Making the new year count

We're off to a good start for 2012. And let's face it, we've got to make it count with the advent of the whole Mayan calendar - zombie apocalypse on the horizon.

Speaking of the zombie apocalypse, I just received word that my zombie short - Body and Blood was a first round finalist in the 2011 Table Read My Screenplay Competition.  This is the second time I've done well when entering this competition... I like this competition.

But what I really should be focusing on is the necessity to broaden our horizons. For years, I stuck to my guns and focused solely on features, and predominantly on horror features. It's my niche, and it's where I'm comfortable, and let's face it, Body and Blood is a horror story. But it's not a feature. And if my friend Jay Costelo hadn't put faith in me and convinced me to try and write a few shorts, I probably wouldn't have written this.. So thanks, Jay!

And if my friend Jeff Brown, a writer who I believe has a promising future, hadn't convinced me that Supernatural was a show I needed to watch, I wouldn't have tried my hand at writing a couple of TV specs. So thanks, Jeff for inspiring me to broaden my horizons.

And while we're at it, thanks needs to be sent out to other writing friends of mine - Judith Watson, George Lee and Sharon White who, as a group, participated in a writing exercise with me that inspired me to write Turf War, an animated feature with no horror whatsoever in its content. I still think it's better than Gnomeo and Juliet. Turf War was a top 100 Table Read finalist last year.

One last thank you, to Greg Goyins - another writer, director, producer and a man with many hats - who has inspired me to tackle another short.  I'm working on it, Greg. I'm working on it.

Thanks to all of you, and to anyone in my life who may not be mentioned here, for helping me broaden my horizons and see the potential of the future. Have a good 2012!

Writing is... well, it's writing

Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays. I hope the end of 2011 brings good memories of a well lived year. Mine was okay. I accomplished a few writing goals - an option, a few accolades from screenwriting festivals, and most recently the completion of a TV spec for the show Supernatural.

Will the script ever make it to the screen? Probably not. That's not the way TV spec writing works. Would it make a good episode? Well, I'm biased. But that's not the point. The point is that I wrote it after years of swearing to myself that I would never write something for TV.

Why, you ask, would I limit myself? Good question. Part of it most likely has to do with the desire to procrastinate instead of grapple with a challenge. I always believed the writing for TV would be hard. Too many fans hope their scripts will make the cut. Shows already have their writers, so staff is extra critical when they read your spec - IF they read your spec. Chances are they won't. If you're lucky to get someone to read it, it's for a show other than the show you wrote the spec for because, like I said - that's just the way the TV industry works. The rules for writing TV are a little bit odd.

But I'm proud of myself because I did it anyway. I wrote a Supernatural spec, and I think I did well. And now I feel excited at trying my hand at another. Maybe a comedy. Maybe another supernatural themed show. The point is that I was inspired to write it, and I followed through. And now I have another script to showcase my talent. Or at least I have another script to showcase my learning curve. It felt good to do it and to complete it in spite of the odds of it ever getting made. It felt good to overcome writer's procrastination.

Hopefully, the new year will see me continue to overcome writer's procrastination. I wish the same success to all my friends and family in their 2012 endeavors as well. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

Things are still looking good

And there you have it. I have been busy working on material for an upstart production company. I wish I could share more. But I can't. Yet. And that's a good thing.

I will say this. As much as I hate networking, it's a necessary evil and the reason I was asked to come on board the project I'm working on. It could be as simple as "Hey, you're in the business? Me too! We should stay in touch!" It's never enough to just write. STAY CONNECTED!

Oh, and I wanted to give another shout out for some friends of mine, Greg Goyins, whose short After the Denim is featured in the upcoming Florida Film Festival, April 8-17, 2011. Maggie Franks for her successful docu-short The Board Meeting, about a pair of retired executives who ponder life while surfing. And Chris Billett, who is moving on to bigger and better things. Congratulations, guys! And good luck!

The out of the loop writer's dilemma

Today was not a good day to be an occasional writer, full time mother. As I caught up on the news posted in the latest edition of The Hollywood Reporter, an article about the new Miramax caught my eye. One of the first productions to be released under the (re)new Miramax banner will be an animated gnome picture called GNOMEO AND JULIET.

Oh, please no! You have got to be kidding me! That animated piece that I just finished, that I've been excited about all summer long has just been blown out of the water. How I sooooo wish I could claim plagiarism, but it's obvious I can't. It's just another example of a great idea drifting through the ether that multiple people 'discovered' at the same time. And I'm kicking myself because I missed the news. With a 2011 planned release, GNOMEO AND JULIET must have been in the works for, at minimum, a full year.

There are differences. The multiple writers of the piece used Shakespeare as a template. I didn't. My only hope is that mine (titled TURF WAR) would have been better. As far as pitching the material? I already know it's a lost cause, because all of Hollywood will compare it to GNOMEO AND JULIET just from the logline. No one is going to want to put forth effort on a script whose idea alone is so close to a new release, no matter how good that other script might be.

But this is one of many dilemmas for a writer in such a high turnover industry. Am I sorry I wrote TURF WAR? Do I chalk it up to wasted time? No! I'm proud of my work, and hope it will, at the very least, showcase my talent. I guess what I'm saying is, don't stop writing! How many times can they remake Romeo and Juliet? Apparently, too many. How many times can we see battles between Vampires and Werewolves? I know, they're on the decline, but they'll return again. They always do.

So, for me, I hope that TURF WAR will at least do well in competition. And in the mean time, I'm off to write that next great idea that seems impossible to have not been tackled by someone else. Wish me luck! And keep writing!

Spring 2010

Wow, not much to report as the year slips away. The first third of 2010 has been peppered with baseball games, civil war reenactments, school for me and the entire family, scouting events... In a nutshell, not much time to write.

But I have set aside some time to keep on that animation idea. As a participant of this year's script frenzy (write 100 pages of a script - or anything else- within in the month of April), I foresee myself failing miserably - with just 14 pages short of the goal. But hey, that's 86 pages to my credit, so I'll take it.

Don't beat yourself up over the words you didn't type. Praise yourself for what you got done! Right? Who's with me?

Of course, I have wasted a lot of writing time on learning MS Powerpoint for class. Now that I know how to use it, it's really cool! I've wasted a lot of time trolling the internet for links to my heritage too. I'm proud to say that I've traced our family line all the way back to 15th Century France, and to the first settlers of Montreal, Quebec, and with some measure of certainty to Pre-Revolutionary War America. That seems like a worthwhile waste of time.

And now, I've succeeded in keeping this blog page up to date. Yay, me!

Keep writing, everyone!

The Holiday Season is Upon Us!

Thanksgiving is gone, Christmas is on the horizon and there are three weeks left to the Fall Semester. Library Acquisitions has been an interesting class, and I foresee a passing grade. The Schoharie has been updated, and I plan on pitching it and submitting it to competitions - after the Holidays.

Onward to a new project, and I think I've got one thanks to my friend Judith, who happens to be the moderator of our local Writer's Group. I don't want to divulge the details of the new script yet (I feel that strongly about the premise), but it was inspired by a writing exercise that Judith put us all through. I'd like to share the exercise with you in hopes of inspiring you to find a fresh story idea.

Basically, you do this:

1) Gather a list of all of the film genres you can think of, such as animation, romantic comedy, drama, horror, sci-fi, western, creature feature, mockumentary, gangster flick, chick flick, fantasy, thriller, supernatural thriller, sports pic, spy pic, military pic, buddy pic, period piece, musical, road picture, etc. etc. Gather as many as you can.

2) Randomly choose three genres off of the list. Pick them out of a hat if you have to, but make it as random as you can.

3) Brainstorm a movie idea based on the three genres you came up with.

The three genres that my team ended up with was a scifi/fantasy-gangster-chick flick. And we brainstormed a story idea from that. Now, I'm attempting to write it! And my son is so excited that he wants to attempt to animate it and post it on the web... Wish us luck, it's all in the preliminary stages, but it sounds like a fun project!

Happy Holidays to all, and keep writing!

A Professional's Rant

I found this link to be an interesting and entertaining read from screenwriter Josh Olsen. 

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php

I'm nowhere near a professional in my caliber of writing, and yet I understand where he's coming from. Sometimes. The article is a double edge sword (cliched phrase!) for me, because as a reader there are days when I dread having to come up with a tactful way to say someone's writing isn't that good. And as a writer, I hate to bother professional level people into reading my work.

But as writers, we have to do that. As writers, we need feedback. As screenwriters, we need to convince the right people to read our material so that it can be bought and, hopefully, made into an honest to goodness movie - or tv show - or web series. How do you do that with tact? 

So, thanks, Josh Olsen, for making me laugh and then depressing the crap out of me in one fell swoop.

Paranoia Film Fest

On the weekend of March 13th-15th, 2009, there is a horror and scifi film festival taking place at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. If you want to find out more, or buy tickets for the event, you can log onto www.paranoiafest.com .

This is their first annual festival, and it looks like fun. Of course, the main reason I bring it up is that one of my scripts has made it to the finalist list of their screenplay competition. A Good Soul. Yay!