S1E18 - Nadir in Headlights

Well, I guess we've like, probably started the episode, so.

Welcome back. Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to beyond the beyond the Locked Doors. No, beyond the Locked Doors.

Beyond the Locked Doors.

That's when we reboot it in a few years. Yeah. That'll be our cash in reboot for nostalgia reasons. I am Scott Paladin. I am writing a werewolf crime noir fiction thing called It Takes a Wolf.

Hi, my name is Sam. Oh.

Oh, shit. Talking about Richard. Sorry, go ahead, Sam. You always go second. I'm so scrambled.

It's all good.

My name is Sam and I'm working on azenwest.

Hi, I'm Jack. I'm also working on azenwest. I'm just upside down and sideways today. Sorry.

That's all right. That's like our natural position is to be a bit. A bit frazzled. If we're all together then something weird has happened.

Yeah.

I have been gone. You've done a couple episodes without me, so I totally understand.

Yeah. And you did some without me as well. It's just like that sometimes.

That's just how it be. That's how it do.

Yeah.

Okay, so I guess we'll start with check ins. How are y'all doing on Azimuth production, if any at all?

I did do the Excel spreadsheet again and I tried to plot out. I am only working on the first episode. I'm only letting the first episode percolate in my head. I'm only doing first episode stuff. And this last week I put out like a basic skeleton of what I wanted to do and read through it and gave it a couple days and went back to it and deleted everything. And then. And then I laid on my couch because I was very sick and I just sort of.

I'm sorry to hear that.

It was so. I lost four pounds. It was really bad.

Oh, God.

But because I was doing a lot of lying around and not doing anything, I was able to, I guess, structure it in my head, which is I guess the very first, very important step. So I think. I think I know what I want to do. I'm going to put it into an Excel spreadsheet again, the way that it is now in my brain. And I'm going to send it to Jack. That's like my next steps.

Okay, cool. Yeah. What I did this past couple weeks between episodes was buy furniture for my house. So that's all I've really been doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fair. Yeah, I am. You have no. If I had had any more time or any less time than to set up I would be, like, podcasting from the floor right now because I am at rock bottom in terms of productivity and feelings right now. So I'm sorry. I'm a fan. No, it's okay. That's just the way it do sometimes. So I got basically no actual progress done. I have been spinning my wheels and trying to get things to work and not getting anywhere. So, yeah, that's where I'm at.

Okay. But I just want to say, the other day when you were posting the channel, like, oh, man, the timestamp on this is like, a year ago. This feels so bad right now. I want to say, like, you've stuck with this project for a year, and that is something to be proud of. Even if at this particular moment you're like, oh, my God, this isn't fucking going anywhere. You've produced stuff and gone places. Material exists that didn't exist a year ago, and you're still working on it. So that goes something.

Yeah. Having stuck with it is definitely a real accomplishment. That's true. I hadn't really been thinking about it in that framework because I have other projects that would have died.

I've done totally.

I've gone through this exact same thing. But because I have y'all, and I have this project right here which keeps me accountable, I have been sticking around with it. But, yeah, sometimes art is hard.

Real preach.

Yeah. For real. Yeah. That's where we're at. I didn't even bring a topic because it's just done. I'm so wiped out.

Scott is metaphorically laying on the floor right now.

Yeah. Basically, like, if I. If. I mean, no, I'd have to move my mic. I can't do it. I came so close to being like, man, I could probably just call, like, we're doing it recorded. If I had a second recorder, I could just be, like, lying on the couch, like, full therapy style. Yeah.

Maybe that would be helpful for you. Jostle some things around in your brain.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, Jack. I was going to mention on the podcast that I realized that my first script file was created June 20th of 2023.

Wow.

So I started the project that would eventually be named It Takes a Wolf a year ago at the moment that I felt that, like I said, I've been having a rough time the last couple of weeks trying to actually get productive writing done. And to be like, oh, crap, I've been at this a year, and I have three of eight episodes written to a zero draft. Not even written written. I'm like, oh, crap, I Have no idea when I'm going to be done. And I've been in creative nadirs before. And so sometimes that is a project that just dies. Sometimes with things like breathing space where I'm accountable, eventually I know that you crawl your way back out of it by figuring out what it was that was making you excited about it in the first place. Sometimes you just gotta. Sometimes your brain's just like, we're gonna only focus on all of the worst things in the world right now. So I think that lots of people can understand how that feels.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

And sometimes it's just like, no, you gotta just beat your own brain back into submission and be like, no, we're doing this anyway.

Doing it anyway. Well, and also I feel like it's totally possible that it took a year to write the first three episodes, and then you'll write the next six episodes in, like four months. It just happens sometimes that you suddenly blast ahead and complete a whole ton of shit very quickly, and you're like, oh, well, the whole project only took a year and a half total. But the first year was so slow.

I've been thinking about in that way in the last six months. And at this point, I'm at the point of where I'm like, nah, it takes how long it takes and I'm just gonna have to do it. I would love, of course, if I suddenly sprang to Life and did 1,000 words a week for the next X number of weeks and then it was done. But if I think forward in that way, that means I start setting goals for myself. And that's, I think, counterproductive at the moment.

So, yeah, the other thing you have to think about this past year, watching you put up your ideas and your thoughts in the discord, most of what you've been doing this year is the world building part.

Yes.

And, like, that's super. It's really hard and there's like a lot of it. And so maybe this next year it will go a little faster because you've at least got, like, most of your framework done and you don't have to stop every five seconds and be like, oh, yeah, how does the government work? You know, like that kind of, wait.

Fuck, I have to ask questions about the world in order to write anything about this, like, specific.

I think that being. I mean, that's 100% true. You're right. That is something that could be the case. I'm also trying to remind myself that it's the only person setting goals and expectations about when this happens is me. Nobody else is. I mean, sure, I know there are people out there who will be excited for the Horny Wear Pearl project when it finally shows up. But the, there is no, like I'm not going to miss a deadline and upset an investor or I'm not going to disappoint a boss or anything like that. Like, this is just me. So like if it, if it takes longer, if it does take a while, as long as I don't, like the only failure is to quit at this point. So like the, any kind of, any kind of feeling of like, oh God, I'm not where I wanted to be, this is going to take forever, how long, blah, blah, that's all stuff that I'm putting onto the, those expectations myself. And so there isn't. And that in that sense they're consequenceless, you know, like it doesn't, it doesn't matter if it takes longer and to that matter, it doesn't matter that I am not where I, you know, if you had asked me in last year, hey, where would you think you're going to be? I would have thought it would have been produced by now. But it doesn't matter that it wasn't. Like it's going to.

Right.

It's going to be as it's going to be done when it's done and it'll be as good as it is when it's done. And I just got to work my best to do all of it, but I can't. Like the expectations and the thought process behind oh crap, I didn't meet the expect. I set an expectation or sort of secretly hoping something would be at a certain point or finished by X date or whatever. That sort of isn't helpful to the process actually. It's setting those goals and dates and things like that are just more pressure I'm putting on myself which is worse for the actual productive process. So it just gotta like sit back and zen a little bit probably. I say that like it's easy of course. Like that's like, oh, just don't care so much.

Just relax. Well, here's the other thing too, Scott. The other project that you've been very involved in the past several years works at like a breakneck, crazy pace. Breathing space appears in the world at a speed that is like fucking unheard of for like hobby project audio dramas. So it's like a bad comparison.

That's where I'm at. I feel like I've vocalized what I needed to vocalize and said this is part of the process where sometimes it's just hard and I'm not feeling great. But that doesn't mean that. Of course that doesn't mean that I'm not quitting. I'm going to keep going at it. I will make progress. The fact that it's hard now just means that my brain's probably chewing on stuff that'll come out later. I will say this. I've been feeling bad and I've been sounding bad, probably for the first part of this podcast. I went back and reread all of the stuff that I wrote for the first three episodes. And I like what I write. I know it's like the done thing to be like, oh, I can't go back and read things I don't like, blah, blah. I can only see the flaws. No, man, I'm a good writer.

Yes, you are.

There are, of course, things that need to be fixed in those scripts and stuff, but generally speaking, I know that I am on a path that will produce a good result.

Yes.

And I'm going to finish this. So I'm. It's. I just got to keep. I will remind myself and remind every and make it known that I am aware this is going to get done and it will be good when it's done, even if it feels hard now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've already produced good content. Yeah, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So is there anything y'all want to talk about with regards to azenwest?

I want to hear your thoughts, Sam, because again, I have been in furniture hell for the past two weeks and I haven't really checked in. So tell me your thoughts.

So, again, last time on, I was having so much trouble with the don't want to info dump, but also audience kind of needs to know what's going on. But then I had the epiphany that a lot of things start out and the reader or listener or watcher does not know what the hell's going on. So it's probably okay. And I wanted to start kind of where we did in the first draft, where they immediately are teleporting onto the station, which I realize is a pretty great place to start because it doesn't drop you into action, quote unquote, but it does drop you into something that's happening and a set piece. Yeah. And I think that that whole thing we had with west being really, really hungry and just wanting to eat actual fucking food for the first time in, like four years is a great place to kind of get really good character development because they have this thing that they're trying to do, like they're wanted. They're wanted men and there's like all this shit happening, but there's no.

Yeah, we're here on omissions. And you're like, I just need some fucking noodles, please, for the love of God.

And I think that sets up a West baseline pretty well. And I really, really, really want this podcast to have serious bits and have the space to tackle some pretty serious issues. Maybe not full on soapbox kind of social justicing or whatever, but I want it to be able to go places that are more drama serious. But we have to remember that both of these people are ridiculous.

Yeah.

Wackos.

Yeah, I know that it feels like. It feels like ridiculous and serious are on opposite ends of a spectrum and you move from one to the other and you're moving along it. But that's, I think, honestly not true that you can simultaneously do both at the exact same time. And you can use ridiculous scenarios and ridiculous people and jokes and stuff like that to cover serious topics and ideas and to say serious things. Oh, yeah, they feel like they're antithetical to one another. But the truth is, that's just not true. You can do both at the same time, and often by doing one or the other on purpose, you end up doing the other one on accident.

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Especially if your characters are real people.

Oh, sorry. Go on, Sam.

No, it's okay. I was just saying that especially if the characters in what you're making are fleshed out and realistic. Real people.

That's true. Have either of you seen any of the original Cartoon Network Teen Titans? Cartoon.

Yes.

Not Teen Titans Go. But the original one.

The actual Teen Titans show.

The actual.

That matters.

Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't remember if it was Cartoon Network or not, but yeah, yeah, that's the one.

Yeah, it's cartoon.

Yeah, that's the one. I've seen.

That show does a wild tone swing like every other episode from like a super serious, dark toned episode to like a crazy, zany, silly one, but it somehow works. And I'm like, that's kind of the tone that I could see working well for this as well, where it's like just see sawing wildly back and forth in tone, but not in a jarring way, in a way that makes sense for these characters and situations that they're in.

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

I think it's also really important that I vocalize somehow. Let me figure out the words. When I first started this project, I was heavily, heavily inspired by the Penumbra podcast because I liked the noir feel and the sci fi, but really just a detective noir story at the beginning. And I loved the characters and a lot of stuff was based on the characters, blah, blah, blah, and going from unspeakable distance and the story that we created there and taking it where we're taking it, it doesn't work. Like, the Panumba podcast isn't even close to what Azen west is going to be. And I might have taken, like, a couple elements of, like, really specific things that I liked. But what I was saying before about how this show is going to be a very, like, very, very dramatic and serious, but also very, very silly at the same time. And I guess that now as I have matured as a writer and a podcaster, my listening has also. I wouldn't say matured, but it has changed a little bit. And my favorite podcast in the entire world, hands down, is Midnight Burger. And Midnight Burger is Doctor who, but American, and instead of a phone booth, it's a diner. And like, that's basically, basically what it is. And the writers of that show, they are brilliant. They. I just. There's. There's. I will. I need to stop because I will gush about them forever. But the writing in that show is so tight and it's so crisp and it's so fucking funny, but it's also so smart. And it does that thing where it's like, really, really, really hilarious and really silly for like an entire episode, and then it just switches, like, bam. It is suddenly serious. Like the most serious ever. And that is way more like what I'm going for. And so I guess that entire thing that I just said is to say that even though I have not actually written any of this stupid podcast down anywhere, and, well, I have, but I've deleted it. It has matured so much and it has changed and it has morphed so much from what it was at conception. Oh, yeah. That even though, again, I haven't really written anything that's stuck onto the page, I feel so accomplished because I am way more grounded in what I want to do and less of a. Oh, I have this idea and it's so fun. La, la la. And now I'm like, well, you've, like.

Figured out what the actual tone of the piece is going to be, which is a really important first step.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, and it's the. I don't even know if this is writing advice. It's just a technique that I often use, which is to start with Some other idea. Like, you start with a. Like I'm just gonna do somebody else's work. Like, I'm just gonna take a story from somewhere else and we're just gonna do my version of that. And what I love about that particular kind of process is that kind of discovery over the course of it that you're talking about, Sam, where like, as you work on something and you put more of yourself into the sort of skeletal structure that you've inherited from some other piece of work, when you put yourself into it, it morphs and changes. And because it's you and because you can't, you can't just do the same thing that somebody else did. You have your own opinions and your own sense of humor and your own ideas and all of those things. You can watch an idea, a story morph from something that was somebody else's idea to your own. And how it changes is super cool. So. Yeah, that's true.

Yes, yes.

Okay, so do we want to set some goals for the next two weeks?

I would like to see this outline I've heard so much about sometime in the next few years.

The outline? Yeah. Yeah.

I like to look at it with my eyes.

Yeah. So I guess your homework is contingent on my homework. So my homework is actually. Maybe structuring is a bad word. I might just word vomit into an actual word document and be like, I want to do this and then this and this and this and this and then maybe this and then this would be fun. Just getting at least. Yeah. Getting at least the idea of what I want to kind of happen. And then I can start. We can start bouncing more specific things off each other.

Yeah, I like that.

Okay, so it sounds like when you say word from it, do you want to. You want to write that out or are you going to meet on a discord call or something?

I want it done on paper. I need to start putting things somewhere where they aren't going to just. I'm going to lose them in the recesses of my brain.

Gotcha.

Yeah, it's nice to have at least something on the paper so that we can take the things on the paper and expand those bullet points out larger or shuffle them around or whatever.

Cool, cool, cool.

And I believe that I might actually. I might actually be able to have bullet points that we can keep now.

Woo. We love to see it.

Yes.

What about you, Scott?

Fuck, man, I don't know.

It's okay if you don't want to.

No, no, no. Well, I like talking about goals mostly because it forces Me to put some structure to like what my plan is. Even if I. These are self imposed. If I don't do it, I don't do it. But I'm thinking about where I have been really stuck on the backstory stuff because I was like, okay, I'm going to back up and I'm going to think more about the origin of these characters and stuff. And that has been not going. That's one of the things that's not been going well. So I'm going to give myself a pass on that for the moment and instead I'm going to work on back into the present. I'm gonna move into episode four, which is the fuck up episode, and I'll have to. And I'll start planning that out.

Because the fuck up.

The fuck up episode.

Yeah, well, I mean like, because that's the character. Each one, each of roughly.

I know that's a character in your podcast. It just sounded funny. I need to get to the fuck up episode now.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna direct my goal, my energy toward in that direction and see how things go. And then, yeah, that's my plan. I'm going to let the backstory stuff percolate and hope that when I get back around to it, I have more and better ideas.

Excellent.

That's like cook on the back burner for a little bit.

Exactly. And rather than. Because if it's not going well right now, I don't have to be working on it right now again, there's no deadline. So I can put it off and do other work and hopefully get some creative steam and energy going in that direction and get some productive product, productive stuff done. And then I'll come back and re approach that later when I've possibly, when I've got more, you know, ideas or I've had more time with characters or something, hopefully it'll work in the future. So.

Well, it's possible that like having done the stuff on either side of it will inform what happens in the backstory.

And it's also, it's also possible that, you know, in the, in the between time, between now and when I get back to it, I'll watch a movie or read a book or I'll have a thought or something. And you know, it's sometimes, you know, maybe it's just not the right time. That's okay. I've got to put that.

You gotta put some stuff in the tank so that it can like, you know, stew in there.

Yeah, sometimes. So I think that's the plan right now. Cause I feel like forcing it isn't working right now, so I'm gonna work on something else. So that's the plan.

Awesome. Okay.

All right, well, in that case, we will catch y'all in two weeks.

Bye.

All right. Bye, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for behind the Locked Doors, a library of cursed Knowledge production podcast thing. I don't know if you are interested in any of these projects. You can head over to Library Horse, which will eventually redirect to a webpage once I make it. You know, if you want to support the podcast, we do have a Patreon. It's patreon.com cursedknowledge. See y'all next week. No, wait. See y'all in two weeks.

Sa.