What the Hell?!?

A little back story: not only do I write screenplays, but I also dabble in stage plays every now and then. My leaning is, on the whole, toward the screen. But every now and then I have an idea for the theater, and write that. A while ago, I submitted to a play development festival, which would have brought me cross country to spend a week in a cabin working on a play I wrote. My kind of thing.

Today, I found out I didn't get in. That's not a huge disappointment. We in the League all know that rejection and thick skins are essential to this business. What got me, though, was the reason for the rejection. Essentially, I received a mass email indicating that the company, which shall remain nameless, received more submissions than expected (OK, that happen). However, the staff was unable to read all of the material (...OK). As a result, the facilitators of the festival calculated the number of plays they could read in two months, which wound up being half of the submissions.

They had a lottery for which plays were going to be read, and cast the other half aside without a second glance.

OK, so, I like to think I'm level headed. And, like I said, it's not the rejection that bugs me, but the reason for it. I work with over 300 non-profit theatre companies in NYC, many of which are a two or three person staff. Yet, these companies hold festivals and read through everything that is submitted. To me, there is no justification for an arts organization, be it for the stage or the screen, to claim to promote new writers and develop new work, and not even read the work submitted! As unknown writers, we rely upon opportunities such as this festival to help us further our careers, and when the companies sponsoring them are overwhelmed and therefore neglect to read 50% of the material submitted to them, no kind words ease the burn felt by those left in the dark.

I fully understand the feeling of being overwhelmed by a project like this festival I submitted to, but I believe that a company's ability to simply back out of their commitment to artists is a frightful thing. Most of us in the League have work out to other competitions. Granted, those are national, well publicized, well managed screenplay competitions. Still, if all of a sudden we received an email telling us that such and such festival received too many screenplays and will only read titles that start with letters A-M, we would feel incredibly gypped (if we fell after N).

My anger comes from this feeling that it's hard enough to make it as a writer. We don't need companies that work for writers making it more difficult. In future years, I hope that this festival I was inappropriately dropped from will figure out how it can manage, and make its new policies very clear to all those submitting work. I hope that this is a one time thing, and not something indicative of a larger issue.

It's great that so many people are writing that writing competitions feel burdened. It's terrible, though, that a writer cannot even be guaranteed that someone will read his or her work when submitting to a competition.

Is this a common occurrence?

The Writing Week part 17

So, I “finished” the first draft of Screenplay X today. (Don’t worry, my children, soon enough I’ll reveal the title and a brief synopsis to you.) I say “finished,” because I know that there are a handful of scenes—really, the progression in the relationship between two characters—that I need to fix before I even think of the draft as being done. Perhaps the scenes aren’t as bad as I think they are, but my gut is telling me that they don’t build enough. Rather than being rungs on a ladder that keep going up and up, they’re sort of a Stairmaster right now; they hit the high note early on and then don’t go past that again. I need to let them build more.

Something struck me as I walked to work today: I can’t write something that is not as fun as the project before it. Maybe that’s a bit unclear. The last project I wrote, my post-apocalyptic spec, was a lot of fun to work on. I really dug it, and still do. And while I loved the script I worked on before it, I had more fun with the second project. Yet, despite how much I enjoyed working on the post-apocalyptic script (my first foray into that genre!), Screenplay X, a psychological thriller, might have been the most fun I’ve had on a project yet. I don’t quite know why that is, other than to guess that I love writing more and more each time I do it. I enjoy all the projects I work on—obviously, otherwise, I wouldn’t spend my time on them—and that enjoyment increases each time I start and complete something else.

Another thing that hit me was how my approach and my superstitions while writing change from project to project. Usually, I outline. This time, I didn’t. I used to only write to music. I spent the post-apocalyptic project writing in silence, yet made sure to have tunes going for Screenplay X. (What’s most odd for X is that I didn’t always opt to listen to music that set the mood. In fact, the first few days of writing, I chose music that was the antithesis to the tone I was setting in the pages, because it was so dark, I felt this compulsion to make sure I didn’t lose myself in the darkness. Having upbeat music playing neutralized my emotions, which might sound very odd for a writer. I was still so deeply engrossed in the feel of the pages, but the music allowed me the door through which I could pull out when things got too heavy.)

The biggest difference, though, is that I haven’t told anyone in the group about this. I’m excited to get the pages out to them, but want to hold off until I tweak the scenes I mentioned above.

The biggest similarity? The schedule. Though I took to writing in the morning, rather than waiting until I got home from work each night (which has been a HUGE help), I still put in my hour a day. That precious hour is one thing I do not plan to change from project to project.

Pollen: A Vision Lover's Enemy

When you're hot, you're hot, and lately I've been on fire. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm just in the kind of groove where there's always a great scene waiting to be written. Beyond the scenes there's another script, itching to be realized. Since moving offices a few months ago (I do my work at work...after work), I have been enjoying the healthiest writing lifestyle of my life. I often wondered as to what might derail me. Would I wake up one day and find that all of the fingers on each hand had been fused into two annoyingly large fingers? Would the world come to an end? Would it be the ninjas? (Cake Man knows) No, none of the above. Instead, I'm brought to my knees by pollen, nature's sperm.

Oh how I hate allergy season, nature's coordinated ejaculation onto mankind. There's no escaping it. It's the one discharge that gets a little bit on everyone.... Anyway, my eyes have been bested by this foul substance. Even as I sit here, typing this post, it would be virtually impossible to stare at the computer screen if it were not for a double dose of benadryl. Oh benadryl, my pill shaped savior, but I will sing your praise later because you make me sleepy. And so I am either sleepy and mildly productive, or in agonizing discomfort and mildly productive. In a job where I can easily spend six hours a day staring into a computer, my eyes just don't have it in them to press on for an additional two hours. Everyone keeps telling me to rest. I say, spoken like true commoners. A writing groove must not end by choice! It must continue on, the writer taking advantage of every glorious page before his well runs dry. And so I sally forth and write on, riding a hybird steed of benadryl, claritin, mucin eye drops for tired eyes, and bausch and lomb allergy eye drops. It all makes me look and feel like a crackhead, but at least the pages will keep coming.

Blair Witch revisited

On Wednesday our Cake-loving member received Cloverfield from Netflix, which we came home and watched after a League business meeting/pizza outing. It was a lot better than I'd thought it would be going in, as I hadn't heard anyone say a nice thing about it besides fellow Leaguer Onyx. In the end, there were too many points where the characters grated on me or their actions didn't follow any sort of logic to keep me from really loving it, but I can't say I wasn't entertained for 80 minutes.

The movie really made me think of a Blair Witch Project with a much bigger budget. I'll come clean: I'm a big Blair Witch Project fan, and still feel the movie doesn't receive the credit it deserves. Even taking the low-budget blockbuster and insane grassroots marketing phenomena away, it succeeds as a creepy, disturbing horror film.

In high school (back when I was younger and a bit more naive) I shot a Blair Witch parody with some friends. We edited straight on VHS and filmed it all in one weekend in the woods behind my house. My memory is a bit foggy, but I believe we were searching for Joan of Arc, rather than a witch. We ended up handing it in, in lieu of a paper for history class. I got a B, which was nice enough.

Coincidentally, a lengthy, insightful look back at The Blair Witch Project from The Onion AV Club's Scott Tobias was just posted here this morning. It's a great read, even if you're not a fan of the movie - it expresses a lot of the same feelings I have about it, nearly ten years later.

Ten years? I'm feeling old.

Welcome, Me.

Hello blogger world, it's me AxelA.

I'm the newest member of the League of Screenwriters + 1 TV writer, and so I just wanted to say, "What are you eating for lunch today?" (I had matzah, fucking passover)

My current status is at work, wavering between eating that piece of cake or chewing a piece of gum. My advice to anyone who is about to graduate -- get a job where you have the freedom to write at it.

I spend 8 our of my 9 hours a day entertaining myself with my own words. Does that make me selfish? Probably. But otherwise I could collect dust, and my coworkers' allergies would act up when they walked by me.

All right League members, Happy Friday! And remember to stay smart, or else you're likely to get hit by a taxi cab.

Signing off,

AxelA

Brain Cell Rubbing

I like seeing my friends ponder, so occasionally I throw questions that require some deep thoughts at them. Such as near graduation, I asked several close friends if they can choose for one to be true, which would it be: to be guaranteed a job right then and there, or for Batman to be real. The follow up question to that is, if your girlfriend/boyfriend cheated on you with Batman, could you, with a clear conscious, be mad at them? (You can replace Batman with Superman.)

The most recent question is who would you rather be: Neil Gaiman or Hugh Laurie.

The race is pretty close, but so far Neil Gaiman is winning. My favorite reason for this “because Hugh Laurie has to live in LA”.

"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things." Finish the quote

I must begin by saying that Forbidden Kingdom’s success depresses me. Especially because when I first heard of the movie, there was a part of me that wanted to go see it.

A friend is moving to Prince Edward Island Canada, where there are two lobsters and two oysters seasons a year. I agreed to booksit while she leaves the good ol’ New York City to go on a year of cold, writing, home-wrecking spree. Among the books she's leaving behind, she specifically pointed one out to me, saying I would enjoy it.

The book’s name is Midnight Blue. It’s thick, especially for a paperback. However, neither the New Yorker nor my next next library book arrived yet, and if I don’t have something to read on the bus in the morning, I go stir crazy. So, you know, whatever, let’s see what this book is about.

It’s about vampires. Light on the plot. Heavy on the violence. And oh God is the violence wonderful. It’s brutal, gritty, vicious, ugly, and it doesn’t skimp on the details. I can’t even bring myself to think about the rom. com. anymore, and there’s a part of me that wonders why on earth did I want to write something funny and romantic and, most of all, happy in the first place?

When I’m writing something that’s...not very nice, I always think how nice would it be to write a script like 50 First Dates, or, I don’t know, Finding Nemo. Then I actually try to write a story in which no one dies and I start watching Law and Order: SVU like it’s crack on screen. (Actually, that’s basically what Law and Order is.)

The truth is, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even like Midnight Blue so much. But I deprived myself of gore almost the entire time of writing the rom. com., and finally I lost it. I know I’ll get through this phase, but right now all I want to do is write about people bleeding. I can’t even come up with plot to go with that.