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!

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.

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.

Sometimes the insecurity angel is right.

Neil Gaiman says that if an author picks up a brand new copy of her/his book, it will fall open to a page with a typo. This always happens. Fact of life. I agree with him, it's a law of the universe, like Reavers are bad, the enemy's gate is down, and ghosts can't cross salt.


Even though I knew it was past the point of no return and I was letting myself in for nothing but heartache, I opened my contest entry and looked at it again. I knew it was a bad idea. I fucking knew it.


What did I find? I didn't put a character name in ALL CAPS. That's right, you heard me. On page nine I introduce one of the minor characters and I DIDN'T CAPITALIZE HER NAME. WTF? I got a professional to help me with my formatting, she even flagged it, and I still managed to screw it up!


facepalm
headdesk
facepalm


The worst part is just before I hit send I had a wild flash of terror, 'Maybe I should read it through just one more time...' and I ruthlessly squelched it. I thought it was just my insecurity angel weighing in. Y'know, the little voice on my shoulder telling me that everything sucks and no one will like it and I better just quit before I humiliate myself in front of the whole world? That voice I've learned to ignore, but it still just won't shut up?


Seems I've learned to ignore it too well.


'No!' I says to my insecurity angel. 'You're just being paranoid.' 

Insecurity angel whined, 'No really, you really should give it just one more last read through! Trust me! Always quadruple check! And check again! In fact, why don't you sit on it another few weeks and check again?'


I ignored my insecurity angel and sent it in. Why didn't I listen? Why why why???


Now I'm in agony. Am I going to get disqualified for that? I've read story after story about contest readers looking for a reason to bounce scripts. What if that's it? I messed up that one little thing and that's it, it's over? It's within the first ten pages even. What if they're not totally loving it, and right when they're making the decision if they want to keep going they see that and round-file it? ARGH!


They don't even announce the semi-finalists until the tail end of July. I now have three months to beat myself up over this. Three months. I don't know how I'm going to function. I could barely sleep last night.


I could go on their facebook page and ask about it... but that would make me look even more needy and neurotic than ever. The insecurity angel would win if I did that. But it would give everyone else a boost, they could see my post and say gleefully to themselves, 'Well, at least I didn't screw that up! What a hack!'


What if by some supreme miracle the reader didn't notice and all I accomplished was pointing it out? 'Oh hey, you did make a mistake there, better luck next year!' Thunk goes the script as it hits the recycle bin.


I just have to suck it up. I wanted a new and more creative mistake, but not like an actual mistake. More like a... creative difference that I could argue my way out of. Yeah, that's what I wanted. I long for the good ol' days when I was agonizing over commas. Life was easier then.


I really should be careful what I wish for.


Damn it.




I must distract myself with something else. Horror. Lots of people dying gruesomely, that should do nicely. I finished Draft 0 of the Horror movie, printed it out, and left it on the shelf in the office. Which turned out to be a bad place for it because every time I walked in there I wanted to pick it up and start editing. Which kind of defeated the purpose of letting it marinate for a week. 'You'll never get a good sear if you keep poking at it...'


Nope, nope, nope, gotta leave it alone for a full week! It was like trying to leave a tray of chocolate chip cookies alone. Or not picking up the edge of a steak to see if it was time to flip it yet. I'm not sure where I'm going with the food analogy. I blame blogging while hungry. Where was I? Oh yes, letting the draft rest. So it's juicy and tender instead of dry and chewy.


It was a struggle, but I made it, and settled down seven whole days later with only a minor lapse or two to start editing, which... was strange. I thought when I put the draft up that all the characters were unique little snowflakes with a unique little voice and when I got the draft back down... that wasn't so. 


Fixed that, and now I'm at the craving feedback point.


I asked a few beloved, cherished, (un)lucky friends and family to read it. So far the only feedback I got was from my husband, and I totally did not arrange the evening so he had absolutely nothing else to do and stand over him to make him finish the story in one sitting. 


All he said was I've reached Stephen King levels of fucked up.


Awesome. I can just take that to the agents and production companies, 'My husband says...'


I tried to get him to be a little more specific. "Was part of it confusing? Was part of it boring? Was the ending obvious? Did the characters feel like unique people?" All of that is vital, vital information!


Him: 'Naw. It's okay."
...
...
...


Yup. I'm not sure how to began the next draft because I know it's not okay. Hopefully the others will weight in with something more specific. There's two parts I think I'm going to cut entirely and a few other things that if even one other person brought that scene up... I would know for sure that there is something not working. I just want validation, okay?


Between my insecurity angel being right (for once) and my gut twinging 'something isn't working' with the horror... I guess figuring out which one to trust is part of being a writer.


That and drowning my typo sorrows in a very nice pale ale, medium rare steak and a bucket of ice cream. I need comfort food right now. 

Unfortunately that probably needs to be followed by a swift kick in the pants so I'll quit wallowing and get back to work.