Ensemble (puke) and the popular kids (more puke)

The first thing you may be wondering is, "Why are there flamingos on this page and what do they have to do with screenwriting?" Absolutely nothing. I just felt like adding a picture. They look like they're deep in thought, wading around there, saying things like, "Where in the hell did Bob drop the remote? I told you not to let him have it."

I am writing what I suppose could be called an ensemble screenplay. I hate that word, so snobbish and uptight. I should say I dislike that word because I do not feel as strongly about it as I do about words such as "dinner" and "jot." Now those words I hate. But my screenplay has a group of people living together in a large old house that has become apartments. In a story like this, there are two things that must be very strong: character and plot. Plot because if you're not careful, your people can just end up drifting around having a thousand conversations that go nowhere, and character because if you're not careful, they'll end up too much alike.

On that second note, I came across an interesting thread about voice (http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing.screenplays.moderated/browse_thread/thread/82c88be732d66516#). There's a lot of good advice flying around in there, but to me, it all seems to boil down to this: see those people in your mind. See them, hear them. Write down what you're seeing and what they say. Yeah, there will be times that you have to nudge them or even give them an outright shove right off the fucking cliff, but for the most part, listen to them, and do not ever, ever limit them.

On the topic of reading threads and other blogs, I keep seeing lists of links running usually down the right-hand side, and they all suspiciously seem to have the same blogs listed over and over. Everyone wants to seem (finger quotation marks) cool and in-the-know by having the most popular kids listed. Well here's the deal pantywaists, I'm going to rebel. That's right. I'm going my own way. So a call out to all you unknowns who are listed on nobody's links. Send me yours and I'll take a look. If you're unknown but I like your style, you're in like Flynn. If John August reads this and gets pissed, so be it, but while you're here John, wanna read my screenplay?

And a polite wave to http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ who kindly let me use their flamingos for the small fee of including a link.

Stones

Alas, I have been rejected again and not just once, but twice. I got nowhere with Nicholl and the Austin Film Festival.

I have read that you might as well just light your first ten or twelve screenplays on fire the second they are done and move on with your writing life because they will sink like stones. They are to be regarded as practice. Have I been simply lucky that the first one was a quarter-finalist and the second top 10%? Should I go ahead and get the matches anyway and just give up on them?

When a person encounters so many rejections from so many sources, they must have moments of stopping and wondering if this is a fool's errand. There is no way of knowing if there will ever be a "yes" in the future and therefore no way of knowing if continuing on is the thing to do or a waste of energy and emotion. I think about these things a lot.

There are some structures that began underwater. Someone had to figure out a way to set a foundation in the murky depths so that the part above would be solid. So they set down one stone in the bottom of the river, and then they set another on top of it, and another on top of that one. And when the structure was finished, no one ever gave a second's notice or appreciation to those stones at the bottom that were holding everything up, that were the beginning of it all.

I'll keep writing. And I'll appreciate the ones that sank like stones.

Mr. Postman

Actually in my case, I have a Mrs. Postman, but all the same, I'm waiting on this much-mythologized person of the USPS. The Austin Film Festival should be mailing letters in the next few days with their site proclaiming it will be by 9/3. Last year I expected absolutely nothing from them. The screenplay I sent in was not really bowling me over, but I thought, "What the hell?" And then a few months later I got a letter saying it had made it to the glitz-n-glitter, World Famous Second Round, top 10%.

This year I majorly revamped another screenplay and sent that one for them to stick in their pipes and smoke. Hopefully they enjoyed the rich, full aroma and satisfying flavor. We'll see.

Blah Blah Blah

That's how I've been feeling this week. I don't know if it's mental, physical, metaphysical, bilingual, but whatever it is, I'm tired of it. Ready to shake it off and get back to being me.

And what the hell is up with the ads that have been appearing on here? They used to be screenwriting related and now they're ... definitely not.

I realize I need to get set up on a regular schedule of not only writing, but of everything-elsing, too. The very core of me resists schedules, hates them, despises them, repels them. I always have. But I guess it's like the addict finally realizing that rehab, no matter how disgusting it sounds, is really what they need. I need the rigid schoolmarm to force me into making progress, little by little, day by day.

Writers are notorious for putting it off. We seem to procrastinate on everything given the slightest chance. We keep saying things like, "There's not enough time today for me to get much done, so I'll just stick my hands down the front of my pants and watch TV. This weekend, well, this weekend will be completely different. I'll have all that time, and I'll get so much dooonnnne." Then this weekend comes, and we sleep until 1:00 p.m. and at 3:25 p.m., we're still sitting around in our pajamas. Yeah, way to go.

So here's what I'm gonna do until I get a schedule figured out - I'm gonna blame you. I never hear from you people. Some comments, positive or negative, would let me know I'm not floating alone out in cyberspace. And maybe if we could get the discussion going in the right direction, the ads would get better.

What is in a date?

"I just remembered that today's my birthday." This sentence was spoken by Nick, a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It seems surprising that anybody would forget something like that, but people do it all the time. I do it.

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day..."
From Shakespeare's Macbeth. Possibly explaining why people forget that it's their birthday.

We live from day to day and generally don't pay a whole lot of notice to the date. And then we wonder why it didn't hit us that it's our birthday or anniversary or the day we were supposed to be at the dentist and dammit now I'm gonna have to make another appointment and they'll probably charge me for not giving 24-hour notice. The calendar, the dates, hell, all of time, is just so arbitrary and made up. Humans are the ones who stick Post-it notes on the days in our pitiful attempts to label them, name them, put our mark on them. But the days will creep on at their petty pace with absolutely no heed for us.

You're probably expecting my next quote to be from "Dust in the wind" by Kansas, right? Well, forget it. I hate that song. I'm just raveling a thread that started with the realization that I missed my anniversary on a screenwriting group I'm part of. It has been an everyday enjoyment for me for over a year (I joined on Friday the 13th, June 2008. Is that another meaningless date or something ominously foreboding?) I feel like I know these people, and I even recently mourned the death of one of its members, a colorful, wonderful lady whom I always loved hearing from. But this date slipped right by me.

Do birthdays matter? Do dates matter? Do we really need to stop and acknowledge the anniversary of every freaking thing? I don't know. But it seems to be human nature to try to hang on to them.

The pen is mightier

I flipped over to a fellow screenwriter's blog (http://iamphilipnight.blogspot.com/) and saw something that really caught my attention - hand writing a script. It reminded me so much of when I first started writing. Everything was handwritten and then typed up later. I wrote my entire first script longhand and then typed it up after I had it all, AND it was in no particular order, AND it ended up being about 160 pages after I got it all in there. Major editing. But I loved it.

I've gotten to where now I tend to go right to the electronic pen and paper. But I wonder (little tribute to Carrie Bradshaw here) was I happier doing it the old fashioned way? It seemed like I was so connected to the story and so ready to just dive right into it every day. We were more linked, and best of all, I could work on it any time, anywhere. I was holding the instrument right in my hand and the ideas flowed into it. Now, it seems maybe a little ... colder.

So I'm thinking my pen should not languish any longer. It has served me well and will again. Thank you, Phillip, for reminding me.

My Job

I realize I haven't said much about my new job. One of the founding fathers of this blog was my joblessness and search for a new one, whether it be in screenwriting, flipping burgers, digging ditches, or a combo of all three (what would that be like?)

It started as part-time and became full-time pretty quickly which was good of course. And I like the job and people I'm working with, learning a lot of new ideas and skills which always appeals to me. The only thing that sort of had me walking around there with a question mark over my head was the lack of ... dirt. I'm not talking about actual soil and grime, although it is a very clean facility. I'm talking about dirt, you know, stories, affairs, fighting, gossip, all that. The other place I worked was chock full of it. It was so thick around us it almost made it worth going in every day just to find out what the hell was next.

But these people seemed nearly angelic. I started to wonder if I might be working in some secret branch of the church. But then, it started trickling in. A comment here. An overheard conversation there. Like I said, just a little trickle at first. And then it was like the dam wall suddenly exploded and here it all comes. I feel right at home.

I just hope they realize their full legal names, addresses, and all their sordid stories will be in my next screenplay ; )