaving them to figure out how to move on and how to let go.

One of the first steps we’re going to take is to find a casting director to work with. Casting two young actors as recent high school grads is going to be challenging and take some time. There are some roles as well that we will definitely need some help filling. But for a few roles there are some people I have in mind that I’d love to work with that hopefully would enjoy working with us. It’s going to be budget, but it’s going to be fun. I hope we find people up for some budget fun.

What does this mean for Chutes? It actually puts Chutes in a good place. With an amazing cast, and a crew of two helping out Violet and I, we shot 9 of 25 new web episodes. We shoot the rest at the end of June and beginning of July and the release schedule for all those episodes will bring us through the end of the year. I’m really excited about Chutes after the work we did last weekend, which is why I think giving it time to build an audience is the right move. I’d rather not rush it the same way we did last time to make sure we deliver a quality product. It means we’ll be at a point of beginning the Chutes feature at the same point next year when we’re wrapping up production on this one.

Does it sound crazy? It probably sounds crazy. It might be. But I have a gut feeling that we’re building momentum and it feels more feasible than ever right now.

So here’s the situation – I want to make a feature film. No, scratch want, I need to make one. I’ve realized the only way that is realistically going to happen any time soon will be through the efforts of a microbudget project. That means finding a project that uses as many free or cheap resources I already have access to as possible. It means using a small crew, with minimal locations. There are two potential projects that I could put my energy towards to make that happen. Both have their positives and negatives. Both have similar could, should, would budget levels (“could shoot it at this level”, “should shoot it at this level”, “would, in an ideal situation, shoot it at this level”) but both also have different factors to consider. Ideally, both could be financed and packaged concurrently, but I don’t have the bandwidth to do that. I need to pick one for now. I’ll break down each of them.

Feature Option 1 – The sci-fi thriller

Chutes still has a feature story to tell, and more new content leading up to it.

Positives

- We’re building an audience for it, existing fan base

- Small cast, primary roles already set

- Potential market

Negatives

- VFX involved would up the budget

- Lots of locations and set pieces: increase locations budget and shooting days

- Higher equipment and production costs

Crowdfundable?: Yes

Thoughts: All of the negatives of going forward with Chutes are monetary. This one would really suffer from cutting corners in production value. We really can’t get away with shooting this one DSLR or shooting it in less than stellar locations. It would fall flat. The positive is that if our efforts to build an audience through our new content this summer are successful, those higher costs would be offset with a crowdfunding campaign. Yes, we’re going to try again, applying what we learned in our first go-round to a stronger effort this time. In the ideal situation, the transmedia content works and we launch a crowdfunding campaign along with an ARG and get this shot early next year. Realistically though, the feature is a much bigger project than I realized and I need to find producing help to really bring it to life the way it deserves to be.

Feature Option 2 – The coming of age drama (with a supernatural element)

“Coming of age drama” – Those words are a financial death sentence. This is the one being pitched. This is the one that was optioned, had meetings, had people attached, then not attached. At the end though, it came down to the fact that these are hard to fund because they’re hard to make a return on in a crowded market. But that’s because everyone having those meetings was talking in millions, not tens of thousands. I can skip the meetings and just go out and make it.

Positives

- Script is production ready

- Small cast, minimum locations

- Dialogue heavy, can minimize shooting days

- Investment memo done, would only need updated numbers

- DSLR style friendly

- Can be shot in pieces

Negatives

- Takes place in Arizona, increased cost of per diems and housing

- Personal films are still a tough sell at any financial level

Crowdfundable?: Not really

Thoughts: If this one did sell, it would be bittersweet – I wouldn’t be involved in its creation, but I could start pre-production on Chutes the next day. I went back and read it recently and realized how much I want to tell this story. It was my therapy and it would be so great to shoot. It has a style and tone that would suit a cheaper camera package. A good chunk of it is outdoors with only two actors so we wouldn’t need a lot of equipment. It’s a very microbudget friendly script, save for the cost of getting people to Arizona. It can also be broken up and shot over several months – a week in Arizona to start, several weekends in LA over the winter, and another two weeks in AZ next spring. The story takes place over a year and shooting in pieces means we could stretch out our money as we get it.

Final Verdict

I think Chutes’ fate will be sealed this summer. We’re trying something that falls under the large umbrella of transmedia with Chutes. Two narrative episodes, new character vlogs, found footage, and an online element will play out from June through September. I’m really excited about it, but it’s all always such a crapshoot to see what builds momentum online and what doesn’t. If we start building success through those, Chutes’ higher costs could be offset by a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Title Redacted has the benefit of being cheaper, but it’s harder to pitch a non-genre personal passion project through crowdfunding. That would have to happen entirely through a private equity route, but that’s something that would still happen quickly because it would be such a low budget. There is a third option, a feature that Violet and I have outlined, based on a short film we did. It has a small cast, minimum locations, and is potentially crowdfundable, but would look better shot on film than on DSLR’s and is still a long way off given we haven’t written the script yet.

In a perfect world, we spend the summer on Chutes, the fall on Title Redacted, and then come back to Chutes in the spring for the feature. But right now it all seems pretty daunting. Another factor is that we can’t crowdfund two different projects back to back. That’s not going to happen. We have to pick one. Raising capital is always an uphill battle. We’re going to fight for every last dollar and invest our own as well. And we’re certainly a long way from raising enough for multiple projects. But to say we only focus on one now doesn’t mean the other is dead. Definitely not. The question remains though, since we have to choose, which one is it going to be? I’m really not sure.

We learned a lot and shared our experience

Sometimes when you’re going through the stages of grief, you don’t even realize it. Which is nice. It’s like dozing off on a long flight and waking up at the end. You don’t want to be conscious of the entire trip. That’s brutal. As I reach the end of this most recent flight of events, I’m relieved it’s coming to an end.

It’s one thing to feel defeated and quit, but it’s another to acknowledge the loss and try to pick yourself back up. The problem is that all the positive talk, all the self-reassurance, can only go so far. You may know what needs to be done to move forward, but not be able to do it.

In my case, I had a checklist of minor things that needed to be taken care of to provide some closure before moving on to new things. I didn’t do them. Not right away, at least. It’s not that I stopped doing what I was doing – I did some writing during that time and started some early prep for a short film. But I didn’t do any of it with a sense of urgency. I was going through the motions. The Kickstarter debacle was a bigger blow than I ever acknowledged, to others or myself. It wasn’t the campaign itself. There were some rejections during that time that impacted the campaign and I think those compounded the disappointment. But in all honesty, it was a great experience, and it I’d still rather be failing trying than not doing anything at all.

There was another factor at play though. That’s that the day job is pretty awesome right now. It requires thinking (always a positive), creativity (love it), and even a chance to shoot some video (how did I get this?). When the day job is doing nothing more than providing living expenses, it’s easy to stay driven. When it’s paying more and something I look forward to, it puts me in a dangerous position of becoming more and more apathetic to the inevitable rejections that come with working in entertainment. It’s something I’m more than conscious of and it’s a complacency that I will constantly work to avoid.

I wrote previously about how my working style is similar to Bowser in Mario Kart – Once I get going, I have a strong force of momentum that’s hard to stop. But once I do stop, I STOP and it takes me a while to get going again. That was also a factor when I took a break over the holidays. It’s taken a while to get going again, but as of last week, I can start to feel the momentum build.

So I guess that means this most recent “woe is me” phase is finally over. It sounds silly, but I found a video while browsing r/motivation that includes a famous speech from Eric Thomas over the song “Time” by Hans Zimmer from Inception. Great combo. Ignore the typo that drives me crazy in the beginning and the rest of the video is great. There I was at 2 in the morning, stuck in a maddening writer’s block and everything finally clicked back on. The momentum is shifting forward again. It wasn’t just browsing motivational videos from Reddit in the middle of the night, but that was certainly a tipping point.

It means getting back to a sense of urgency with my schedule. So I apologize in advance to everyone I don’t see much this year. Although, one of my goals is to be more organized and have better time management, so that I can do more things I enjoy while still fitting in the things I need to do. Less time on the couch, more time seeing family and friends while still working tirelessly. I hope it works.

I guess the last few months were an example of working through the pain. It was kind of like slowing my pace without quitting the race. But now I can shift gears again. The sense of urgency and excitement is back. Time to get to work.

First a thank you to those 84 backers. You are what kept Violet and I going each day. You backed us financially, shared our project, tweeted it, emailed it, and talked about it. We are so grateful that you joined us on our journey.

Here’s a look at what an average Kickstarter feature narrative project’s numbers look like (thanks to Lucas McNelly and Crowdfunding 201)

And here’s what Chutes’ final numbers looked like:

Yeesh. Where do we begin? We only had 670 likes. We needed more than double that if we were going to be successful. Another issue was the average dollars per backer. The average campaign $$/Backers is a bit misleading because it’s the mean, not the median. A handful of larger dollar backers would’ve dramatically changed that number for us, but we had none lined up. We knew we needed to get a lot of backers to make up that difference. That’s one area we fell short. But it goes further than that. Look at our ratio. It was nearly 8 and actually well over 8 until the last day. What does that mean? That ratio is the number of backers compared to number of likes. It means a high number of people saw our project but didn’t back it.  To examine why our campaign fell short, I think that’s where we need to begin.

We didn’t have a clear message when we launched our campaign. We threw a lot of things at the wall hoping one would stick rather than choosing one clear message from the beginning. We talked a lot about the web series aspect, but our web series didn’t have a large audience to begin with. Plus, we lost our platform. In retrospect, it was not good planning to assume we’d get the support from Koldcast, but we had no reason to believe it would be otherwise. Koldcast is always aggressive about promoting their series when they have new episodes. They’ve also recently started pushing crowdfunding campaigns for select series. We counted on that as a big aspect of our campaign, tied to the release of two new episodes during the campaign. Unfortunately, they weren’t interested. We got the cold shoulder from them and when they finally did respond after a couple of follow ups, it was to inform us that season one would be pulled (but not until our campaign ended out of “courtesy” and contrary to the notice required in their distribution contract. They still dropped our page before the campaign ended. Not that I’m bitter…). After the Koldcast gut shot, we quickly abandoned pushing a web series aspect. That was a big blow and part of why we didn’t reach as many people as we had anticipated.

Besides web series, we also talked a lot about sci-fi. But when people hear sci-fi, they think special effects, space, exotic locations. They don’t usually think things like, “Primer” or “Another Earth” two big low-fi inspirations for our project. We were reaching in the wrong direction.

What did resonate from our project was our use of a diverse cast in non-stereotypical roles. Focusing on that paid dividends and it was something we were happy to talk about because we are very proud of that aspect.  Violet wrote a guest blog on Mas Wired that generated a lot of traffic as well as some backers. Over the course of the campaign, we saw that a bulk of our backers came from Facebook, meaning friends and family of our core group were our main backers. However, every time we had an article or a video, like Film Courage, my personal blog, or Digital Spill, we managed new backers from those links. It wasn’t as much, but you could see the beginnings of reaching that second level of people beyond just friends and family.

That next level is what we failed to grow large enough AND convert to backers. That second level that does not have a personal connection to the project is not going to have an emotional stake, so if the project isn’t close, there’s not a lot to get excited about. When you throw in more eyes, and a couple of large backers though, it looks like it could happen. When it looks like it could happen, more of those second level people becoming emotionally involved. They root for it – the Kickstarter effect. With that, I believe we would’ve converted a lot more of those likes into backers. Without any incentive to give, those people didn’t back us in the end. Some did – but not the numbers that would have if there were an excitement around it.

In the end, we should’ve waited when Violet broke her foot. We should’ve waited until the new year, reshot the pitch video, and made sure both episodes and phase one of the transmedia videos were complete before launching. We lost valuable prep time because of it, and, as mentioned in a previous post, we lost a chance to attend events in person in both California and Arizona. But could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. We felt we were ready to launch and I was itching to shoot.

You have to ask yourself – did you not make a compelling enough case or is it not a compelling enough project? I’m going with the former for two reasons. One, we didn’t reach enough people to determine if there was interest in it or not. Two, we didn’t show enough of our project. If we had stuck to our web series tie in, we would’ve released our two new episodes, then referenced important season one episodes that related to the feature plot. In the end, we just didn’t do or show enough given how unknown we are. If we had released our new episodes, had reviews written about them, launched the first transmedia episode, and appeared on twice the number of bogs and podcasts and still had the same ratios? I would’ve had to put the project aside. However, it would be unfair to call the project dead at the end of this campaign given that it hasn’t had a chance to get proper exposure to begin with.

I talked about this in our Film Courage interview, but the competitive landscape of crowdfunding has changed. It is considerably more challenging. Before, you could have a cool concept, shoot a decent pitch video, make sure to update regularly, social media the crap out of it during the campaign and you were all but assured of hitting your goal. Now you have to have a unique concept with a great pitch video and a targeted plan to reach your audience, not just your personal social network, unless your social media reach is your audience, in which case, you’re in good shape. You should also have a sense of where your money is going to come from. If you know from day one you don’t have any four or five figure backers lined up, find them first. So the key takeaways from our experience with Kickstarter:

• Use the numbers. There is enough research out there to get a sense of where you’ll need to be based on your goal. Make a list of potential backers. We named ours – “Should back”, “Might back”, “Would be nice if…”. That will give you a sense of what your numbers may look like and how big a gap there is between people you know and people you’ll have to find.
• Have a clear focus. Ours was a low-fi sci-fi with diverse non-stereotypical leads, only we settled on it way too late. Reach the audience that connects with that focus.
• Contact people early. Had we known we needed to plan around a different distribution platform, we would’ve adjusted accordingly. You also can’t expect blogs to respond and get something written in a day or two so if you want press, start the contact process before your campaign even begins.
• Your personal social media reach isn’t enough anymore. You need to find your project’s audience to get enough backers. I realized too late into the campaign that I wasn’t following very many sci-fi fans or sites on either twitter or Facebook. I had no personal connections to the places where people might’ve been interested in seeing our project. We did have some networks to the diversity aspect, but didn’t contact them early enough.
• Give people a reason to root for you and the project. While I stressed above the potential backers we would’ve gained if we were closer, we needed more backers early on. Contests, events, etc is a place we could’ve improved. A special thanks to LXV Wine for offering some great bottles of wine as a prize for backers. But we needed more things like that and needed to better tie it into our concept.
• Have fun. It’s going to be all encompassing and exhausting. If you’re not having fun with it, what’s the point? Violet did a hobble dance, we did a geek-off, and we had many late night and early morning tired giggle fits. Whenever one of us would get frustrated, the other would remind me that we were supposed to enjoy the ride regardless of how it ended.

We knew a lot of these points going into the campaign, but executing it is much different than reading about it. We learned some valuable lessons and we’ll be back on Kickstarter for post-production of Chutes next summer. We hope to see you there.

In the summer of 2004, I was on my way to grad school for film at Chapman University. I had sent my security deposit, had my classes assigned, and was planning my move from Phoenix, Arizona. But before I left, I was working a summer job that required a road trip to Albuquerque. Then things changed.

There was an accident. A blown tire. Our van rolled a couple of times. I didn’t walk away unscathed. Shattered 1^st metacarpal, chipped elbow, fractured scapula, and a broken neck were the largest issues.

While in the hospital, they wanted to operate to fix my thumb. I was hesitant but agreed. That morning, not one, but two IV’s popped out. I took it as a sign and decided to wait until I was back in Phoenix to have the surgery.

When I returned to Phoenix, I found out that my neck injury wasn’t just a hairline fracture, it had slipped in such a way that the x-ray didn’t look pretty. Had I gone through with the thumb surgery earlier, the anesthesia tube probably would’ve hit the spinal fracture and paralyzed me.

I had a spinal fusion surgery to fix my neck and then a surgery to put a couple of pins in my hand to fix my thumb a few days later. Undeterred, I still thought I could make it to Chapman. It was August and I was going to be in a neck brace and cast through October. Since I couldn’t drive, I looked up bus routes to see if it would be possible. Then I had a follow up appointment for my neck surgery. I had an infection in the repaired area. It was so bad I needed another surgery to clean it out and make sure the instrumentation hadn’t also been infected. That would’ve caused major issues. I was stuck in the hospital for the next several days fighting off a fever. I made it through okay, but it meant more time in the next brace and required me to take it easy, stay indoors, and rest. No school for me.

Staying positive with the help of friends

After the cast came off my hand and the brace came off my neck, I had several weeks of physical therapy. I couldn’t lift more than a gallon of milk for a year. I couldn’t walk for very long without my neck starting to hurt at first, but I kept at it. By the time I made my way back to California the following year, the money I had saved up was gone, I had no car, and no money. I crashed on a friend’s couch and in Violet’s dorm. I worked at a Seattle’s Best inside a Border’s, which helped me regain some physical strength. I’d hide in the back and sit on a crate when I could because standing for an entire shift was exhausting and painful.

By the end of that year, Violet and I found a place and jobs. A year after the surgery, I received the all clear to resume all normal activities, except for riding a motorcycle or playing football. Not that I ever did either of those. It took a while to start digging out of the financial hole I had been in because of the accident. Two years after the accident, I should’ve been graduating. Nevertheless I was happy to be at a point where I finally had a life returned to normal.

I kept writing during this time. Writing actually helped me through a lot of it. But the film industry seemed miles away. I slowly crept my way back into it though, PA’ing on a couple of sets, joining NALIP, and then finally shooting a short in 2007. I worked my way up to Production Coordinator and UPM on a couple of small projects while focusing on writing. Then I grew tired of waiting for my projects to get made as a writer and that’s what led to initial creation of the Chutes & Ladders web series.

There’s a balancing act done for the sake of sanity between chance and fate. What an awful, unfeeling world we live in when we win lottery level odds to a bad situation. But fate is different. Maybe things happen for a reason. I renewed my relationship with some family members and old friends and strengthened it with others. It strengthened an already strong drive and gave me a fresh perspective to appreciate the moment. Who would I have been if it hadn’t happened? Would that me be a weaker person? Who knows.

That’s where Chutes comes in. It’s about the choices we make when we don’t think we have a choice. A man from the future has a collection of photos that reveal his fate as well as the fate of others. No matter what he does, the events in the photos happen. How long would you fight that before giving in? What does it say about your character if your actions are already written? When seemingly little events happen to Alex and Olivia that put them on a course with Vikram, is that fate? A lot of little events have to fall into place for a big one to happen. You can go crazy playing those events over and over in your head and feel helpless to them. But that doesn’t mean you’re not in control of your actions. What happens when Alex and Olivia decide they want to take control, photos be damned? What can change and what can’t? That’s what drives Chutes.

The same forces are playing out right now in our Kickstarter campaign. So many little events that lined up against us, our own actions included. A lot to be learned. Are we going to shrug our shoulders and call it a day? Or are we going to look back at all of the little events, good and bad, that led to the creation of a movie? Things can happen for a reason when you make them. Right now, this can be the story of how a project died, or it can be one of how a project overcame challenges to succeed. In hindsight, one way or another, it will look like those events were meant to be.

Maybe the universe deals the cards. And maybe they’re the house that, in the end, always wins. But regardless of the hand you’re dealt, you control how you play it. You can be dealt pocket kings and blow it. You can bluff your way to a huge pot with a 2 and a 5. But you get to decide how to play those cards, and how to make the most of them, if you so choose.

There’s still time to back Chutes. Click here or below to back us.

That’s right it’s from the N64 version

Working styles are like Mario Kart characters – they’re all a little different and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I think the key to successfully maximizing your Mario Kart ability and not getting lapped by everybody (*cough*Keith*cough*) is to know and use those strengths properly. In Mario Kart, I’m a Yoshi kind of driver. But in real life, I’m a Bowser.

What does that mean, exactly? It means I need some ramp up time. I’m slow to get going, but once I do get going, it’s like a heavy boulder picking up speed down the mountain. The problem with Bowser is that the slightest misstep and he come to a dead stop. Then you need to go through the slow start all over again. This is exactly how I work – it takes me forever to get going, and once I stop, I have to start the long process all over again.

Sure I’ve tried to be “more productive” with my time. I’ve disconnected my internet or gone to cafes without internet, but I guarantee I will find a way to stall or distract myself when I need to write. And rather than go straight through my to-do list I will go A.D.D. for as long as possible. But at a certain point, something will click and I become the most productive person ever. Once I reach that point I can keep going until the sun comes up (and often do).

Now I had a couple of options. I could fight my natural tendencies, or I could embrace them. It’s not healthy to stay up all night, but it’s also not realistic to think I can sit down and be productive at the snap of a finger. The stalling is a part of my process. When writing, I work things out in my head while daydreaming and procrastinating before putting hand to keyboard. I plan around this – I set aside enough time to work my way into things. I know I’m going to need it if I’m going to get anything done. I’m fooling myself if I think I can sit down and do 30 minutes of writing cold.

The Kickstarter campaign has been similar. Once I got going the first week, I was absorbed in it. Then I got sick. That was that sudden stop moment. And with the clock ticking, it took a couple of days to get going again. The starting and stopping has been frustrating and something I hadn’t anticipated. With better planning maybe I would’ve had some content to plug in during those stop/slow start moments. Violet certainly filled the gap well during those times though.

Good planning keeps me from hitting those starting over points. Since our mid-campaign stumble, I’ve been able to keep going. Not necessarily at the pace I would’ve liked, but at least not running into a dead stop. You learn your working style, adjust, and make the most of it. And if you work off momentum, you hope you don’t hit a banana peel. Or your own green shell. It’s always your own green shell.

Chute maps and crowdfunding. It’s all daunting.

We put a lot of planning and preparation into our campaign. But it’s hard to know exactly what you’re up against in a crowdfunding campaign until you’re actually in the middle of it. People often say there aren’t enough hours in the day, but it’s incredibly frustrating to literally not have enough hours – to watch one day end and the other begin while still trying to fit in work for two jobs.While we had some setbacks, such as getting sick, or the emotional blow and physical limitations of Violet’s broken foot, there are a lot of people that I’m sure have cleared greater hurdles on their way to a successful crowdfunding campaign than the ones we have faced.

The general trend with Kickstarter is that people either make just enough to hit their goal, or make hardly anything at all. There’s not really many in between that. I think that’s because people who don’t hit their goal either A)Don’t understand crowdfunding and leave their campaign page for dead the moment they launch it, or B)Recognize the overwhelming odds against them hitting their goal at a certain point and cancel the campaign.

We learned quickly to narrow the focus of our audience and in hindsight I wish we had done so in our original pitch script. We’re falling short because we either haven’t reached our target audience outside our network, or our project isn’t resonating with them. Or both. Hopefully not both. But we think there’s a lot of headway to make into reaching potential audience and there’s still time to do that. We also haven’t made a dent into our 2^nd degree of contacts. Friends of friends aren’t backers. We have a lot of likes and I’m hopeful that we can make a case to convert them to backers in the time that remains while we continue to reach new people. On the bright side, there are a lot more “wow, he/she is a backer? That’s awesome” cases than there are, “I can’t believe he/she hasn’t backed yet,” ones.

When I was in high school, I went on a ski trip during Christmas break. It was only my second time skiing, so while I picked it up pretty quickly, I was still very much a beginner. But I just had to try some black diamond moguls. I was in over my head on the course, and to make it worse, it was right below one of the ski lifts. I wrecked every few moguls the entire way down that course. It was painful. But I was determined to finish that course, and in the end I did. And maybe if I had waited until I was a more experience skier, I would’ve left my first mogul course with fewer bumps and bruises. But if you’re going to advance, you have to dive in sooner or later. It would’ve been easy to take off my skis and walk down the mountain, conceding defeat. That’s not me though.

When you dive in, you might get laughed at. You might get hurt. You’ll probably fail. It shouldn’t matter. You keep going until the end of the course. I do. I’ll see you at our finish line on Friday, November 2^nd. Battered and beaten, but successful.

One week left to help us make our dream happen. Please click here to support.

I went for a run earlier this evening and was extremely tempted to stop early. During the first five months when I was focused on weight loss, I would run anywhere from 3-5 miles, but always at least the 3. Since then, I’ve run more than 3.5 miles only once and only more than 3 a handful of times. It became very easy to hit 2 miles and call it a day, feeling proud of myself just for doing anything at all. Sometimes, that’s not enough though. Tonight I finished a 3.1 mile run. I really want to finish off those last ten pounds and I’m not going to get there by settling.

I also want to make a movie. A science fiction feature film, to be exact. Chutes is all I’ve been thinking about all year. Our Kickstarter campaign launched Sunday afternoon. I have been touched and humbled by the people who have backed our project so far. But it’s not enough. We have a lofty goal of $28,000 because that is the minimum it would cost to get this thing shot. Now, given the support received so far, it would be very easy to take that same complacent attitude. “Well, it was a tough goal, but we tried.” It would be very easy to take away the support we’ve had to feel okay with defeat. But that’s not what’s going to happen.

It’s the early stage of a marathon, where the realization of how far this run actually is sets in. That moment of panic when you’re not sure what you’ve gotten yourself into. But you weather that, calm down, and keep going. We’re not even at the point of the marathon where we hit a wall. We’re just getting started. And until that counter says no time left, I will be pushing as hard as I can. The difference with this Kickstarter though, unlike my nightly runs, is that I won’t be crossing the finish line alone. There will be a whole lot of people with me by the end of this campaign. If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll be one of them.

PLEASE BACK US AND HELP US SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT CHUTES

Multitasking while running sucked for several reasons. I would lose my sense of pace and either get winded too soon, or I would slow to a crawl and not get a good workout. I would lose my form and that would lead to sore knees and ankles. Sadly, my body’s fragile. Also, by the time I finished my run, my mind was a mess. I had a million things I felt I needed to get done or write down. It completed ruined the reasons I was enjoying running so much.

Now when I run, the only thing I focus on is the run itself: breathing in and out, my feet hitting the ground, my arms moving. Every so often I’ll find my mind start to wander along with a song, but I’ll always make sure to pull myself back.

It may feel counterintuitive, but thinking about nothing but my breathing during a run makes me so much more productive afterwards. That chance to clear my head, to take a moment to focus and relax, makes all the difference in the world. It’s so easy to try to multitask things to feel like you’re getting more done, but all it really does is create a constant state of busy. Sometimes the most productive thing I can do when I’m facing writer’s block is the dishes. Or take a walk. I suppose you could call it mindfulness, but I don’t think I know what I’m doing enough to call it that. The greater point is, taking time to clear your head and be conscious of the present in a world where we’re constantly surrounded by texts, emails, tweets, and low attention span drivel, is a great thing to practice.

As I was walking back, a guy was jogging down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. He wasn’t in the best shape and was definitely struggling, but I gave him a nod of understanding. It brought to mind a great quote I’ve seen everywhere since I started running, “No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch.” It’s so true and it applies to writing too. No matter how awful you think your first draft is, it’s still more words than the person who keeps talking up his story that’s never been written.

The thing that made me relate as I saw him jog by was that he was doing it pretty late at night. It was dark and there weren’t many people out. Putting yourself out there as a beginner in anything can always be intimidating. When I started running, I would make sure it was dark out and the evening traffic was clear. I could just imagine some passersby pointing and laughing as I struggled along at what could only be described as a medium-paced walk.

Over time, I got faster. My form got better. Eventually I was running well simply because I wasn’t self-conscious anymore. Sure, I’m by no means a fast runner and I’m still a ways off from my targeted health goals, but I’m confident and comfortable running. I go running right when I get home now even though the sun goes down later. It’s daylight out and there’s a long line of traffic at the intersections I run through, but I don’t even notice anymore.

I’ve written some terrible first drafts and a couple of scripts that will never see the light of day. But it took those first couple times in the dark, struggling along while getting the hang of things in order to get better. I’m more comfortable sending out my writing now than I was before. It’s by no means where I want it to be, but I know that I’ve put in that time in the dark and can have my writing out in the open now.