How Long Do You Write For?

In theory, writing every day is the best possible way to consistently improve and produce pages. I disagreed with this until I actually began doing it, and with the exception of a few weeks off in between projects, I now try to write for at least one hour every day. (I believe it was Stephen King who says that most writers only have one good hour in them a day.)

I spent the weekend in Boston visiting a friend and knew that I was going to be less than productive. So, I took yesterday off from work and dedicated the whole day to re-writes. I wrote solidly for more than my usual hour before taking a break. When I returned to my computer, I figure I probably put in another good hour and a half before that dastardly writing villain The Internet (a subject of much debate here recently) landed a debilitating blow. After some down time that involved dinner and the premier of How I Met Your Mother, it was back to the computer.

I was weaker than I thought from The Internet's earlier assault, and after about 20 minutes, I lost Round 3 for good. I couldn't help but feel as though I'd come up short - not everything I wanted to accomplish had been done. Yet, I had to remind myself that I'd written for nearly 3 and a half hours all told by the end of the night. Not too shabby.

So, I got to thinking. I usually write for an hour a day. Some people write from sun-up to sun-down. Some people have a page goal. How long do you write for each day?

Tuesday sick-blogging: Rock 'n Roll Reading

I'm home sick today, laying in bed with my laptop at my side. Not fun.

Last week, I asked if, while writing, you created a playlist or soundtrack to not only accompany you while writing, but to serve as an official anthem for the work. Not everyone does it, I'm sure. I find it to be helpful and an entertaining facet of the writing process. Or maybe it's just a distraction. No matter.



Also mentioned last week was music/book blog Largehearted Boy's Book Notes series of interviews, which allows authors to talk about the music that inspired them while writing their most recently released book/novel/whatever.

Today, as I drowsily scrolled through my blogs, I discovered that indie siren Juliana Hatfield was being spotlighted, talking about her new autobiography/memoir When I Grow Up.

Here's a sampling:

"Don't" by Dinosaur Jr.

The Blake Babies (my first band) were recording during the overnight shift at Fort Apache studios in Cambridge, MA, and Dinosaur Jr. were making their album "Bug" in the daytime. I arrived early one evening and happened to catch Lou Barlow, bassist and occasional song-contributor of Dinosaur, doing a vocal take of this song in which he scream-sings "WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME???!!!" repeatedly. It hurt my throat just to listen; Lou was throwing his whole body and soul into it. He seemed to be trying to destroy something with his voice, or to exorcise some evil demon.

It was maybe the most authentically tortured and anguished vocal performance I'd ever had the pleasure (or horror) to witness. Lou really meant it.

He came out of the recording booth and went into the bathroom and spat up blood. That's how hard he had sung. Scary, but righteous, I thought. Maybe rock and roll should hurt. If it doesn't, maybe you're not doing it right.

Now, reading this reminded me of another genre of books I read voraciously (well, when I'm not 10 books into a detective series, that is): Music history or musical bios. And, oddly enough, I find that the best autobiographies in the rock genre are often written not by the big name stars, but lesser-known "almost stars." Which is why I have high hopes for Hatfield's book. I was never much of a fan of her music, but from what little I've read (Rolling Stone had an excerpt), I think it'll be an entertaining and memorable read.



Another example that falls into the category of lesser-known music personality with a good book is Dean Wareham, formerly of bands Luna and Galaxie 500. Wareham's tales -- aptly titled Black Postcards -- of touring, band tension and drug abuse are engaging and brutally honest, making for a great peek into the industry a lot of us only see through the filter of television, radio or iTunes.



I guess the point of this note is to remind you all -- and myself, to a degree -- that while it's great to read stuff in the genre you are writing in, and want to work in, it's doubly helpful to branch out and find other kinds of writing you enjoy. It'll only help your writing get better, and ideally, more diverse.

What are some of the genres you enjoy reading?

Writers' Warning - Consulting Service

WRITERS' WARNING

(Writers' Warning is a new section we're debuting here on ScreenwritersLeague.com where we post about suspicious and potentially risky services and companies. Not all practices mentioned are necessarily dangerous for writers - some might be completely legit and just sound fishy at first. We only report the facts and encourage comments from people who know better and can speak on behalf of the situations/companies.)

I recently heard back from one company regarding a query letter I sent out. The response I got sent up a red flag. The company, let's call it X Management, since I'd rather keep this to the event and not name names, is a respectable company by everything I've read. I called X Management to see if there was a specific person I should address my query email to (a good practice if you have the time) and sent my personally addressed email. A few days later, I received a message that X Management has a new service to "weed out" writers who aren't serious about breaking into the industry.

Because they receive hundreds of submissions, X Management offers a consulting service that guarantees they'll read your script. For $125, they'll give you one page of notes on your query letter. For $500, they'll read your script. The WHOLE thing (!). People who don't participate will not be considered. The reasons that the email cited for this were: it's become too much of a financial burden for the company to read everything and this is the only way it can continue to accept unsolicited material, writers who aren't "interested and motivated" won't participate, and rather than just a rejection letter, writers will receive personalized notes. I kid you not, those are the three reasons.

This is obviously not something I plan to do. As I said, everything I've read about X Management makes it sound like a great company - indeed, there's a reason I submitted to it. And consulting services are not uncommon. I can understand offering them and know a lot of companies specialize in providing feedback for a fee. I just can't get on board with a management company that claims only serious writers will pay for their consulting services, and that only those "serious" writers will be considered for potential representation. The word 'management' in the company's name seems misleading to me now.

Anyone with any sort of positive experience with "consulting services" like this should feel free to post. I might be making mountains out of molehills, but I have never once heard something like this talked about as anything other than a less than legitimate practice.

The Writing Week part 38 - Great (Negative) Feedback

Years ago, when I was still a fresh-faced writing student, getting negative feedback on a script I was proud of would ruin my day. I could have sworn that everyone should and would have liked my dialogue and my scene structure as much as I did. It was a killing blow when my classmates or professor said otherwise. The more people agreed I'd missed the mark, the worse I felt, too. It was like I was a character in Mortal Combat, rooted to the floor, and someone was shouting "FINISH HIM." Down I went.

How far I've come. A few weeks ago, I sent my post-Apocalyptic spec - the very one I'm writing my query letters for - to one of my company's former board members, an agented writer. I got his notes mid-last week. He highlighted what he felt to be BIG problems. The funny thing was, though, that pretty much everything he pointed out were things that Leaguers brought up in past meetings. (I guess that begins to answer the debate I've been having with myself and the group as to the level of feedback we provide. I've often wondered if our critiquing abilities have increased, or if we're still fairly amateurish in what we find needs work in a script. The fact that a seasoned writer said almost the exact same things that my peers did is beyond encouraging; it's one more indicator that we're heading in the right direction.)

I thanked him for his comments quickly, after reading them once, and told him that I'd need time to digest them before being able to fully communicate about them. I was surprised when he called my grateful response "classy" and said that he was impressed by my ability to receive feedback. Having gone to school for screenwriting and being in the League, receiving feedback has become second nature to me. It's like breathing. I do it to live. I guess some people don't, though. So, for any new/emerging writers out there, the lesson (so you don't even have to read between the lines or interpret on your own) is learn how to take criticism. If you can't take it from friends or peers, you won't be able to take it from a producer or manager, who will likely be much more brutal in their delivery of it.

The feedback also came at a great time. With a number of query letters already sent out, I figure I have a solid two weeks, at the very least, to make the necessary improvements to my script. (I say two weeks because a couple of the companies vowed to reply within three weeks, and this was a week ago. For the most part, I figure I have months before I'll hear anything, if I hear anything.) In fact, this is the best I've ever felt about receiving negative feedback (and perhaps positive, too). I feel like something good is going to come out of this, and my script, which I wanted to be done but wasn't sure was, will be much stronger for it.

A great week, for sure.

What makes a crime novel a crime novel? The continued genre vs. literary debate

The New York Times has a glowing review of Dennis Lehane's latest, The Given Day, which takes place in the early 20th century, during the historic Boston police strike.



Now, I want to preface this post by explaining that I'm a huge Lehane fan. Specifically, I love his Kenzie/Gennaro detective novels, which kicked off his writing career. His later work, especially Mystic River, was still of high quality, but to me lacked the same verve and energy of his first six novels. But my beef isn't with Lehane -- he's probably written a great book. I plan on reading it and expect to like it. He's one of my favorite contemporary authors. My issue is with this bit from the review:

No more thinking of Mr. Lehane as an author of detective novels that make good movies (“Gone, Baby, Gone”) and tell devastatingly bleak Boston stories (“Mystic River”). He has written a majestic, fiery epic that moves him far beyond the confines of the crime genre.

Shades of Doctorow and Dreiser surround Mr. Lehane’s choice of 1919 as the time for this expansive story. It is not simply the relatively unexplored eventfulness of that year that makes “The Given Day” so far reaching; it’s the relentless fierce-terrible nature of the turmoil on parade.

Now, just what irks me about this review? I can't say it fully struck me until I read David Montomery's post over at Crime Fiction Dossier, so I'll let him speak up first:

One line leapt out of me from the review and stuck with me: "He has written a majestic, fiery epic that moves him far beyond the confines of the crime genre."

I've been thinking about that statement since I read it, wondering exactly what the confines of the crime genre are. And near as I can come up with, a crime novel has to have a crime (either past or future) play an important part in the plot, or else it somehow has to deal with crime or the aftermath of crime in a significant way. Other than that, I think anything is fair game.

As I indicated, I haven't read The Given Day. But judging by the description and the reviews I've read, the book involves the lives of police officers, a terrorist attack, spying, bomb-throwing anarchists, suspense, corruption, anti-union violence...Well, damn, that sounds a lot like a crime novel to me.

It's almost like Ms. Maslin (and I wouldn't be surprised if other critics wrote something similar) is embarrased to admit that she really liked and admired a book of significant literary achievement -- that just happened to be a crime novel.

We saw some of this reaction earlier this year with Richard Price's superb Lush Life, another novel of literary prowess that, oh yeah, was a crime novel.

I haven't read The Given Day, either. I don't know if it's any good, or about any of the specific plot points in the book. But, I do know that there is some level of crime in the book. Doesn't that make it, to some degree, a crime novel? Why is this, and not, say, Mystic River or Coronado or Darkness, Take My Hand, a "literary" work, and therefore better than Lehane's earlier work? More importantly, why should there even be that distinction? Why can't a book just be good, whether it's a crime novel or not?

I'd argue that Lehane is finally stepping into a world that has already been populated by the previously mentioned Richard Price and, more importantly, George Pelecanos, whose last few novels have only peripherally dealt with a crime but instead spent more time painting a picture for the reader of a city or society in decay. Are Pelecanos' works less "literary" because they're still set in the modern day and involve drug deals and stick-ups as a way of showing how our world is melting down? If he'd set his books in the 1800s, would he gain more literary praise? My guess is probably. And that, to me, is really annoying. And, to push the joke a bit, more criminal.



Just because a work of prose, or a screenplay, involves a crime or deals with crime shouldn't lessen the literary or artistic value. The idea that suddenly, Lehane, who has been writing solid novels since he first got published, is a more important author because he's no longer writing a straight-up detective piece is silly, and insulting to those of us that spend time reading crime fiction not just because we find the genre interesting, but because the books in the genre we choose to read are, well, pretty damn good.

I didn't fully intend for this post to become a rant against the literary vs. genre bias -- I brought that up already. But, here we are. What do you think about the literary hierarchy? Does it hold water?

Trailer Trash XII: Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

"This is the stupidest damn thing I ever heard!"

Wikipedia's one-sentence summary of this Stepford Wives rip-off is pretty funny:

...the premise of the movie is that a mad scientist (played by Anitra Ford) has created an army of beauties who seduce men to death.

Seduced... to DEATH. What a way to go!

The men of the town are quickly dropping off like flies, and the local law enforcement just can't figure out why. Each of the men are found having suffered heart failure caused by sexual exhaustion. It turns out they've been meeting up with these super-beauties created by a mad lady scientist. It's maybe a rather over-elaborate set-up to just show women in their underwear, don't ya think? It's like in the Fringe pilot, when the main character had to strip down to her bra and panties to be able to communicate psychically with her dead partner. (Thanks, 70s exploitation movies! Thanks, Fox!)



At O:06 - The strange force... of vanilla frosting? That's my guess.
At 0:12 - BEES??
At 0:22 - Mmm, ravishingly beautiful women.
At 0:30 - Ahhhh, the "waka-chika-waka-chika-waka-chika" soundtrack. This movie is from the seventies, folks. In case you didn't believe me, there's your proof.
At 0:53 - Wait, *why* try to stop it?
At 1:25 - Hillbilly freakout alert!
At 1:33 - Loooooooser.


An interesting bit of trivia: Invasion of the Bee Girls was the first produced screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, who went on to work on the screenplays for Star Trek II, IV, and VI. Right, the even-numbered ones. The good ones.

"Abstinence isn't going to be anything new around here!"

Do you create a soundtrack for your screenplay/novel?

On Monday, I asked what kind of music you listened to while writing or to get into the writing mindset. Today, I stumble across this post, from music/book blog Largehearted Boy, in which authors discuss music or a specific playlist and how the songs are relevant to their recently published book or short story. It's an interesting series of interviews done with a variety of writers. Definitely worth checking out.

It also begs the question: Do you ever find it helpful to put together a playlist or "soundtrack" for your project? I've had an iTunes playlist going for SILENT CITY, but have yet to really pare it down enough where I'm comfortable even calling it a soundtrack. It's got a lot of the stuff I mentioned in my previous post, because that's what I like to listen to while writing, period. But, it also has some more story-specific songs that tie into or reflect the overall plot of the book. Lots of Cuban music, some grittier rock numbers (Velvet Underground, Steve Earle, The Replacements), and, in many ways, these tracks serve as the soundtrack for the book and appear in the text itself.

For example, when Pete is talking about listening to the 'Mats at work -- that's what was playing while I was writing. It's kind of fun. At least for me.