I did something this week, which I’m not sure how I feel about. Long story short, a literary manager in L.A. had contacted the League a while back. I sent him my “Sin City style” spec in response to his query, and he claimed to really like it. Flash forward about six months, and nothing really came of it. Since a few of us are on the verge of sending out queries, I figured I’d drop him a line, a sort of pre-query burst query to someone I already have a bit of history with. So, Wednesday of last week – following a League meeting that left me feeling pretty comfortable with the state of my post-Apocalyptic spec – I let him know I had another script. He asked me to send it over.
While I say that I left our last League meeting feeling good about my script, that does not mean that there was nothing left to be done on it. There were some (mostly minor) rewrites that I had to do. There was no timeline for contacting this manager, but for some reason, I was itching to drop him a line as soon as I could. After sending him the email on Wednesday, and getting such a rapid response from him, I felt obligated to get him the material ASAP. That is why Wednesday night I worked for nearly 4 straight hours toughing up my script. It is also why I woke up and spent another hour doing tweaks before work on Thursday.
All told, I think that the end result was successful. My hesitation to feel 100% comfortable with it, though, comes from the last minute nature with which I did the revisions. Normally, I like to be able to re-read every draft I write from start to finish, no matter how little has been changed. I didn’t get to do that this time, and even though I read the specific scenes I had changed a half dozen times apiece, I still went to work on Thursday feeling as though I’d missed something. I don’t know that anything actually did escape me, but my inability to read all 105 pages straight through this time unsettled me. It still does a bit.
At any rate, we’ll see what happens. This week will be dedicated to going through the post-Apocalyptic spec once more and writing short horror scripts. For anyone interested, visit http://mandy.com/1/jobs3.cfm?v=29272782 to find out a bit more about Hotel Guignol, a web-based series, akin to The Twilight Zone, that needs 5-10 minute horror shorts set in a hotel room. It could be good short screenplay writing practice, as well as a fun way to pick up 100 bucks.
While I say that I left our last League meeting feeling good about my script, that does not mean that there was nothing left to be done on it. There were some (mostly minor) rewrites that I had to do. There was no timeline for contacting this manager, but for some reason, I was itching to drop him a line as soon as I could. After sending him the email on Wednesday, and getting such a rapid response from him, I felt obligated to get him the material ASAP. That is why Wednesday night I worked for nearly 4 straight hours toughing up my script. It is also why I woke up and spent another hour doing tweaks before work on Thursday.
All told, I think that the end result was successful. My hesitation to feel 100% comfortable with it, though, comes from the last minute nature with which I did the revisions. Normally, I like to be able to re-read every draft I write from start to finish, no matter how little has been changed. I didn’t get to do that this time, and even though I read the specific scenes I had changed a half dozen times apiece, I still went to work on Thursday feeling as though I’d missed something. I don’t know that anything actually did escape me, but my inability to read all 105 pages straight through this time unsettled me. It still does a bit.
At any rate, we’ll see what happens. This week will be dedicated to going through the post-Apocalyptic spec once more and writing short horror scripts. For anyone interested, visit http://mandy.com/1/jobs3.cfm?v=29272782 to find out a bit more about Hotel Guignol, a web-based series, akin to The Twilight Zone, that needs 5-10 minute horror shorts set in a hotel room. It could be good short screenplay writing practice, as well as a fun way to pick up 100 bucks.
