Most of my writing career has followed a particular pattern. I write what pops into my head, and I write a lot. Some of it sells, some of it makes people go “huh?” and some of it wins awards. Still, I generally have gone into projects with at least a general idea what I thought I’d do with the final product, at least in recent years. It seems, if not an exactly logical process, a workable one.

Sometimes, however, things change. For one thing, the way you interact with the world, and with people. You can live in a bubble, or you can expand with the world – and contract with it, as well. Our world is much larger with all it has to share, and much smaller with how simple it has become to reach out and interact. I have always been a forward leaning sort of person. When something new and shiny comes along, I play with it…at least when it comes to Computers. I was an early adopter of message boards, online services, the Internet, E-mail, and now I enjoy the magic and madness that we call Social Media. While I’m still not sold on Facebook, I’m active on the micro-blogging service Twitter, and have been slowly building a network of contacts, followers, interesting characters, and shared thought.

Knowing that some among you, as usual, are clearing your throats and saying “Get to the point, Wilson,” I will do so. The point is that the changes in the Internet and in my world have now had a profound impact on my career. At least, it’s potentially profound, and to cause the shift in my habits and my outlook, all that’s required is the potential.

Last February I found myself in the very hotel where I’m sitting as I type this, getting ready to open a branch office for my company. I had a book to work on, and I had all the files carefully saved to my flash drive. I had my laptop, and I was ready to rock and roll. Of course, something else happened.

The Embassy Suites BMI has a great feature. Between 5:30 and 7:30 at night, if you present your room key at the bar downstairs, you drink for free. Having been duly informed of this by co-workers also staying here, I looked forward to an interesting evening. As I sat waiting, I logged on to Twitter and started talking with a few friends of mine. One of them, Terence Smelser, is a truck driver. He’s also a right-wing nutjob, but that’s a story for a different time. We started talking, for some reason, about “green” fuel. Someone brought up bio-diesel. Before I knew it I’d proposed a story about a couple on a cross-country killing spree, and a bunch of wacked out pseudo-scientists on their trail, cleaning u the bodies and using them to make diesel. We all had a laugh, and then I logged off to go to happy hour.

I took the laptop with me, because I intended to sit in the bar and work on my book as I sipped free Yuengling Lager. As plans so often do, this one failed. I was in such a hurry to get downstairs that I forgot to take my flash drive. By the time I was set up down in the bar, logged on, and ready to write, I was in no mood to trek back up to the room and get it, so I had a dilemma.

Instead of doing what I should have done and getting ready to meet my deadline, I opened up Microsoft Word and downloaded a screenplay template. I typed the words KILLER GREEN at the top, and I was off. Interspersed with bouts of laughing and chatting with the folks on Twitter, I wrote the first scene of a screenplay that I thought I was only doing to pass the time. It felt like a joke, but at the same time it was freaking FUN. I can’t tell you how long it had been prior to that that I really had fun writing. Probably sometime during the writing of “The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature,” but again, that’s not important.

I posted the first scene to my website using a Wordpress plugin called “Scrippet” that puts the text into Screenplay format in your blog. Before I’d even finished posting it, I was working on the second scene. Meanwhile, people started to read. I never intended to finish that screenplay. I was going to do a couple of scenes for something to do, and then get back to work, but the screenplay itself was having none of it. Also, I went from a couple of hundred hits on my website to 500-1000 a day as I continued to post episodes. The tag “Killer Green” on my site has (to date) had over 15,000 hits. Readership grew, and so did my momentum, and a month or so ago I finished it.

The screenplay is populated with characters named after the people on Twitter who were most supportive as I wrote. You can find links to their profiles on Twitter here:

http://www.davidniallwilson.com/screenplays/killer-green

You’ll also find the first two scenes still posted. You won’t find the rest because just before I completed the script I was approached by a new production company, Ambergris Films. They already had the option to a novel by an author I respect (no names on that yet because they aren’t ready to announce). They wanted to option Killer Green, and I agreed. So, to recap, I wrote this thing because of talking to people on Twitter. I posted it in my blog and put links to the updates on Twitter. I populated it with people from Twitter, and by golly, I sold the damn thing…on Twitter. It’s a couple of steps shy of pre-production now. A couple of directors are looking at it (Again, no names yet, but I’m excited). A couple of actors and at least one actress are tentatively interested. You can already buy t-shirts, and there is a contest from Ambergris for a walk-on part in the film (including airfare from the continental US). How cool is that?

I said earlier that this has changed my writing, and my “process,” and it’s true. I do the heavy work most evenings, and a little during lunch hours, or before work. At 10:00 each night I put it away, and I work on “Redneck Dragon,” the second screenplay I’ve posted on my site and shared on Twitter. It has a pretty good following too – and I believe it’s an even better script. The work is fresh for me, interesting, and keeps me smiling. It has revitalized how I look at my career, and the words I present to the world.

Give it a look, if you feel so inclined.

Ambergris Films is at:

http://www.ambergrisfilms.com

Killer Green has its own website created by Ambergris at:

http://ambergrisfilms.com/killer.htm

You can find “Redneck Dragon” at:

http://www.davidniallwilson.com/screenplays/redneck-dragon

You can follow me on Twitter and see what’s going on at:

http://www.twitter.com/david_n_wilson

While you are there you can check out Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, and a ton of others I interact with almost daily. There are writers, readers, fans, and just about any other sort of character you might be interested in, and you only have to think of 140 characters of brilliance at a time.

*The Killer Green artwork is provided by a friend of my son’s – it is not an official Ambergris poster – though it DOES rock.