Ain't Dead

Just a quick update to announce I am still in the land of the living. Epic stuff is happening.

I've landed my first script reader gig with the fabulous Film Festival Guild, so even though my script writing has slowed to a crawl due to the novel thing, I'm still involved with the film industry somehow. Which is good, cause it'll always be my first love.

I sold a book last week. The working title is Finding Figaro, and right now it's scheduled to be published next spring by Dreamspinner Press. With a title like that, how could it ~not~ be romance?

I wrote a short story about a book made from human skins (originally intended for a sweet anthology about writing and publishing. I'm screwed up, I know. I took the prompts and decided to go in a more...anthropodermic bibliopegy direction.) but it turned into a novella, and now it's well on the way to novel size. Stuff just happens, okay? I don't even know how.

The writing process is weird.

Romance by any other name... would still be hard to write.

In case you haven't guessed yet, I am writing (and selling, whoot whoot!) romance under the not-so-clever pseudonym Penny Hudson. I wanted to use Penny Dreadful, but that's already taken. So was Paige Turner. Now I wish I'd picked Penny Kidd (say it by syllables) but alas, it was not meant to be.

My romance author blog is here and I'll be posting about my two forthcoming titles from Dreamspinner Press. They'll both be available this summer. I'll confine most of the romance-specific chatter over there aside from this post, but no promises. I'm cross-posting, minus these two paragraphs. 

HAHA you know my secret identity! I'd be a terrible superhero, I really would. 

That'd be me. I'm a twat.

Anyway, on writing romance.

You might think because the ending is already known--Happily Ever After--romance would be among the easiest genres to write. HAHA LOL NOPE #RollsAroundOnFloorLaughing /wipesawaytears.

As Kipling says: There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.

There's far more than sixty-nine (hehe) different sources of personal conflict and drama in romance novels. So I'm going to blog specifically on the type of romance novel where the main conflict between the characters is based on a simple misunderstanding. 

Something that could be cleared up with a little honest discussion.

But that discussion cannot happen easily.

For romance, there's a Main Character and an obvious (or not so obvious) Love Interest (or more than one). As a reader, you know after roughly two hundredish pages, they're going to kiss, have some epic sex, and live happily ever after. Because that's what romance is. That's the promise made to you when you pick up the book. You will wade through the trials and tribulations of these characters and eventually, they'll find True Love and you'll get a happy wobbly feeling when they admit how they care about each other and throw themselves into each others arms.

But wait, but wait, why don't they just do that from the beginning? Since they're so obviously meant for each other? Two halves of a single soul, and all the other sickeningly sweet cliches.

There has to be a reason they don't boink (or boink with tender loving feelings sprinkled on top) until after most of the book has happened, otherwise it's just a casual hook-up without an emotional angle, unless one character is using the casual hook-up to avoid intimacy and-- and I'm going off target. Ahem.

My point is it's really hard to stretch a sex scene into 70k+ words. Or maybe it's just I can't manage it. Laurell K. Hamilton can. But she's also got lots of vampire/supernatural plot going on around (and during) the orgies. Orgies that usually further the plot. Have you read her books? The sex scenes are vital to the plot, which usually doesn't have anything to do with sex. I think I should go reread all the Anita Blake books... for research... yeah...

After Main Character and Love Interest meet, but before Main Character and Love Interest do the beast with two backs, stuff has to happen. Important stuff. Plot stuff. Character stuff. Because there has to be a reason these two (or more) people dance around each other and hold off the boinking until the end of the book. If their eyes meet and they run toward each other while At Last plays over the loudspeaker, and then commence violating public nudity laws, it's interesting, but it's not long enough to make a book. Something has to keep the climax (harhar) from happening. 

For dramatic reasons. But there's a fine line between drama and melodrama.

So if the reason they aren't together is because of a smallish misunderstanding that could be sorted out with a brief conversation over some caramel lattes on a sleepy Saturday afternoon, then that conversation has to be danced around like negotiations with North Korea over chilling the fuck out and developing a national hobby that doesn't involve Geiger counters.

Get me? It has to be a huge thing, with some element of danger or apprehension surrounding it. An 'I might die if I say this right now' sort of atmosphere. There has to be trepidation. There has to be a solid reason the conversation absolutely could not happen in the course of the casual 'getting to know you' chatter amid the heated glances and magnetic pull they feel toward each other.

How tedious and unfulfilling would it be if they met, had a misunderstanding, then retired to some trendy cafe to work things out by the end of the first chapter?

'Oh, I made an incorrect assumption about your life/job/values/personality/relationship status/family. Allow me to kiss away your hurt feelings.' Then nothing else happens except sex in every possible position for the next twelve chapters? If you've been reading romance novels any length of time, you've read lots and lots of sex scenes, and you know they're not nearly as rewarding when the characters haven't bled, sweated, and wept copious amounts of tears to get to the emotional climax, not just the physical climax.

You want them to work for it. You want them to clench their hands, bite their lips, and take deep, shuddering breaths while they force the words out with their eyes squeezed shut because they can't bear to watch the reaction to whatever they're struggling to say.

The conversation to clear up the simple misunderstanding has to be radioactive. It has to be enormous. It has to be a giant, world-view shifting moment that causes stress, anxiety, fear, nerves and running through it all has to be the faint, thin shred of hope that maybe it might work out after all.

This is when character motivation becomes vital. You have to know exactly why your characters would flee to the ends of the earth rather then have that particular conversation. Then you can make a simple misunderstanding work to keep them apart for 70k+.

Go forth and obfuscate.

Make Them Say No to You.

Don't say no for them. Whoever the anonymous them is. Don't you dare. Whatever you're making, stories, art, macrame sex toys, whatever creative thing you're doing, don't you dare look at it and decide it's not good enough for the market and then tuck it away in a drawer with a dramatic sigh about how if only you'd had THE ONE MAGICAL ADVANTAGE you could sell it and quit your day job mopping up the exorcism room after those three rogue priests wander off to congratulate themselves on a demon well banished and break into the sacramental wine.

Three reasons:

1) Creative people are naturally down on and extremely critical of their own abilities and will underestimate themselves. This is an actual scientific fact*.

2) In my travels around the world I have seen some hideous shit sell, but YOU make cute, fun stuff. Whatever you make. Because the thing you make reflects your taste and style and classy self as an artist.

3) It's a big world. Suppose the publisher/art gallery/etsy store you selected and made your thing specifically for rejects it? They turn up their nose at it? They tell you it's just not right for them, the tone doesn't match, it's too similar to a thing they already have? So what? So what? There's a lot of publishers/art galleries/websites that your thing will be treasured and upvoted and sell. Use your google-fu and find them.

But if they're saying no to your stories or art, it doesn't mean they're wrong. You could be wrong.

1) Are you really ready to shove that project out into the cruel, indifferent world? Has an independent editor flagged all the typos? Have you played with your handmade wooden puzzle enough to know you need a second coat of sealant to keep the paint from flaking? Can you take a decent picture and understand how to edit and upload it? Do you check your email often? Does your 'contact me' button actually work?

There is NOTHING more frustrating than wanting to buy something, but the artist has vanished. Then I'm reduced to twitter stalking and wondering if @battlecat77 is the person who makes that awesome medieval armor for cats, but they never reply. If I can't reach you, I can't buy the thing. So you make no money. That is a badness thing. Do you check your spam folder once a week for hapless customers that use hotmail? (My gmail always bounces hotmail, I never told it to do that, it just does. It also ignores me when I told it to stop. Apparently Google does not obey the second law of robotics.)

Are you ready? Is your work ready? If you aren't confident in your own work, then do your research, see what's out there, and if your stuff is of comparable quality, send it out. Let them say no. Don't you say no to yourself before anyone else even sees it.When the first buyer says no, then find another. There's always another. Another publisher, another shop, another way to sell the thing you made. Get creative, you ARE creative. You MADE a THING. You WROTE a SCRIPT. You can find a way to sell it. I believe in you. 

2) Are you doing lots of stuff? The more you do, the better you become. The more stories you write, the more stone walls you build, the more exotic gerbils you raise, the better you become. This is also a fact, scientifically proven by anyone who has practiced any skill whatsoever. Branch out. Expand. Even if a thing has been around thousands of years, you can still put your own unique twist on it.

Books are old news, but remember those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novels? A novel new twist! I rest my case.

3) Are you for-real serious about this? Are you writing at least five days a week? Do you treat it like a job and sit down, unplug the internet, and stare at a blank cursor until story happens? Do you have an outline, or at least a summery with the beginning, middle, and end of the book to keep you on track? Substitute the word project for book. Do you know how it's going to happen? Etsy, ebay, and craiglists are full to the brim of weekend crafters churning out random stuff and barely making their material cost back.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Profit... is a funny joke, but knowing the outline of the project and the steps you have to take to accomplish the goal is SO IMPORTANT I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU. BUT I WILL.

4) Did you write your goal down? No? Go and do that. Right now, hop to it! Find some paper and write down what you want out of this thing you do. To be published? To make X amount every month? To spend your life traveling from one craft fair to another like some sort of modern hippy in an SUV instead of old VW van? To develop a variety of guinea pig with hair so long you can cackle like Dr. Frankenstein and shriek 'IT'S ALIVE', because you've just created a tribble?

Write your goal down, pin it up somewhere you see it EVERY DAY, and do something every SINGLE day to accomplish your goal. Even if you just have the time/mental bandwidth to do one thing to reach the goal, one thing a day will get you there. Do nothing a day and you'll never get there.

I leave you with this for further reading.

Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art graduation speech and Make Every Day a Non-Zero Day.

Go get'um tiger. 

* Based on a random survey of creative people I know and didn't actually bother to survey.

2013 aka The Year of You Did Better.

Time for the annual roundup post of doom.

I didn't blog as much this year as last year. Or it should be 'last year as the year before' because wow, it's 2014. I still can't believe it. 2013 was shorter than normal. I'd scientifically prove this, but it's so obvious I can't be bothered.

January - Learned I needed to expand the short story into a novella if I wanted to sell it, and promptly put off actually doing it for about six months.

March - Wrote a slightly pretentious blog post about Amanda Palmer and Veronica Mars. I still think it's so fucking cool they let the fans fund a movie.

April - Entered a contest. Lost. I'm not going to document all the time I entered a contest this past year and lost because that would be too depressing. This particular contest sparked an idea and I expanded it into a script. Now I'm rewriting it as a fantasy novel because it would be so much easier to sell it as a book than as a spec script from an unknown, unproduced writer. It's called 'Rhiven'. Selling it to Baen Books, or having it securely nestled in their slush pile by 2015 is a nice goal, right?

June - Sucked it up and expanded the short story to novella size. I swear I've never checked a word count so many times during one document in my life. I didn't think I'd do it, but I added a few scenes and found a way to keep the tension going and pulled it off. Go me.  

August - I was a quarter finalist in BlueCat's title contest for 'Camp Wishaway', the zombie horror story that mutated into a kid's coming of age/adventure story but with zombies.
Because zombies.

September - Resubmitted novella. Waited. Waited. Waited. 

October - Wrote stuff so secret I can't even remember.

November - SOLD THAT MOFO!

December - Discovered a contest to write an actual canon Dark Crystal prequel novel. With three weeks left before the deadline, I jumped in full steam ahead. I ended up rewriting about half of it with three days to go when I discovered my timeline was flawed, but I managed. I think I ended last year on a positive note. 

January 2014 - Reviewed another short story submission and discovered I made a typo in the motherfuckin' title. It's a new year, but I'm still me. Damn.

All Hail the Dark Crystal!

You've seen 'Dark Crystal' right? No? Yes? Maybe? It's that muppet thing from 1982 that Jim Henson did. Ring any bells? Once you get past the fact it's a puppet movie targeted at kids, it's really about a genocidal war and slavery and oppression and to cap it off, the end of the world. Or the beginning.

Aughra sees what I did there.

No wonder I adored it as a wee tiny child.

The good folks over at The Jim Henson Company and Grosset & Dunlap of the Penguin Young Readers Group are holding an open call for authors to write a DarkCrystal prequel novel. As a writer who adores epic fantasy, especially gruesome children's stories and regularly gets notes back on my own work that this is really really dark for a children's story, I'M ALL OVER IT YO.

Except I found out around December 4th and the deadline is December 31th.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

The contest organizers picked a fairly narrow time frame they want the book set in and the super-helpful folks over at Dark Crystal even made a .pdf doc of all the known canon from that era as a reference. The website itself is an excellent resource, especially to someone like me who didn't even know there were other books and comics and stuff expanding the universe.

Without that, it'd be like writing a Star Wars prequel without knowing about the Old Republic.

They want the book set right in the beginning, before the Gelflings realize the Skeksis are waging a secret war on them to drain them of their vital essence. To sum up, the Skeksis suck the life out of the Gelflings and drink it to keep themselves young. So think vampire, not Red Cross. The Gelflings are not sent home with balloon and a 'Thanks for Donating!' sticker.

That's also when things get weird. The timeline gives me a headache.

The entire movie is about the last two surviving Gelflings and a prophecy about Gelflings healing the Dark Crystal and restoring balance to the force and stopping the Skeksis, but the prophecy doesn't happen until the Wall of Destiny goes up about 100 A.G.C (After Great Conjunction) (There ain't no Gelfling Jesus to number calenders around) (It's fantasy, go with it).

The Gelflings don't know exactly what or who is attacking them until the Wall of Destiny happens, so there's a hundred year period during which eighteen Skeksis (canon number) wage secret war on the thousands and thousands of Gelflings and the Gelfling never twig to it. Not a tinfoil hat 'the guv'ment is gonna get me' war either, an actual war with hundreds of prisoners transported to the Crystal Castle and killed.

Just eighteen Skeksis. Maybe if they were Daleks, or Cybermen, or Borg. You want me to believe that eighteen lousy Skeksis managed to;

1) Always attack without getting spotted, 

2) Always escape with their prisoners, 

3) Secretly transport them into the Castle that's guarded by Gelflings, 

3) No prisoners EVER escape or elude capture, 

4) NOBODY noticed anything? Ever?

Well, they'd notice these guys. Meet the Garthim! 

Only three easy payments of 19.95, vital for all your Gelfling collecting needs!

The source docs say they're incredibly stupid but in the movie they're seen traveling from the Castle to the Podling village (hours away), smashing it up, capturing Podlings ALIVE, and returning promptly. Also they traveled to Aughra's Observatory (a place they'd never been) and did the same thing. 

They don't get distracted by plants or water crossings or funny smells?

Accomplishing those tasks is a complicated sequence of events. Break those behaviors down for a mo'. Have you ever tried teaching dog with no fetching instinct how to fetch? Or a cat how to pick up a rat without crunching it and letting the gooey cream filling out? They might not be truly sentient, but Garthim are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for.

I rewatched the movie, jotted down anything that caught my attention, and then camped out at a bakery with excellent coffee for about five days just free-typing as I tried to hash out my story. Stray thoughts happened. Ideas were examined and discarded with abandon. I went in a lot of odd directions before I settled on the high points and got busy writing. They wanted a 7-10k sample of the story I wanted to tell. HA! (I couldn't articulate that completely until I wrote the summery yesterday)

My excellent script reader, Michelle, was willing to take time out of her holiday to do a quick and dirty evaluation for readability and plotholes big enough the Galactica could fly through.

She sent it back on the 22nd, that gave me a little over a week to get it together. I spent the next couple of days polishing the edges and addressing each note. I FINISHED! (Uh-oh... a good thing happened... guess you know what THAT means...)

High on glee, I idly poked around the website just because I felt like it. Good thing I did.

Skeksis don't make the Garthim until after the Wall of Destiny happens.

AOOGA AOOGA AOOGA 

CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE?

I say again, the Skekis DON'T build their foot soldiers until AFTER the Gelfling realize SOMEONE is after them. Okay, so, yeah... no. No. NO. The Skeksis are NOT gullible, or optimists, or battle hardy behemoths. They scheme and hide and plot and lie and lie and lie about what they're really doing for as long as possible because they're afraid the Gelflings could stop them.

So why would they start doing it when there's only eighteen of them? You don't go to war when you're outnumbered thousands to one with no soldiers. 

Tactical sense=none.

As a result, on Christmas day I discovered half my story just became invalid. Literally, I had twenty pages and ten of those were about the Garthim. Merry Christmas to me. I haunted the Author Quest message board, relieved I wasn't the only person thrown for a loop on the timeline, and prayed for a solution. After I wasted half a day wallowing trying to convince myself that I could hand-wavy that awkward fact away and give the Skeksis Garthim and keep my PERFECT STORY PERFECT, I accepted reality.

It was the five stages of grief in about twelve hours. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, like psychotic emotional Christmas roller coaster.

T-5 days to deadline.

You know what got me to the finish line?

Steven Moffat. Yeah, him. I saw an interview and he said that he wrote Blink over a long weekend and it went into production ten days later (I know, I know, he'd been thinking about the story a hell of a lot longer than a weekend) but the epic awesomeness that is Blink happened fast! In a weekend!

I can fix a short story over five days. Not that I'm saying I'm as badass or talented as Steven Moffat, but I CAN DO THIS and someday I want to write Doctor Who so as a step down that road, I'M FIXING THIS.

The rewrite process illustrated through interpretive dance: 

*Battle cry*

*Actual cry*

*Chugging beer*

*Weeping into the keyboard*

*Weeping angels on my keyboard*

*Fuck me it's three AM again*

*I can sleep in January*

*Wash, rinse, repeat*

Then a miracle happened, I DID IT. I fixed it, the Garthim are gone. It's as canon as I can make it. I'm going to fiddle with it for one more day searching for the next-to last typo (there's always one that gets away) before I submit and then put it on my 'You Tried' board as my last 2013 accomplishment.

'Cause I rule. 

*Pirouettes into the sunset*  

Whovian 5evah

Unless you hate sci-fi, you must have noticed Doctor Who is celebrating fifty years. Fifty years! Can you imagine writing a story that's stayed around and only gotten more popular as the decades pass?

The Doctor and I go way back. All the way back to... oh... 2010 or so. Shut up, I'm American. I have to pay extra just to get BBCA with my cable AND their programming is hardly a good representation of quality UK shows. Sherlock didn't even air on BBCA ffs, it aired on PBS. (An Americanized edit <---travesty.)

ANYWAYS, I had a point somewhere. 

My very first brush with the Doctor happened from some books acquired at a second hand shop back when I was a kid. I mostly remember being confused. I didn't understand the Doctor regenerates. I didn't understand the Tardis can travel in time and space. Random things were happening. Random people were happening. I was lost, so I set the books down.

Skip ahead a decade or two. I have a very clear memory of flipping channels and wondering if Gordon Ramsey was remaking the Walnut Tree again. He wasn't, but some weird thing was on. There was a woman yelling at a man not to blink and some creepy as fuck moving statues and a police box upstairs which made no sense at all and then it vanished and the statues went back to being statues, although they were even more creepy then. I thought it was the Twilight zone or something. I was hooked. I checked the tv listing to see what it actually was, then I dashed out the door. Late for work as usual.

'Doctor Who - Saves the World'

When I got home that night I looked for it and sure enough, it reaired the next day. (BBCA is infamous for showing nothing but endless hours of Top Gear and Gordon Ramsey. It's practically the Top Gear and Gordon Ramsey network.)

This time the Doctor was hanging out with some redhead and then he was on a train and there was knocking and this creepy blonde woman repeating what everyone said and THE ENTIRE TIME I waited for them to skip to the house and the creepy statues and explain how someone got a police box up those narrow stairs and why it disappeared and why was it bigger on the inside.

It shames me to say but it took for almost the entire episode (literally, three minutes to the end) before I realized I watched a different episode the day before. Apparently BBCA puts 'Doctor Who - Saves the World' for every single episode description.

Thank god for Netflix. I didn't skip Nine, figured out the regeneration thing, the Tardis thing, and basically fell in love with the whole Doctor Who thing.Which led to DragonCon 2013.

It's Seven!

Remember Vincent and the Doctor? I cosplayed as the entire episode.  

Dunno who the cute guy with the 'Keep Austin Weird' hat was, but he takes a good picture.

(It's Gareth David Lloyd)

(Blue Gillespie)

(Girl Number 9)

(Mostly Blue Gillespie)

(Tiny bit Torchwood)

(I'm a fan, okay? That's the point of cons. A place I can be a flaily flaily fan.)

Holy Shitsnacks Batman! I'm a Quarter Finalist!

I will admit having been in an antiwriting funk for the last few months. I don't want to call it writer's block, it's been more like writers why-even-bother-I-suck-so-bad. AS IT TURNS OUT it was a sneak attack by the Insecurity Angel. Damn Insecurity Angel.

Then good stuff happened.

I was published.

I'm being interviewed.

And OH YEAH I'm a quarter finalist on Blue Cat.

I DON'T SUCK AND THE INSECURITY ANGEL CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF.

First things first: I wrote a snark-laden article over what farriers wish horse owners really knew for 'Gypsy Horse World' under the oh-so-clever pseudonym, 'The Grumpy Farrier'. I divulged trade secrets like don't give my number to your flakey friend with the bonkers horse and for the love of little steel horseshoe nails, bring your checkbook to the barn don't leave it at the house. People, get with the program. 

Michelle Goode, who has done the amazing job of shepherding 'Camp Wishaway' through multiple drafts into something that might actually be worth reading, runs #loglinechallenge over on Facebook. She posts the prompts. We post the loglines. It's a symbiotic relationship. Like cats and the little plastic thingy that comes off milk cartons. She interviews one participant each month and this month (like two days ago) I got the lucky email with the interview questions and felt like a complete fraud because I hadn't done very much, y'know? I had a one page article published and... nada. Some random loglines. And yet I was calling myself a writer. Such a poser!

BUT THEN the NEXT DAY I got an email from Blue Cat asking me to vote in their title contest.

What'evs.

I scrolled through it with absolutely no expectation that I'd be on the list. Then I was. Then I freaked out I was on a title contest list. I will admit that I shrieked. Then I did further reading and discovered the title contest list was actually the Quarter Finalist list. I was a QUARTER FINALIST. ME! 130 out of 1847! I did pirouettes across the living room and that evidently disturbed my dog enough he dragged himself off the couch and blinked at me like I'd lost my mind. Seriously. Tyson was concerned for my sanity.

We went walkies. That turned into runnies. That turned into wow I'm a long way from home maybe I should have done a circle. But I was so full of energy and excitement I couldn't think and I was honestly bouncing for the first half mile. Maybe further. I'm still bouncing, actually. I'm not a poser! External validation! Whoo!

15 Pages of Destiny

I'm subscribed to a daily e-paper that scours the web for screenwriting and writing stories and delivers them to my inbox in a condensed list. Random statement? I think not. I told you that to tell you this. A few days ago there was a short story about a contest closing soon. I didn't pay much attention but it was a slow news day and I was trapped in a waiting room so why not? 

What else did I have to do? Wade through the old issues of Reader's Digest and Golf Monthly? My horror script has been retitled 'Camp Wishaway' and shipped off to my script reader and I'd devoted all the thinking time I had to 'Keeper', my current project. I still haven't found a scriptwriting app that doesn't suck for my phone so I couldn't work on it. I was torn between reading old editions of People or trying something new. You know me, I decided to try something new. 

The contest details: Write the first fifteen pages based on their logline and win fame, fortune, and most valuable of all, a professional mentorship while you finish the script. It includes professional feedback every ten pages and I can tell you, that's not to be sneered at.

It's only fifteen pages. I could do that in the roughly ten days remaining before it closed. Because why not? I think that's the tagline of my life. This is what I have to work with. 

'After a storm destroys her small farm, killing her mother and father, an adolescent girl is sent off on a journey of survival.' 

Well. That's a bit boring, innit?

It had Wizard of Oz written all over it. I was suddenly less interested. But the logline wouldn't leave me. I spent the next two hours sitting in the waiting room turning it over in my mind. How could I possibly make that interesting? Could it even be made interesting?

Challenge accepted.

What's the most dangerous thing they could be farming? Velociraptors? 

Maybe the location made it dangerous? What if they were lava farmers? 

Maybe the time period wasn't healthy for a child to be alone. I edged into 'Clan of the Cave Bear' territory for a while, then swung the other way and went more 'Journey of Natty Gann'. 

Maybe it was on another planet? Uncle Owen and Aunty Em were moisture farmers. Everything was great until the Empire attacked.

By the time we left I had a rough outline, three acts, characters, and what is hopefully a very dramatic first fifteen pages jotted down. I was more productive in those two hours sitting and thinking about my story than I've been all week. Cornered like a rat in a trap with nothing else to do, I can come up with some awesome ideas. Go team me. Now to polish the bastard and send it in...

UPDATE: I hereby take back every uncharitable thought I had about that logline. This script is going to amazeballs. 

 

The Women Writing the Future

I refer to Amanda Fucking Palmer and Veronica Mars. Amanda's a singer and Veronica is a fictional detective, but between them they're composing the future of media in huge, sweeping brush strokes.

In Amanda's recent TED talk, 'The Art of Asking', she mentions that her older album sold 25,000 copies, and to the record label that was a failure. It wasn't big enough to be a success and that, frankly, is mind boggling to me. Selling 25,000 albums sounds like a success but to the record company it just wasn't.

Right after that she talked to a fan who gave her ten bucks for a copy he actually burned from a friend. He felt bad and wanted to pay her for it anyway. He didn't have to do it, he didn't have to say anything at all, but he wanted to and that changed everything.

Amanda became the hat in the 'pass the hat' concept. People gave her money for her music. She encourages torrenting, downloading, sharing, but she asks for help because hey, it does cost money and she's gotta eat, pay her band, and stay tricked out in those fabulous punk cabaret costumes.

She freed herself from the bonds of the short-sighted record company and threw herself into the crowd, trusting that they would catch her. Her next album, 'Theatre is Evil', would be funded solely by the fans on kickstarter. It was a historic occasion, would they break her fall or would she crash to the ground?

Her goal was 100,000 dollars and her fans (and I'm one of them) backed her to 1.2 million.

She says that asking makes people nervous and artists don't want to ask for things and that's so true. I'm on the sponsorship committee on my derby team and so it's my job to go out and ask for donations. Support my team. Please. It's hard. It really is. I don't even have soul scorching music to show for it.

Skip ahead a few months.

I watched and adored Veronica Mars as a teenager. Veronica was clever, a modern Nancy Drew and she solved her own problems. But like most clever shows, it got shoe-horned into the category of niche show, one of those cult favorites only the weirdos enjoy and when it was canceled the usual batch of useless petitions went around to save the show in some fashion, and like always, the petitions failed.

Ten years later the show's creator, Rob Thomas, managed to secure permission from Warner Bros. to make a movie. I would've loved to be in the room for that. How did the discussion go? Exactly what words got that result? I'd dearly love to know.

I'm sure you've heard the results.

Veronica Mars made their goal of 2 million dollars in 12 hours. You know why? Because instead of executives looking at demographics or accountant pondering if there was a market, they just asked the fans. They said, "Do you want this to be a thing? Will you put your money where your mouth is?"

A veritable horde of fans raced each other to kickstarter to give their five bucks, ten bucks, fifty bucks- as of right now 1859 of them gave 200 dollars each because they wanted this movie to happen. More than 50,000 people have given 3.3 million dollars in a day and a half. Roll that number around in your mind.

Every so often I go on a rant about region locked content and the occasional difficulty I've had actually, legally, paying for tv shows I like because they haven't got (and might never have) a region 1 release. I know I can watch it on youtube for free. I am not unfamiliar with this concept. I don't want to. I want to pay for it so the people that make the stuff I like get paid and can make more of it.

I'm taking the long view here. I know my pithy contribution to the coffers doesn't actually matter, but when a bunch of people band together to do something, it matters. 'Theatre is Evil' happened and I helped make it happen. It would have happened without me, but it didn't. I helped. I get a warm fuzzy feeling every time I think of that.

So take my money. Do what Amanda says. Ask for help. Don't ask how you can stop piracy (you can't) or get people to pay for this, just ask them to help. Repeat after me.

"Do you want this to be a thing? Will you put your money where your mouth is?"

They'll do it, or they won't. Give the fans the chance to show their love and fund stuff.

2012 aka The Year of You Tried

Apparently it's traditional to post a round up of what I did and did not get up to this year. Some people even post how many words they wrote last year. I can't even keep track of how many wips I've got at this point. God only knows how many words I've written and much more importantly, how many I've deleted.

So here goes.

January: Finished my first TV spec and got a brilliant idea for a horror movie. I decided that it couldn't be that hard to bang out a few feature specs 'cause I was so fabulous and talented and stuff.

February: Discovered I was delusional, it really was that hard to write a feature. I sent tv spec off to Scriptapalooza with visions of huge contracts and deals dancing in my eyes. Impressed myself with my ability to daydream.

March: Had grammar induced breakdown. If the comma was an actual thing I would stab it.

April: Started a rom com called 'Chunks' because what's a spec pile without a comedic romp about two people that don't really like each other, and yet somehow they're married? I learned the hard way about minor characters becoming more interesting than the major characters. Turns out that could very well be the death knoll of a spec. Still hadn't finished it.

Entered 50 Kisses contest with the aforementioned dreams of money and glory.

May: Got my very first script report on my horror from a for-real, professional script reader. Just recently I went and reread it to cheer myself up because the script, currently on draft 6, is SO MUCH BETTER now than it was at that point, a mere seven months ago.

Discovered Dead Roots, a zombie comic book, and pitched three or four ideas. Was soundly rejected, and then I saw a typo in the original email to the editor. Had typo induced breakdown. It was a nice change from the grammar induced breakdown.

June: Pitched more ideas for Dead Roots 'cause he never actually told me to stop emailing. In a bout of desperation, I shamelessly lifted the 'zombies appear' moment from Horror Script and he actually liked it.

Then rejected it.

July: Got feedback from the contest I sent the TV spec to. They liked it. Kind of. They explained why they didn't like it but I didn't understand their point until I was listening to Cabin Pressure. Received a revelation about tying plot lines together that rivaled Moses coming down the mountain, or Douglas finding out how much the Captain of an airdot actually gets paid when he works for Caroline.

50 Kisses announced they'd accept a second entry. Composed perfect do-over, complete with leaving off 'FADE IN' from the first line. Had another typo induced breakdown when I realized.

August: 1800 odd people entered 50 Kisses, but only 50 could win. I was not one of them, BUT both my entries made the long list, which makes me one of 16 people that could say that, out of 1800. 

So there's that. I hereby award myself an extra shiny 'You Tried' sticker.

September: Lost Scriptapalooze with my tv spec. Added another sticker to the wall.

Was 1 of 13 to be allowed in the Dead Roots Contest. I was lucky number 13, which I thought was funny. Lost by quite a wide margin in the end, but I still scratched out third place. My 'You Tried' collection is growing.

October: I've finished the first draft of a drama titled 'Keeper'. It's so bad it smells. I decided to let it compost on the hard drive for a while before I try editing it into something that isn't so eye searing bad, but honestly, really awesome mushrooms do grow in crap. I still have hope for it.

November: Found out about a poetry contest run by Brit Writers. I've never written poetry in my life, but I still managed to rhyme 'scratch' with 'snatch', revealing my natural talents and innate charm. 

I was completely devastated, but not entirely unsurprised, when I didn't win.

December: Some months back I sent a short story off for an anthology and promptly forgot about it.

It was rejected.

BUT

The editor liked it, it just didn't fit into the tone of the anthology so she told me to make it into a novella and resubmit. She pays by the word, told me to add more words, and then she wants it back.

So I suppose I ended 2012 on a high note? I don't know.

Next year Horror will finally settle on a title and be sent out into the world and Keeper will probably be joining Horror in a quest to bring me fame and fortune. Chunks may or may not be binned. Short story turned Novella will be done and hopefully published somewhere. 

A half dozen other things are in various stages of being written but there's not much to say about any of them at this point. They're not ripe yet. 

My resolution for 2013 is to sell some writing and finally sort out the comma. Or murder it. 

Whichever is easier. 

I suspect assassination on punctuation might just be the winner.

Does poetry have to rhyme?

Houston, we are a no go for the poetry contest, abort, abort, abort....

But now I can post my entry here. It's not too horrible, but I am rather biased.

The rules: 100 words or less and it had to contain the phrase 'Brit Writers'. The theme was 'The changing faces of publishing and our world of words'. I'm not even sure what that means.

I think I'll call it... 'I Tried'.


I pour my soul out on the page,
I write my words in a passionate rage.
But rejection is my daily bread,
The editor doesn't care how much I've bled.


Self-publish, e-publish or the more traditional way,
In the end does it really matter? I just can't say.
I send off and send out and apply and appeal,
All the while seeking that one fateful deal.


I rewrite and redraft and start again from scratch,
It's one simple chance I'm desperate to snatch.
Brit Writers everywhere, stay strong and persevere,
There will be a sale somewhere, I promise, never fear.


I am extremely pleased about the fact I rhymed 'scratch' with 'snatch'.

What? C'mon, that's funny. I have to amuse myself somehow.

Stay away from the Waiting Place!

I clawed my way up to 3rd in Dead Roots. Not nearly good enough to be published, but it's the closest to winning I've ever been. Congratulations to the winner, David Scullion! I got beat fair and square, it's still gonna be an awesome book even without my own little brilliant contribution. Thank you everyone that voted for me.

Which leads me to add up my recent triumphs and realize... I hadn't got any. I've either been told no or heard radio silence for all my submissions lately. I'm taking the shotgun approach to a writing career and firing off something for everything I can find. Eventually something will be the right fit, but until then it's a bit of a downer.

That got me thinking about healthy ways to deal with disappointment. I know plenty of unhealthy ways, but living at the Chinese buffet is not something my waistline or my wallet can handle long term. 

Getting drunk is right out. That's a rabbit hole I want to stay far away from. Drinking when I'm down in the dumps, I mean. I've got no objection to alcohol otherwise. Besides, I'm taking up home-brewing. I'm starting my first batch of cider in a few days and it will be the most magnificent apple cider EVER. So say we all.

I have a few different ways to bounce back from disappointment. Because of the shotgun approach, I always have things out. I'm waiting to hear back on three other submissions, a film treatment for amazon, a short story, and a poem. 

I'm about twenty pages away from finishing my next script, a drama thing tentatively titled 'Keeper', and about to embark on rewrite number... 6? 7? 9 gazillion? on Untitled Horror script of horribleness that's currently trying to pull itself into two separate movies like demented conjoined twins.

They're right. It isn't the writing that's the hard part, it's the mutherduckin' rewriting. 

Also it's about to get cold and rainy all the time and that always cheers me up. I loath the summertime. Nature's too damn cheerful for my taste. The sun, IT BURNS.

The other way I drag myself back up to an optimistic place is to consult the good Doctor for a motivational pick-me-up.

I can hear you say it. "What doctor? Doctor Who?" <-- you see what I did thar? I crack myself up. 

No, not this time. Doctor Seuss. He keeps me from wallowing in the waiting place. 

I have places to go.

Me. The Zombie Queen.

Or I could be. I'm a finalist in Dead Roots, the zombie comic book anthology I blogged about before. Go look at their contributors' page. My story is in the running to be published in a book that contains all my favorite sci-fi writers! How cool is that? Seriously? It's the closest to 'cool' I've ever been in my life.

James Moran, the reason I refuse to swim someplace I can't see the bottom because what if there's bear traps? Jason Arnopp, whose book got me over my deep abiding fear of reporters. I could just go on and on and on but there's a catch. A HUGE SCREAMING CATCH.

The winner is determined by votes. Facebook 'Likes' to be precise. Right now 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are all within ten votes of each other. I'm bouncing between '1st = published' and '2nd = sucks to be you'. There is no consolation prize. It's win or nothing.

I need all the help I can get, so if you're on Facebook go ahead and 'like' my story, and please share it with all your friends! You can even friend me if you want, though I warn you I only use facebook to yak about movies, tv shows, comics, and roller derby. 

It's come down to a social networking battle and like the zombocalypse, I'm determined to survive.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=366852903394758&set=a.366852350061480.87029.122886321124752&type=1&theater

50 Kisses: Results

I did really well. I didn't win, but both my entries made the long list which makes me one of about 16 (I believe) out of 1800 + that managed to get that far with both entries. It's only the second contest I've ever entered so I'm bouncing with excitement I did so well so early on.

You can read both my scripts below. Or if you happen to be a film maker, I'd be delighted if you made either one of them into a film short.

Dirty Riffs & Neon Lights: 14 year old Robin will do almost anything to impress a girl.

Beyond The Sea: For some couples, Valentine's day is just another day.

Now I'm off to change my profile page to '50 Kisses long list winner - 2012' because I'm so totally counting this as a credit. It's a thing and I did it and other people said so, so it counts. So there.

Until next time :)

EDIT: 8/15 My scripts are LIVE on the 50 Kisses website and they're eligible to be on the DVD under special features if you'd like to check it out. Dirty Riffs and Beyond the Sea. 

A+B+C=Profit

I got my script coverage back from Scriptapalooza last week. It was more positive than I expected which was a pleasant surprise, and I learned something I didn't know I didn't know so it was worth the money to get a report back. The main comments referred to a concept I thought I understood, but clearly didn't. Other people have told me the same thing and I obediently shook my head, 'Yuppers, I get it,' whilst missing the point entirely.

But I thought I understood so that has to count for... exactly nothing, actually.

Their main (and nearly only, yay me:) criticism about my entry revolved around the various story lines. My A story was exciting and interesting. My B story was interesting but didn't have much to do with the A story beyond appearing and taking up pages. The C story was interesting but petered away into nothing like a fart in the wind. A winning script, that does not make.

I've read and been told to tie the three separate story lines together. I thought I did, but just being set in the same universe with the same characters in the same script isn't enough. Just being present isn't enough. The separate story lines have to feed back into each other like a braid.

I pondered this and pondered this and pondered this, still not quite grasping the concept. While I was pondering, I discovered to my eternal delight that BBC4 isn't region locked. At first glance, this has nothing to do with anything except to be an additional way to mess around on the web, but at second glance, this completely revolutionized everything.

Cabin Pressure --> Johannesburg --> Play

If you've never listened to Cabin Pressure, stop what you're doing, download it and come back. I'll wait. It's brilliant, hysterically funny, and I think I'm in love. It's my new favorite show.

So I'm thinking deep thoughts about my script report and the various failures of the story lines to relate back to each other while I listened. I laughed my way through the episode then instantly started it over because my mind was making some interesting connections amid all the giggles. I paid much more attention to how the episode unfolded the second/third/fourth time listening.

Did I mention it's brilliant?

In the A story: Caroline is annoyed at Martin and Douglas and makes them cut two thousand pounds off their budget for the trip. If they succeed they can split the money. If they fail and come in a single penny over, they have to pay her a grand apiece. She thinks it's a fantastic idea. They're not so sure, but with a thousand pounds on the line, they're willing to go along with her. Also she doesn't actually give them any choice.

To save on fuel, Douglas shakes the plane down and tosses anything he deems unnecessary weight, including the coffee pot. Later during the B story Douglas tells Arthur to fill a wine bottle with water and set it on the edge of the engine to heat up so they can make coffee later. Incidentally, that sets up the C story. It all just builds on itself.

In the B story: A warning light comes on, leading to an emergency landing to get it fixed. Martin and Arthur go on an away mission to retrieve a mechanic and suffers assorted hijinks, including getting their borrowed baggage truck stuck under a bridge while Douglas is still focused on the A story of trying to come in under budget. When presented with the bill for their emergency stop, he has to do something to knock twenty bucks off so the airfield manager floats the idea of Douglas washing his car.

It's the same car the airfield manager refused to let them borrow at the beginning of the B story which led to Martin and Arthur dinking around Spain in a baggage truck. Determined not to pay Caroline a thousand pounds, Douglas whines about it, agrees, and parks the car behind the plane to wash it with some minor heckling from Caroline. He needs the money, okay?

Martin and Arthur return with a mechanic, he fixes their problem by thumping the instrument panel, revealing that the plane wasn't actually broken at all, just the little yellow warning light.

They're going to take off before the airfield closes at five, they're under budget, they won't owe Caroline any money. Martin does a quick jog around the plane for his preflight inspection and they get ready to leave. For once everything goes right. Or does it?

The tower calls them in a panic. They've fired a missile. Directly into the car Douglas washed to reduce the bill (A story). It's still parked behind the plane they thought was broken (B story). The missile is the wine bottle in the engine Arthur forgot about (C story).

Presumably they don't finish the trip under budget.

There you have it. A story, B story, and C story. They cross and crisscross each other.

Go listen to the episode if you haven't already. You can pick out the places the different story lines intersect. I feel like I've had a writer breakthrough. When people say tie the different story lines together they honestly mean tie them together. They're not being cryptic. It's not enough to be happening at the same time or be in the same script, they have to weave in and out like a braid.

I'm going back and doing another page 1 rewrite of horror script so it's ready to go the very instant 'Girls on Film' reopens. Right now horror script is another example of A, B, and C not coming anywhere near each other, let alone interlacing. Now I can fix that.

Thank god for Cabin Pressure.

FADE IN:

 FADE IN: 

I feel like I haven't blogged in forever. A whole six weeks counts as forever on the internet. 

About eight decades ago (in internet years) I entered 50 kisses and blogged about it. From Adrian Mead's fantastic book, 'Making it as a screenwriter' I learned that I needed to get my act together before the contest happened. It makes sense, if you think about it, which I absolutely didn't until he pointed it out using small and easily understood words, but it takes time to write and polish a story. Slinging it in right before the deadline leads to sloppy mistakes which I am prone to commit.

I also decided to enter early before the readers were bored and burned out on reading the same type of thing over and over. That way (hopefully) my entry goes in the 'consider' pile before the standards for the 'consider' pile get too terribly high. I know, devious right? I'm a regular Bond villain, cackling my evil plans to the entire interwebz.

Two or three weeks before the deadline they posted a very helpful blog post about how the contest was going and what they saw repeated over and over among their entries. You'd think with a theme as vague as 'Valentines Day' and the only requirement is it must to contain a kiss, it would difficult to find too terribly many similarities beyond those two points. Three words, really.

Hahaha, wrong. I managed to tick off almost every box on the list. Oomph, right in the ego!

My creative and original work of love, romance, and passion was in fact trite, overdone, and boring.

Grumble grumble grumble. I spent the obligatory amount of time moaning about it on twitter (two humorous tweets, for those keeping score at home. I may have been was am pathetic) and moved on, convinced I didn't have the faintest fart of a chance for a writing credit and that ipad. I've never even touched an ipad. I certainly won't be fondling the one they're giving away. Maybe next year.

The ability to move on is important for a writer. Kinda like being used to being fired all the time. I've spent years perfecting that talent, I'm already used to being fired all the time from my day job so this is second nature to me. It's the all important getting professional credits and eventually getting paid to write something that I'm still working on.

Y'know, that really didn't come out right. I'm honestly a decent farrier. I think so anyway. But it is true, there's only two kinds of farriers in the world. Those that have been fired and those that are gonna be fired...  

Anyway, back to my point...

A week before the deadline, they tweeted that they'd decided to accept a SECOND script. TWO. It's Christmas come early! I get a free do-over! I went right back to the 'we've seen it' list and decided to go in the direct opposite direction. But probably so did everyone else so I went opposite from the opposite and just to thoroughly confuse myself, reversed it again! Then I bent it at a ninety and took the corner on two wheels just to be absolutely sure I wasn't followed... 

It might suck but there's not another one like it. I hope. But there probably actually is. Without my script's fatal flaw, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh yes, this story has a fatal flaw. It's almost a greek tragedy. 

My new story told a riveting tale of manliness, friendship, and devotion, barely contained in a mere two pages. My kryptonite is typos and I know this so I proofread that sucker 591 times, then got a friend to go over it also. No typos. Not one single one escaped us. We were proofread goddesses. Bow before our magnificence and wallow in our glory, you puny mortals!

*ahem*

In fear of inconvenient server crashes, random internet failure, or miscalculated time zone differences, I submitted it a full two days early. It was perfect. You know what happens whenever I think I did something right? You guessed it. I sent it off, got the confirmation email back immediately (which is a fantastic feature) and then started the Closing of the Tabs. I broke my own solemn vow and looked at it again before I closed the file.

I didn't start with FADE IN:

Screenwriter 101. ALWAYS START WITH FADE IN:

Did I remember this? No, and my friend writes novels so she certainly wouldn't catch the fact that I skipped straight to the first scene heading. INT - THE CANTINA OF BROKEN DREAMS - DAY

*facepalm*

*headdesk*

*facepalm*

Will their crack team of readers be so used to seeing and skipping over FADE IN: that they don't notice it's missing? Will they be so captivated by the story they don't care? Do they read this blog? I'm confident the answer to last one that is hysterical laughter and a resounding no.

But only time will tell.

Things are just ticking along.

Just a quick update. 

I got my horror script and 50 First Kisses entry back from my lovely editor lady, Michelle Goode, with only minor bruising to my indomitable writer ego. I did index cards to try and fix my first act blues. It was actually helpful. I saw how repetitive some of the scenes were. Same story advancing dialogue in about five different locations. Gloriously cinematic locations, but the same dialogue just rephrased.

Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

Then Minion decided to help me.

   

Honestly, she wasn't much help.

I tweaked my 50 First Kisses entry and sent it off into the internet ether, I won't be rejected find out about that until midsummer. I've answered some ads looking for various films shorts and sent off every single one I've got that's halfway decent. Haven't heard anything back yet on any of them. Made a mental note to write more. Shorts seem to be popular for gaining writing/acting/producing/directing credits, if not actual money, which would be the ideal situation.

Found out about a Zombie anthology comic book seeking submissions. I fired off three concepts and while none of them were quite right, the editor was very nice about it. Yay! My first professional rejection, glad that's out of the way. I don't know why I'm excited to be to told my pitches weren't good enough, but I am. I'm a very strange special little snowflake.

I'm going to rework them plus a few more and resubmit. I have until the end of the month to come up with something he likes or he tells me to quit emailing him. Place your bets on which happens first.

Then I reread my original email and immediately spotted a typo. 

/overcome with despair, throws self into a pit of tigers.

Granny knows best

So the rom-com is ticking along nicely. Well, by nicely I really mean fits and starts and disjointed scenes and I have to keep telling myself I can't edit a blank page so I've got to get something down, even if it's sucktastic. It's got a working title of 'Chunks' and no, you don't want to know why. Just trust me, you just don't. I've done a rough, very very rough outline and spent a lot of time thinking about exactly what needs to happen for this to be worth reading.

I know the story I want to tell fairly well, but can I actually tell it? Yes, yes I think I can. If it will cooperate. Now I've run smack into the first of what I'm sure is going to be many unexpected issues. Lemme explain.

I've got two main characters, and one slightly less main character. Slightly less main character has a grandmother that was supposed to roll in, observe the situation, and pronounce doom on everyone for the trouble they've got themselves into that kicks off the whole story. Then she's supposed to flounce away back to the bingo hall to shotgun Ensure and speculate about the new Dallas movie. This is her only scene, right? But she won't leave.

Won't. Leave.

Now granny's over in the corner, cackling with glee at the pitiful hijinks the others are suffering from. No, she won't fix it for them. She could, but she won't. She's too busy laughing and besides, that's too easy. I tried to hurry her away so they could get on with dealing with the problem themselves. Exit Granny, stage left. She wasn't having it. She declared doom on me too and threatened to belt me with her cane. This was more entertaining than any amount of bingo and gossip and she wasn't going to be escorted to the door. Nope.

Horrified, I backed away from the keyboard.

How does that even work? I'm making this up. Is there a part of my mind represented by the granny that blows a great big raspberry at the rest of my mental bandwidth? What does that mean about me as a person? I can't even make the invisible, imaginary people I make up out of absolute nothing do what I want.

Apparently I'm a pushover. No wonder my dog never listens. I'm going to make some more coffee and then me and granny are having it out. She's giving me the evil eye right now. Shit. But she's not staying. No.

Bring it on, granny. 

It's finished! Now start again!

The horror feature has now finished the gauntlet of friends and family. Based on their feedback, it has been tweaked and sharpened to a fine edge. In a gruesome, blood dripping kind of way. It is horror, after all. People say 'the cutting edge' when they mean modern technology. They forget the real cutting edge is a sharp, shiny blade. Perfect for... well... I don't want to give too much away. 

I also did an entry for 50 first kisses. Two pages max and there has to be a kiss. Bring it on. It's free and they let foreigners enter so it's my kinda contest. I read the winning scripts for the last one page contest the London Screenwriting Festival did. It absolutely blew my mind just how much story could be told in one page if the writer was deft enough. You can read them both here.

My favorite one is 'Everything you need' by David Turner. Go read it and weep with envy. I did.

One page people. The writer did ALL THAT in one page. It's just so perfect. 

I wanted to print both winning scripts out and shove them under the nose of everyone I knew and bellow, "Read this! Isn't it brilliant!?! Look how awesome that is!" I wanted to, I didn't actually do it. They would have fitted me with an I-Love-Me jacket if I had.  I am capable of censoring myself, but it's so hard sometimes. I just want to share my love of amazing stories with everyone whether they want me to or not. 

Now I'm circling another few ideas. I've been jotting them down on the computer as they occur to me so I've got a few stacked up.  What to write next is my big dilemma. I've got an idea for a tv pilot. If I started working on it now it should be just about ready to enter in the ABC Fellowship next spring.

There's another idea for a feature floating around in my brain, a rom-com this time. About... well... lemme write it first and then I'll tell you all about it. It's funny though, you'll be in stitches and never think of voodoo, rum and maxi pads the same way.

The drama thing is still banished. I don't want to talk about it.

A couple of important things have to happen before I can actually start writing something else. This next step is vital to the creative process.

Ready for it? It's a secret, I shouldn't say but I like you so I'll tell.

Here it is... I have to clean my whole house, clean out the car, sweep, wash the dog and possibly the cats if they don't hide fast enough or if I can pry them out from under the couch. That's right, I've got to get some serious procrastinating in before the writing juices can truly flow. Only once there is no more laundry to fold and the house reeks of lemon and pine can I start something new.

I may even piddle around with something from le day job for a while.

Eventually... there is no more stalling... there is just me and a blank page that I will proceed to vomit words all over it, hopefully in a somewhat coherent fashion. Or at least coherent after serious editing. Serious, SERIOUS editing. 

Outlines make life so much easier, but before I can contemplate actually outlining  and <gasp> writing any of my new bajillion dollar ideas, I've got to take a page out of Jason Arnopp's book and alphabetize my dvd collection.

By genre.