Let us set the stage. The year is 2025, as you are no doubt aware. It’s been a while since my mind birthed my Synthetic Empires pilot. It was a story I often liked to describe to friends and family as “Star Wars meets The Bicentennial Man”, despite it probably being neither of those things. There was a time when I was so in love with this idea. My eyes would sparkle when I told people about it. This was the first large-scale writing project in a long while that actually got me hopeful for my future as a writer.

Maybe this could be the one…

Somehow, I went from obsessing over this idea, to walking away from it. It became a past project that I’d abandoned in favour of matters more trivial. Quinn, Michelle and the other characters occupying this fictional vista fast became specters that haunted my mind during my more melancholic of moments.

In 2022, I befriended a rather delightful author who was keen to read what I’d written. She had noted how my eyes lit up each time I mentioned my time spent on this screenplay.

“I can see this means a lot to you,” she said, a warm smirk spreading across her cheeks.

Naturally, she was curious to learn more, so I let her read it.

I sat in silence as she read through it. Her eyes glanced from left to right, drinking in the words I’d agonized over prior months spent in lockdown.

“There’s a lot going on in here,” she admitted after finishing.

My heart sank a little. Perhaps my face did too, as she appeared to notice.

“It’s not bad!” she assured, “it just needs more room to breathe.”

I wish I used these words as an opportunity to revisit the project. A chance to reflect and revitalize this project made itself apparent during that summer evening. I could have returned to the story that excited me so dearly, reinventing it as something new.

It may be a surprise to few that I did the opposite. Instead of growing excited over the possibilities of Synthetic Empires as a novel, I became evermore anxious, flustered at the fact that the list of problems to sort was growing ever larger. Not only did this story lack a USP, it lacked a suitably sized canvas. It was a TV show bursting at the scenes; likely to alienate more than intrigue.

More years passed. The summer of 2022 became lost to time. I didn’t think about Synthetic Empires properly again until I found myself at a Fantasy & Sci-Fi Spotlight event in Shrewsbury. The event consisted of a collective of local indie authors and book lovers meeting to discuss and share their love of writing. As though by poetic design, my encounter with the event was largely by accident. A casual conversation with a colleague resulted in me learning about the event being held at the Nerdy cafe.

By this point, it was the fall of 2024. In the build up to the event, I was nervous yet hopeful. It had been a long time since I’d sat in a room full of passionate writers. The last time I did, I gazed with starry eyes as the speakers lit up the room with their enthusiasm, wit and drive. Only back then, I was a 20-year-old University student convinced I was on the cusp of a fulfilling career. At 34, would I be just as electrified? Or was there a chance I’d grow bitter in the realisation I’d neglected my writing ambitions for most of my adult life?

Fortunately, the latter never came to be. The event whisked me back to my days as a romantic student, enraptured by a love I’d neglected for far too long. Like a match to a stove, the panelists at Spotlight ignited a fire in my mind. Hearing authors talk about establishing the rules of magic, manufacturing fictional worlds, and developing characters to populate said-worlds took me home. I recalled countless nights thinking about character motives and fictional geographies and how on earth I was going to build a narrative to drive my stories forth. The very anxieties I felt were spoken back, only this time, it wasn’t from a place of fear, it was from a place of excitement. These authors weren’t talking about such facets as though they were cursed hindrances, but processes native to the writing journey. They weren’t reasons to give up and find other hobbies; they were reasons to push forward.

I left the Spotlight event thinking a great deal about my Synthetic Empires project. The passion provided me with a bravery to finally think about it without wanting to scarper for the hills.

“It just needs more room to breathe.”

Maybe I could try this idea out on a different canvas. Not that I’m suggesting television is an unsuitable platform to tell such a story upon. It was more a case I felt compelled to approach this particular tale from a different viewpoint. I could dig deep into the minds of Quinn and Michelle through prose alone. Their worlds could come to life through first-person perspectives, flowery prose, and a heftier page counts.

Those with a keen eye will have already deduced that I didn’t run with this idea the moment it came to me. After all, why would I be sitting here, eight months on, with a blank document glowing before me? Why had I not spent all that time hashing out a first draft? I could provide a dozen reasons why, but they’d all be excuses. I don’t even think the reasons matter all that much. I was delaying. That’s all there is to the matter. 

Yet never did my mind give up on the Synthetic Empires project entirely. Amidst all the other essays, short stories and audio projects I’d been working on between October and now, the thoughts from that Sunday afternoon in Shrewsbury never went away. They lingered and gestated in the depths of my imagination. I never stopped thinking about Quinn and Michelle from that day on. The mechanoid and the girl, fleeing an affluent yet poisoned London, in search of something real.

Today, I’ve decided to do something with these ideas. With the exception of the screenplay and the follow up treatment, at the time of writing, Quinn and Michelle have existed largely in my mind. I think it’s about time I go about changing this. Whether the finished product is good or bad is beside the point. I just need to bring this story to life good and proper. I want to see where it goes.

Yet to do this, I need to keep myself from delaying yet again. As experience has shown, inspiration hasn’t been enough to keep me disciplined on every occasion. The number of times I’ve taken prolonged breaks and distracted detours is far too many for my liking. Hence why I have started this diary. The more I explore ideas and discuss the process of putting this story together, the less likely I am to wander off and neglect it again. Not only will it serve as a space to chronicle the writing process, it will also serve as a motivator.

It is for this reason why I am here right now, jumping between gawping at a blank page and reminiscing about a five-year-old unpublished story. I’m ready to face the hurdles and do the work. Hopefully documenting the journey will keep me from taking my eye off the ball once again.

I guess there’s only one way to find out.