SE2 D192: Back in the Saddle

Welcome back, dear follower. It has been 2 months since my last post and what a whirlwind it’s been. From having so much time on my hands that I was beginning to freak out – lack of income will do that to ya – to having no time for anything let alone screenwriting, life has been moving at breakneck speed.

I wish I had spent more of my ‘downtime’ writing, but at the time I was so concerned about finding work that any time I spent writing felt like time away from finding a job. It’s kind of weird, but after awhile looking for work becomes your job and any moment spent not doing it brings tremendous debilitating guilt. And if the job search isn’t paying off and you aren’t accomplishing anything in the other aspects of your life because you’re so focused on looking for a job that isn’t manifesting, so you redouble your efforts and completely ignore the rest of your life in order to devote complete attention to finding a job that isn’t forth coming, so you. . .well, you get the idea. Your very existence becomes a vortex of despair pulling you further and further into the depths.

And then, over night, it all changes. I’ve worked on an infomercial, edited promo spots for Martin Socrsese’s Silence, wrote and produced 3 BTS pods for Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast (edited one of them) and helped script and video edit a documentary about that same film. I’ve also been hired to write treatments for several reality TV shows as soon as I finish the work for Disney. Plus, I done some writing for my hiking website, Hike-LosAngeles.com, and I’ve been writing, shooting, and editing a series of videos exploring out current political climate through protests and rallies.

And, if that weren’t enough, I’ve completed 3 drafts of Electro (formerly The Secret Project) – a short film project – which have been read and evaluated at both Rewrites Writers Group and the IAWTV Writers Workshop and I’ve managed to get readings on the first 40 pages of Do Unto Others. To be fair these were pre-existing pages, so they don’t count toward my monthly goals, but it got me back in the frame of mind for that script, and I’m now working on new pages.

It’s amazing how productive I’m being, but it kicks me in the seat of the pants to know I had so much free time just two months ago and accomplished so little – nothing really. And with everything I’ve got going on right now, I also signed up for a TV series workshop with REJ Literary Management. The group meets once a week for 8 weeks to pitch and develop a TV series. Each participant works on their own project, but with the input of the other writers the way you would in an actual writers’ room.

I attended my first class yesterday. I wasn’t quite as prepared as some of the other writers, but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The other writers have also been concentrating their writing on TV series, whereas I have been focused on features, so they had a stronger vision for their projects than I had for mine. However, now that I know what to expect, I should be up to speed very quickly. The class is also very pitch intensive, which is something I’m looking forward to as that is probably my weakest skill.

So there should be plenty to blog about over the next several weeks. I just have to find the time to squeeze it in.