#NanNoWriMo
8 years ago
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Cookie Prophecy
Last night's fortune cookie: "Your ideas are clever, and you will be rewarded." Sweet.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Home
Been back for about a week now. My stay in Washington was draining and raw, and surprisingly necessary on a personal level. As the clock wound down towards my departure, I found myself not wanting to leave because there was so much left to be done. The family's okay. Well, better than okay, really, but there's still a lot of shit to sort through. All the problems we faced when I first left LA are still there. In fact, a couple have multiplied. But if anything, we feel more able to handle them. You dig your way out of the avalanche one shovel-full at a time.
Me, I'm doing all right. I'm looking at things differently. I've undergone what a friend called a "values shift." What I want, what I'm working towards, has come into rather sharp focus. The career path I've been on is no longer the main one I'm following. Oh, they may still wind up in the same place -- that's the super happy ending, the one that can't be unlocked until you've played through the game a few times -- but it's not critical that they do. What is critical is that I find some form of paying work, and fast.
In the meantime, I'm attacking the writing with renewed vigor. I hit page ninety on Grandmother Clock this morning, and will likely have a draft by mid-May. The most recent final very last I'm-never-doing-this again Pwned rewrite is progressing well. Very happy with that. Epic Level (and, apparently, Endemol) loved the Earth Force 5 rewrite; that shoot's this summer. The Fred, Prince of Darkness artwork is staring to come in. The Hopjockey team has decided to respec the project to pitch as a feature. And Ben's fantasy series has begun to stir.
Still, I can't help feeling like this time might be a valiant last stand for the writing dream. My own personal Thermopylae, where my barbarian student loan interest rates are the Persians. My elite, outnumbered projects have bottlenecked the enemy in the mountain passes of deferment and forbearance. But can they hold them off until promised future earnings arrive?
This is stupid. I'm a go work on my resume.
Me, I'm doing all right. I'm looking at things differently. I've undergone what a friend called a "values shift." What I want, what I'm working towards, has come into rather sharp focus. The career path I've been on is no longer the main one I'm following. Oh, they may still wind up in the same place -- that's the super happy ending, the one that can't be unlocked until you've played through the game a few times -- but it's not critical that they do. What is critical is that I find some form of paying work, and fast.
In the meantime, I'm attacking the writing with renewed vigor. I hit page ninety on Grandmother Clock this morning, and will likely have a draft by mid-May. The most recent final very last I'm-never-doing-this again Pwned rewrite is progressing well. Very happy with that. Epic Level (and, apparently, Endemol) loved the Earth Force 5 rewrite; that shoot's this summer. The Fred, Prince of Darkness artwork is staring to come in. The Hopjockey team has decided to respec the project to pitch as a feature. And Ben's fantasy series has begun to stir.
Still, I can't help feeling like this time might be a valiant last stand for the writing dream. My own personal Thermopylae, where my barbarian student loan interest rates are the Persians. My elite, outnumbered projects have bottlenecked the enemy in the mountain passes of deferment and forbearance. But can they hold them off until promised future earnings arrive?
This is stupid. I'm a go work on my resume.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter
My father was a church organist for twenty-some years, all through my early childhood. Church on Sunday was a half-day affair, from before the sun was up to the early afternoon. I absorbed a lot of things I didn't quite understand, a lot of imagery and half-understood notions, so I filled in the gaps with kiddie logic, the way yunguns do. I knew, for example, that Jesus was born on Christmas and died on Easter. But I thought this happened every year. The way I understood it, Jesus was born every Christmas, magically grew to maturity in the next few months, and then died again on Easter. And I remember wondering why nobody ever warned him. I mean, here's a congregation full of people singing about how much they love the guy, but nobody thinks to give him a heads-up about his impending death? Seemed a bit cruel to me. Must be one of those mysteries. The logic of a five-year-old.
It's Easter morning, nine or so. This is the time of my morning write, the time of day I'm usually scribbling on a manuscript. When all's well and easy, I write every morning, and the pages stack up, and after a while I have a new screenplay to share. Things have not been well, nor easy. I've had two good writes this month. Two. And yesterday my laptop's keyboard started malfunctioning. Again. Gotta swing by Best Buy and get a USB keyboard. My laptop's the only computer here with Final Draft on it.
Here is my parents' house. I came up for a medical emergency at the end of March. I was only supposed to be here for a couple of days -- what needed doing was done the second day I was here. But needs kept me here, and so I stayed. And then things worsened.
We had another completely different medical emergency on Friday. My 91-year-old grandfather had what we thought was a heart attack. Turns out it was only congestive heart failure. I watched the ambulances pull up, watched the paramedics wheel him out of the farmhouse. I stayed out of the way -- my mother, aunt, and grandmother had everything under control, because with Grandpa's decreasing health, this sort of thing has become disturbingly routine. When he comes back to the farm on Monday, he'll be in hospice care. He's decided to die at the farm, which is a surprise to no one. That he's dying is also no surprise, though of course that doesn't make it any easier.
So this has not exactly been an environment conducive to writing. And, frankly, writing's not what I should be dong while I'm here. This is the longest stretch I've been in the northwest since we moved to LA in 2005. Here I must be vague. Since I've arrived, there has been a reeducation regarding my family history, one I've needed to be here for. It is clear that a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change. The future of my parents and the home they raised us in is uncertain. And that uncertainty is infectious. I brought my own sizable load of it with me, and here it's impossible to avoid. That uncertainty, that doubt, is nearly crippling.
Jeff, my brother in all but blood, came out the night before my grandfather was hospitalized. We didn't get much time together. We rarely do. We browsed the Tacoma Book Center but didn't buy anything -- we'd picked that place clean years ago -- rode around the Five Mile Drive and walked Owen Beach. We spoke of many things. Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. I spoke of the worry that gnaws at me, that I am constantly agonizing over. Am I doing the right thing? This is a family question, not just a professional one. Should I keep doing what I'm doing? Writing and filmmaking are the only things I'm good at, the only places I excel. But we can't afford to idle here, not the way my rich friends can, to play the waiting game necessary for success. And even if I ultimately find success, how long and what sacrifices will that take? What if it takes twenty, thirty years? Do I want to put my life on hold until I'm fifty, to have our kids growing up hardly knowing me and a wife who resents me? And when, if ever, will we have our children, build our family? What good is success if you have no one to share it with? The measure of a man is not what he does for himself.
Jeff listened. And like he always seems to do, he found the answer to my troubles in a Zen story, a kernel of wisdom easy to understand but difficult to implement. He told me of a student who asked his master what else he might do to guide himself towards enlightenment. "Enlightenment," the master replied, "is an accident." It's not something you can earn, he explained, not something you can track down or pay your dues for or ever be owed. Hearing this, the student despaired. "But," the master added, "meditation makes you accident-prone." Make a couple key substitutions, and you get this:
When Jeff articulated that, it resonated with me, the way a truth you've always known does when it's first put into words. Success in this industry is not about talent, or commitment, or who you know or whose genes you share, though such things can help. It's about being struck by lightning. And sure, you can do things to put yourself in the way of that bolt, but you can't coax it down. It's liberating to think of it in those terms -- if it's an accident, then it's not ever anything you can deserve. And if you can't deserve it, it removes the burden of shame associated with not achieving it, eliminates the "Why hasn't it happened? What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me?" Nothing. Nothing at all.
This month -- and I'm about halfway through my time here -- has cleared a lot of fog and put things into sharp contrast. What I want is more clear to me now than it has ever been: Family and home, and health for both. I don't need success in film for either, especially if it would take time away from them. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing. I don't think I could. But it does mean I'm going to stop thinking of cinema as my only outlet. I'll go back to writing for the reason I started: I love telling stories, and I have good ones to share. But watering those stories down to fit key demographics, hiring myself out to tell stories I don't really care about for other people? Screw that. That's not why I started doing this. I started doing this because I loved it, not because I ever expected to have a career at it. It wasn't until I moved down here that it became an insufferable burden.
I think that, unless there's some compelling reason for us to stay, that when our lease is up in February, Camille and I will move. Whether back to the northwest or to the California coast, I cannot say. But a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change, because the current one is unraveling and has become unsustainable.
So it's time to consider something new. The option that excites me the most is a foray into hospitality industry. Camille's dream is to own and operate a bed & breakfast, ideally in or around San Luis Obispo. I love that idea. She's so good with people, makes friends with such ease. It's a natural fit. I've had my dream, and pursued it, and though part of it might still come true, likely it won't. And you know what? I'm fine with that. The things I'd do at a B&B are the things I do now: write in the morning, chores and maintenance during the day. Maybe she'd even pay me. And I'm excited, truly excited, to try something new and scary with my partner.
In the Christian calendar, today is the day of rebirth, the confirmation of continuing life. But for rebirth to occur, there has to be a death, and an acceptance of that death. I'm seeing that literally and metaphorically in family right now. And if it's to happen in my own life, I must accept the death of where I thought I'd be and how I thought I'd live -- or at least let go of how I thought things would be. And that, my friends, is liberating.
It's Easter morning, nine or so. This is the time of my morning write, the time of day I'm usually scribbling on a manuscript. When all's well and easy, I write every morning, and the pages stack up, and after a while I have a new screenplay to share. Things have not been well, nor easy. I've had two good writes this month. Two. And yesterday my laptop's keyboard started malfunctioning. Again. Gotta swing by Best Buy and get a USB keyboard. My laptop's the only computer here with Final Draft on it.
Here is my parents' house. I came up for a medical emergency at the end of March. I was only supposed to be here for a couple of days -- what needed doing was done the second day I was here. But needs kept me here, and so I stayed. And then things worsened.
We had another completely different medical emergency on Friday. My 91-year-old grandfather had what we thought was a heart attack. Turns out it was only congestive heart failure. I watched the ambulances pull up, watched the paramedics wheel him out of the farmhouse. I stayed out of the way -- my mother, aunt, and grandmother had everything under control, because with Grandpa's decreasing health, this sort of thing has become disturbingly routine. When he comes back to the farm on Monday, he'll be in hospice care. He's decided to die at the farm, which is a surprise to no one. That he's dying is also no surprise, though of course that doesn't make it any easier.
So this has not exactly been an environment conducive to writing. And, frankly, writing's not what I should be dong while I'm here. This is the longest stretch I've been in the northwest since we moved to LA in 2005. Here I must be vague. Since I've arrived, there has been a reeducation regarding my family history, one I've needed to be here for. It is clear that a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change. The future of my parents and the home they raised us in is uncertain. And that uncertainty is infectious. I brought my own sizable load of it with me, and here it's impossible to avoid. That uncertainty, that doubt, is nearly crippling.
Jeff, my brother in all but blood, came out the night before my grandfather was hospitalized. We didn't get much time together. We rarely do. We browsed the Tacoma Book Center but didn't buy anything -- we'd picked that place clean years ago -- rode around the Five Mile Drive and walked Owen Beach. We spoke of many things. Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. I spoke of the worry that gnaws at me, that I am constantly agonizing over. Am I doing the right thing? This is a family question, not just a professional one. Should I keep doing what I'm doing? Writing and filmmaking are the only things I'm good at, the only places I excel. But we can't afford to idle here, not the way my rich friends can, to play the waiting game necessary for success. And even if I ultimately find success, how long and what sacrifices will that take? What if it takes twenty, thirty years? Do I want to put my life on hold until I'm fifty, to have our kids growing up hardly knowing me and a wife who resents me? And when, if ever, will we have our children, build our family? What good is success if you have no one to share it with? The measure of a man is not what he does for himself.
Jeff listened. And like he always seems to do, he found the answer to my troubles in a Zen story, a kernel of wisdom easy to understand but difficult to implement. He told me of a student who asked his master what else he might do to guide himself towards enlightenment. "Enlightenment," the master replied, "is an accident." It's not something you can earn, he explained, not something you can track down or pay your dues for or ever be owed. Hearing this, the student despaired. "But," the master added, "meditation makes you accident-prone." Make a couple key substitutions, and you get this:
Success is an accident.
But practice and discipline make you accident-prone.
When Jeff articulated that, it resonated with me, the way a truth you've always known does when it's first put into words. Success in this industry is not about talent, or commitment, or who you know or whose genes you share, though such things can help. It's about being struck by lightning. And sure, you can do things to put yourself in the way of that bolt, but you can't coax it down. It's liberating to think of it in those terms -- if it's an accident, then it's not ever anything you can deserve. And if you can't deserve it, it removes the burden of shame associated with not achieving it, eliminates the "Why hasn't it happened? What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me?" Nothing. Nothing at all.
This month -- and I'm about halfway through my time here -- has cleared a lot of fog and put things into sharp contrast. What I want is more clear to me now than it has ever been: Family and home, and health for both. I don't need success in film for either, especially if it would take time away from them. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing. I don't think I could. But it does mean I'm going to stop thinking of cinema as my only outlet. I'll go back to writing for the reason I started: I love telling stories, and I have good ones to share. But watering those stories down to fit key demographics, hiring myself out to tell stories I don't really care about for other people? Screw that. That's not why I started doing this. I started doing this because I loved it, not because I ever expected to have a career at it. It wasn't until I moved down here that it became an insufferable burden.
I think that, unless there's some compelling reason for us to stay, that when our lease is up in February, Camille and I will move. Whether back to the northwest or to the California coast, I cannot say. But a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change, because the current one is unraveling and has become unsustainable.
So it's time to consider something new. The option that excites me the most is a foray into hospitality industry. Camille's dream is to own and operate a bed & breakfast, ideally in or around San Luis Obispo. I love that idea. She's so good with people, makes friends with such ease. It's a natural fit. I've had my dream, and pursued it, and though part of it might still come true, likely it won't. And you know what? I'm fine with that. The things I'd do at a B&B are the things I do now: write in the morning, chores and maintenance during the day. Maybe she'd even pay me. And I'm excited, truly excited, to try something new and scary with my partner.
In the Christian calendar, today is the day of rebirth, the confirmation of continuing life. But for rebirth to occur, there has to be a death, and an acceptance of that death. I'm seeing that literally and metaphorically in family right now. And if it's to happen in my own life, I must accept the death of where I thought I'd be and how I thought I'd live -- or at least let go of how I thought things would be. And that, my friends, is liberating.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Alumn, I
Last week, I made the last-minute decision to attend an AFI alumni dinner. I heard about it through Jonah, my partner on Fred, Prince of Darkness and Grandmother Clock. He was one of several mini-hosts putting together a table of alumns for the dinner. It was part of a drive to dial newer graduates in to the alumni processes. I figured it could be fun. Might reconnect with some friends, meet a few fellow fellows. Plus, the event was at Mortons: The Steakhouse, and I seriously needed to get my beef on.
We have no mascot
We have no mascot.
I got there early, and didn't see anyone I recognized. So I mingled. And the first guy I struck up a conversation with was a producer from '04 named Brian Udovich. He looked oddly familiar, but I couldn't place him. He asked me what I'd been working on, and I quite proudly told him about Dorkness making it to DVD. The conversation went something like this:
.
ME: Yeah, it's on Netflix and Amazon now. I'm pretty proud of it.
UDOVICH: Cool, cool.
ME: So what've you been up to?
UDOVICH: Well, after graduation, I produced All the Boys Love Mandy Lane with a writer and director from my year.
ME: (recognizing him) Right! I saw that! You screened it at AFI that one time. Grats on that getting picked up. Have you done much since them?
UDOVICH: Yeah, we made a film called The Wackness.
ME: (recognizing it) The critically acclaimed indie? With Ben Kingsley?
UDOVICH: That's the one.
ME: How'd that do?
UDOVICH: We won Sundance.
ME: ...
UDOVICH: ...
ME: Dorkness Rising is on Netflix.
.
We swapped cards, promised to keep in touch. I got a writing sample to him the next day.
.
I also bumped into Stan Brooks, the heavy who had gotten us the Hopjockey meetings and the man who taught me to pitch. I hadn't seen him since before we pitched Cartoon Network. He asked how the project was going, and then he told us we needed to come in and meet with him. Even though we didn't sell the project, he explained, some of the places we pitched loved us. And he wants to show us exactly what those places are buying. I assume it's so we can pitch them again with Stan in our corner. Talk about an adrenaline boost.
.
Dinner itself bordered on the divine. I shared a table with friends from my year. After we'd eaten, speakers -- including Jonah, Udovich, and Jon Avnet -- took turns stressing the importance of alumni involvement. I won't overload you with the details; suffice it to say I found myself nodding to everything they said. I was sold. And if I hadn't been, the vanilla cheesecake would have pushed me over the top.
.
As folks were departing, Jonah and I got to talk to Stan. Jonah mentioned the projects we were working on, Fred and Grandmother Clock, and Stan extended the same offer to us: Come in and I'll show you what places are buying. Then he pointed to me and said "Cartoon Network loves this guy. Loves him." Double ego boost.
.
Oh, one final bit of awesome: Udovich turned me on to Reel Grit, a film screening series he runs with another alumn. It showcases mindblowing genre films. Sunday's screening was a brilliant Swedish horror called Let the Right One In. It was, hands down, the best vampire movie I've seen in a decade. Unfortunately, it's being remade in the US. Next week's screening is of the ultra-violent martial arts classic Riki-Oh, which from the clips I've seen includes exploding heads and people disembowling themselves to strangle their opponents with their own intestines. I'm so fucking there.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Building Momentum
Despite the flu that kept my head holes cemented with mucus for over a week, I've made great progress on multiple projects over the last fortnight. I had been waiting for my producing partner to get me feedback on the Grandmother Clock treatment before I started the script. But I got tired of that, so I threw myself into it, and in so doing worked out several writer muscles that were achy with disuse. Now I'm thirty-some pages in, with a stronger Act One than I've had in, perhaps, ever. And while the project is tiring, as screenwriting always is, it was the invigorating tiring, the tiring that leaves you excited to begin again the next day; the kind of tiring where the narrative I'm striving to whittle out is like a crafty opponent I'm trying to outwit, an opponent who gives ground but never breaks. And sure, he may get the best of me after six or eight pages, but I'll be back tomorrow to kick him in the head with my character arcs. I have no idea how much sense that made.
So, to reiterate, it's energizing work, work that energized me to get a couple other things moving as well. I decided I was tired of doing research on Belly of the Beast; there are only so many books you can read about 19th century yankee whaling before you know all there is to know about cutting in and trying out, and can identify every kind of harpoon, and know what a flensing knife is and where a blubber hook goes.* So I launched myself into the pre-writing, a bit prematurely, I thought. But after only one day, I had beaten out the story; after the next, the crew had manned the ship and introduced themselves, had let me know their likes and dislikes; and today I broke the story completely. Now Belly is off to scene work and the note card jigsaw. I'll likely start scripting that one in April; with luck, I'll have it off to the WMA guy by May.
Somewhere in there I penned a mini-bible for the webseries spec pilot I'm writing for Epic Level, Earth Force 5. As you might guess from the title, it's a comedy. Which which was a nice palate cleanser, seeing as how I'd been spending all my time with terrified whalers and a grieving girl and her troupe of haunted friends. Epic Level will likely be doing a conference call this week to schedule a shoot. Which couldn't come too soon -- as I've said more than nine times, I'm going nuts not being on set.
Also, my partners on Sword & Sorcery had a meeting with the top producer in Seattle today. He really likes the project, and wants to see a script. Also, just got an email from a new AFI grad and his producing partner. They'd read the blurb on Red Shirts from my year's screenwriter pamphlet, and think it has huge potential.
So the writing has been good. And I aim to keep it so. In fact, I haven't written this much or this well since my first year at AFI, before they taught me that I was doing everything wrong. It's good to be wrong again.
* It goes into the blubber. That's why it's called a blubber hook.
So, to reiterate, it's energizing work, work that energized me to get a couple other things moving as well. I decided I was tired of doing research on Belly of the Beast; there are only so many books you can read about 19th century yankee whaling before you know all there is to know about cutting in and trying out, and can identify every kind of harpoon, and know what a flensing knife is and where a blubber hook goes.* So I launched myself into the pre-writing, a bit prematurely, I thought. But after only one day, I had beaten out the story; after the next, the crew had manned the ship and introduced themselves, had let me know their likes and dislikes; and today I broke the story completely. Now Belly is off to scene work and the note card jigsaw. I'll likely start scripting that one in April; with luck, I'll have it off to the WMA guy by May.
Somewhere in there I penned a mini-bible for the webseries spec pilot I'm writing for Epic Level, Earth Force 5. As you might guess from the title, it's a comedy. Which which was a nice palate cleanser, seeing as how I'd been spending all my time with terrified whalers and a grieving girl and her troupe of haunted friends. Epic Level will likely be doing a conference call this week to schedule a shoot. Which couldn't come too soon -- as I've said more than nine times, I'm going nuts not being on set.
Also, my partners on Sword & Sorcery had a meeting with the top producer in Seattle today. He really likes the project, and wants to see a script. Also, just got an email from a new AFI grad and his producing partner. They'd read the blurb on Red Shirts from my year's screenwriter pamphlet, and think it has huge potential.
So the writing has been good. And I aim to keep it so. In fact, I haven't written this much or this well since my first year at AFI, before they taught me that I was doing everything wrong. It's good to be wrong again.
* It goes into the blubber. That's why it's called a blubber hook.
Friday, March 6, 2009
SLO Life
Wifey's started a new blog about life in and around San Luis Obispo, our favorite vacation destination. The blog will feature reviews and recommendations of wineries, restaurants, inns and hotels, and other not-to-be-missed accomodations. It's the first step on her (and our) quest to own and operate her own bed & breakfast in SLO. Check it out!
Also, be sure to swing by LiveSLO.org in the next couple of weeks. That's Wifey's new website, chronicling all things to do with San Luis Obispo County. The blog will be an extension of it. Go Wifey!
Also, be sure to swing by LiveSLO.org in the next couple of weeks. That's Wifey's new website, chronicling all things to do with San Luis Obispo County. The blog will be an extension of it. Go Wifey!
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