The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 140 - New Script and Agent Updates

It feels good to be writing something new again. I mean, really writing something - not just jotting down a few random notes here or typing up a rough outline there. No, I mean actually sitting down, opening Movie Magic 2000, and putting words to the page, working my way up from a blank page one all over again.

I haven't gone through this process in quite a while now. Most of my time the past two years has been dedicated to my post-Apocalyptic spec. However, as it's now in the hands of the creative exec at the production company in LA and out to agents, there's not a whole lot I can do for it these days. Not until some decisions are made by people who aren't me. And, if I'm at all serious about trying to become a working, career screenwriter, I know that I can't just let the time pass and not use it to produce other pages for a new project.

Time's too valuable to waste right now - if, (knock on wood) I have to take some meetings in the coming month, I certainly don't want to show up at them empty handed. It's all well and good to have the post-Apocalyptic spec open the door to that meeting for me, but I know that one of the very first questions (once the basic "tell me about yourself" stuff is done with) is going to be, "So what else do you have?" The thing is, I don't necessarily have to have a library of scripts ready to be messaged over right then and there. What I will need, though, is the ability to talk about other ideas in specific details. The more I have written of a script, the more I should know about it. And even if I don't have pages, the more I've worked an idea out, the better able I'll be to talk about it in a meeting without getting flustered. It just so happens that I do have pages for this new thing - the firefighter script - and while I'm just at page 18 of a first draft, that's better than nothing.

So on the writing front, you could say that it was a pretty good wee. Regarding the post-Apocalyptic spec, it was just so-so. We still waiting to hear back from one of the two agents that we initially went to with the hopes of finding me some representation. Unfortunately, the agent that we did hear back from passed. I'm not 100% sure why, just not for them, I guess. Still, I don't know whether that says more about my writing or the state of the industry. I'm hoping it's the latter, of course. This agent was brought a script that a production company is already basically behind, which people want to go out and try to sell very soon. We just want the agent behind it. Even having an A-list producer's name behind the project didn't seal representation, which just goes to show that you never know what will work. 

Far as I know, we're still waiting to hear back from the other agent, and - in light of the one's pass - have gone out to a few others. My manager didn't expect we'd hear anything before Labor Day, so hopefully this coming week will bring news from a few of the others we've reached out to. And, more hopefully, one of them will like it and like me. I think we can still go ahead if I wind up being un-repped (those very same agents could come knocking if I make a sale without an agent behind me), but it would be nice to land some representation now that we're actually putting the script out there with that intent. No one likes to come away empty-handed. We'll see what this coming week brings.