The Writer's Journey - Log 5: A Story Meant for More

Facing Mortality

The waiting room was cold, yet I was sweating through my shirt. All around me, other patients sat in quiet reflection, with some in my position and others where I believed I would soon be. The fear and tension coursing through my veins were at a level I never expected. A lump in my lung. Cancer. I had lung cancer.

Then, a few minutes later, I listened with bated breath and anticipation as the oncologist issued a correction. Benign. It wasn’t cancer. The relief that coursed through me then was tenfold the previous fear. A weight was lifted off of me, but even though I no longer had a cancer diagnosis, the initial test results and preliminary diagnosis had left their marks on me.

During the four weeks in which I believed I had cancer, I was forced to question my mortality and life in ways I had never known were possible. Even after being indirectly struck by lightning twice, it wasn't the same. Even being hit by a shark, which happened at the same beach where a young girl, just two days later, was killed by a shark, didn't hit the same way. The thought of cancer was different. It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t something that happened and took me within the blink of an eye. It was a diagnosis of an end date coming at me slowly.

Legacy and Humanity

Many are forced to go through the same thing I did, and many are not lucky enough to hear the word ‘benign’. Every single person approaches the news in their own way, and for me, it was what many may expect: I looked back at decisions I’d made throughout my life and questioned their validity. I questioned my regrets. I looked at my failures and victories, and I assessed them in a frame I never had before: Legacy.

“What will your legacy be after you take your last breath, Aaron?”

I didn’t like what I had to tell myself. But that was just the beginning of my self-reflection, and soon my mind shifted from the micro to the macro.

“What if the world was going to end? What would we want our legacy to be?”

The thought sat there for months. It ruminated. It marinated. Then, one night, I looked down from the stars that hang so bright here in the Arizona sky, and I watched my dogs sniffing around the yard. A random thought crossed my mind, and for what reason I couldn’t tell you: How would I handle my pups if I knew the world was going to end?

The Birth of an Idea

I legitimately cannot say why I had that thought, but it struck me, and I immediately began to work out the steps. Within moments, my heart was sinking. I could see the actions that would be needed. I wanted to fall to my knees and embrace my pets, apologizing in words they’d never understand for actions I’d never taken, and (hopefully) never will have to take.

That night, those steps of that hypothetical haunted me, and for another reason I cannot explain, my mind suddenly popped up the idea from the summer: What would we want our legacy to be?

These two random thoughts continued to weigh on me, and though I knew they somehow belonged together, they had yet to coalesce. While they hung over me, a news article crossed my social feed one night. It was a surprising headline, and my subconscious evidently noted it down. Then, about a month after that night in the backyard, putting the steps together of how to handle my dogs, I was listening to the audiobook of my favorite novel: “When Worlds Collide”.

The article came back to me first: “Trillions Of Weird ‘Rogue Planets’ Exist In Our Galaxy, Say Scientists” (this is the ACTUAL article: Trillions of Weird Rogue Planets Exist in Our Galaxy). Then, I was hit again by that question of legacy, and my mind went to work.

But even with that framework, a story wasn’t created.

Walking my dogs that night (November 19^th, 2023), it all came together. As unsavory as it is, I had just stood up from picking up my Chihuahua’s droppings. My legs wouldn’t move. The thoughts all came together in a flash. The dots had been connected,

Within hours, Viator: Voices of the Apocalypse was fully laid out. It was to be a story of humanity, a story focused on the unknowns to history, of those who history never remembers. It was to be their story. Their story would be our legacy when confronted with a cataclysmic collision with a rogue planet, and the main character would be a man confronting the end with his pets.

From there, like every story, it adapted. It grew to deeper levels than I ever initially expected or thought possible.

The entire time, however, something was scratching at the back of my head. Every scene I wrote, I could see. I could see the angles, the cuts, the close-ups, and the pans. I could hear the music. It was real. Sure, many authors will experience similar, but for me, it made writing the book more like a dictation for what the story really needed to be. It needed to be not just read, but seen, in the same way I was seeing it.

From Book to Script

Even after the book was published, the visions of it were fresh in my mind. In a way, they haunted me. I saw them every day. It was almost as if the characters of the story were real, somewhere out there in the infinite universe, and they were begging and pleading with me to keep pushing for their story. It was as if their story wasn’t finished yet.

So, I continued. I did several edits post-publishing, a typically frowned-upon action, and I created theatrical trailers. I even wrote several songs and accompanying music videos. Even while writing my third book, I was still at work on Viator, creating and editing a brand-new cover.

Yet, still, it nagged and bit at me. It wasn’t done. There was more for Viator. It was meant to be seen, not just read. It deserved to impact people in the way that only seen media can do.

One night, it became too much. Everything else could wait. I sat at my computer, pulled up Final Draft (which I have unknowingly had for nearly a decade, apparently), opened a new document and began writing. After just 24 hours, I had a rough draft of the first episode. Within 48 hours, I had a feature-length script polished and ready for filming.

Over the next three weeks, I spent 14 hours a day, including days when I worked for 8 hours (I often even wrote while working). Then, just 22 days after the first word of the first draft was written, I had a polished, 10-episode series that matched the vision I had seen from the very first word of the first draft of the book. From the heavy silences to the long and unapologetic monologues, it was exactly the vision I had lived with for literal years.

Viator: Voices of the Apocalypse is a fantastic book (for those who have discovered it), but the show? The show could be cultural.

Why This Story Matters

With the writing now finished, the real groundwork begins. It’s time to get people to notice, and it’s time to get Viator to a place where people can sit around the TV, asking themselves: “What story would I tell about my life if I had just six months left to live?”

This may seem like a simple question, after all, we’re all posed a similar hypothetical at least once in our lives. But a hypothetical question is far different from seeing others live through it. Watching others who are forced to confront their own lives hits deeper than the hypothetical, and right now, our world needs more of that reflection.

What Comes Next

Now, I’ll be putting forward the same effort, the same drive, toward finding a way to bring this story to those who I believe need to hear and see it. There will be many tough days ahead, and not a single one will be easy. There will be challenges I can’t foresee yet, but I know that this story and its impacts are worth a million tough days. I’ll push through as much as I have to, and I’ll never give up on it. Viator: Voices of the Apocalypse is a story that can change lives, and that’s worth dedicating my life to.