In my spare time (that is, the time I am not able to work on “How to get Away with it”), I’ve been writing 12-13 new stories. One of these, “Monica”, has reached treatment phase — and was completed just at the end of 2015.
This is one of the longest treatments I have ever written — at 66 pages, according to Microsoft Word, it has taken me 13,612 minutes to write — that’s 9.45 DAYS if I were to have written it non-stop without sleeping or eating or…living life.
I’ve never talked to anyone about this story. I guess I’ll divulge a little bit now.
“Monica” is about a teenager who falls in love with her serial abductor. It is a dramatic love story intended to take the audience through the exact journey Monica goes through as a young female abductee — fear and terror; falling in love; accepting reality; and finally, understanding that sometimes full closure is not possible.
I won’t reveal anything more about the plot or narrative at this time.
What I can tell you is that the treatment took me over two years to write. Now I wasn’t working on it all the time, in fact, if you do the math, the writing amounts to about 36 words a day over 844 days. Though in reality, I wrote the final 30 pages over the course of one week at the end of December.
I completed my original story line and rough treatment in July 2010. The story however, had been developing in my mind since I was a lot younger. I first came up with the idea around 1999 or 2000, when I was actually closer in age to the character, Monica. Her name and persona is based on a real individual I met when I was 13 — also named Monica — who moved to the Toronto area from Texas (Texas is also the location where my treatment begins).
This is probably one of the most personal stories I have ever written. I have injected a lot of myself — my emotions and my memories of being young into this character.
I hope to one day share this with the world.
Andrew
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