It’s been awhile.

Let’s see. What can I tell you?

I can tell you that 2017 was not the best year of my life, but that’s hardly unique to me.

2018 has gone a little better, so far. I know we’re only three weeks in, but still. I’ve got a list of things to accomplish this year: a full-length album, a novel, radio plays, short stories, two screenplays, a whole slew of comic book projects.

A movie.

(Yes. That movie.)

Maybe I should tell you about the movie. Marlon.

Here’s what I have to tell: I am working on it. The work is going incredibly slowly, and every avenue I have examined to speed the process up, to just finish the damn thing already, to GET IT THE FUCK DONE...are all expensive. I’m not talking even a thousand dollars. I would spend a thousand dollars in a heartbeat, and worry about the bill later.

The money to finish it up quickly and well would bankrupt me. So I’m grinding on, slow and steady, in fits and starts, chipping, chiseling, etcetera.

I haven’t forgotten, I haven’t given up. Someday I’ll surprise you all.

“What? What’s this?” you’ll say. “A horror movie? I remember hearing about this somewhere, a long time ago.”

“It’s Marlon,” I’ll say.

“No shit?” You’ll reply, and clap me on the back, and watch it. Then you’ll go, “Right on. That was pretty groovy. A bit fucked-up, but I dug it.”

And I’ll say, “Thanks, glad you dug it,” and I will return to the screenplay I was working on, and all will be right with the world.

I’m going to be honest, because the writing I care about is honest, and above all, I want to write things that people care about. (Well, perhaps I write to Entertain first and foremost, but caring is close on the heels of the glitter and glam.)

I’ve been kind of depressed lately. For the last week or so, noticeably, palpably, paralyzingly depressed. It’s no mystery to me; I’ve had ups and downs all my life, and every single time it gets bad, it’s because I’m not writing.

I kid you not: just typing this right now is helping.

Skipping over the glum, gray details, it’s getting better. I wrote yesterday; a missing chunk of a novel I hacked out of one month of early mornings in 2014. It felt great. And I’m writing today: this journal is a sort of warm-up to shake me out of the colorless, tasteless smudge I’ve been in all morning. When I’m done with this, there’s more writing waiting.

My wife is right: “Time management,” she told me this morning, with a smile and a kiss and the kind of hug that drags me up toward the sun.

It really is a beautiful day. Clean. Clear. The snow is running in rivulets and freshets down the double glass of the window by my desk. The room smells of the ghost of strong espresso and the fresh scent of new hardbacks I’ve been meaning to read forever.

I just finished The Book Thief, which was easily one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years. I plan to really write about it soon.

Currently, I’m reading Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen and Owen King. It’s exactly the book I need right now, as Stephen King’s books so often are.

(And there’s a great dig at Donald Trump in the first forty pages, so that’s a plus.)

I have a lot to do this year.

I have a lot to do today.

It feels good to know that doing it will help me heal, and in healing, find my voice, and myself, again.

--Max Peterson