Dixie (and other cool stuff)

The donations continue to come in for our Dixie Stenberg mini comic, and we're pretty thrilled that we're very nearly 3/4 of the way there! Woo!

We'd also like to congratulate our artist, Jerry Gaylord, on being hired by BOOM! to do some cool zombie comic set at SDCC!

Jerry's doing the interiors and didn't do the cover, so don't be confused by that. :)

Also! Jerry turned in the first few rough layouts for Dixie. Here's a sneak peak. Try not to squee! Oh, who am I kidding. Squee away!

More books

I recently finished Writing from the Inside Out and I know a lot of writers love this book, but it really didn't have a whole lot in it for me personally.

See, the basic message is that however writers feel about writing, they're not alone in feeling this way, and it's normal to doubt yourself and blah blah blah. OK. I get that. I have a writing partner, so I actually have another person right there. I don't have to have crazy conversations by myself (not that I don't occasionally have those too, but you get what I'm saying).

But the OTHER message of the book is to be happy about the work that you do. And if you're actually working as a Hollywood writer, that's really really hard. Even William Goldman said it's really hard to be creatively fulfilled if all you do is write assignment-type work, because everybody is always changing stuff and so writers have to bend and mold themselves to something they may not personally believe in just so they can cash a check. Goldman thinks this is why people go on to be writer-directors, or writer-producers, or add the hyphenate of your choice, because for many writers, if you don't do something else, you won't be creatively fulfilled.

The cool thing is, I have that something else already! I have Pendant!

My husband and I have always remarked that even if a story we love doesn't get picked up in some form by someone in some medium, we can still create it through Pendant.

I think also that writing for Pendant has helped us learn more about what we really want to write, what actually creatively fulfills us and makes us happy. I think if we had truly broken into Hollywood before now, it might have been detrimental to our development as writers in general.

Because of Pendant, not only have we written on deadline (for years) but we've been editors and producers. We've developed stories alone, as a team, and with larger groups. We've had such a wide range of amazing experiences because of Pendant, I just... I am so grateful for what I've gotten to do so far.

And no matter what eventually happens for us professionally, that's never going to change. Pendant will always be there, giving us the freedom to do what we want to do.

I think that's pretty freakin' great.

The Dixie Stenberg mini-comic!

The Dixie Stenberg mini-comic Kickstarter is now live!

Check it out here, won't you?

More reading

I recently read two books, Breakfast with Sharks and William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.

I recommend both books. Breakfast with Sharks had some really great information that I personally hadn't seen before, and there's really REALLY great advice on pitching over the phone cold. However, I CANNOT stress enough that you shouldn't pitch something that isn't complete and ready to go if you're going to cold call someone about a script you have. Just had to get the newb advice out of the way there.

Adventures in the Screen Trade made me feel like I don't know JACK about Hollywood history. Yeah, this book is like forty years old now, but there's a lot of stuff in there that will help you understand why Hollywood is how it is right now, if you understand how it was back then. A lot has changed, but a LOT hasn't.

Both of them are very much worth the read.

Derailed, conclusion

On my lunch break, I added another three pages to the draft, which brings my total to 8.5 pages for the week. We're now on page 29 and I'm done for the week. Woo!

Derailed

This post is mainly about being derailed writing-wise; or, more importantly I suppose, fighting back from situations that would derail most people. Here's how my week went.

Monday
I had planned to do some story work on a project on Monday. However, I have a full time day job. And at said day job, something got dropped into my lap that needed top priority. It was so urgent, in fact, that I knew I was going to lose my lunch break. This meant no story work.

However, I do have a writing partner (yay!) and he worked on the screenplay on Monday.

I got home from work and we went over the plan for our Kickstarter video. We're using some of the characters from the original audio show and asked them if they'd record something for this (they happily agreed), so I did a pass on that script and we got that sent out to our voice actors. That was all good and I had to rest easy that at least something got done.

Tuesday
On Tuesday I was awakened by one of my cats moaning in pain. If you've ever heard a cat moan, it's kind of unsettling. So at 6:30 a.m. I was driving him to the emergency vet. Sigh.

I left him there and I was only a little bit late for work. The same project was going to be taking up a lot of my time on Tuesday as well, unfortunately. In fact, everyone was so pleased with the work I did on Monday, they gave me more. Being competent is a dangerous thing.

I also had an appointment on my lunch break. So that day was also shot for writing, but I knew that going in. I'd kind of planned for this, and I had printed out some e-mails related to the writing project so I could at least review them at the doctor's office, but instead I spent my time sending cranky texts out to my husband about how crappy the day was. I did manage to complete the preliminary registration for our Kickstarter campaign. I also had an appointment after work, and then I had to pick up my cat, who was now fine, but a $700 bill doesn't make you feel all that much better about it. -_-


Wednesday
Wednesday and Thursday were supposed to be my days for the screenplay. Plans changed though, because Jeffrey had time to work on the screenplay that day, and I really wanted to finish up my story work that I'd planned for Monday. So I wrote up the story stuff on my lunch break and I came up with some pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself. Finally, I was able to check something off my writing to-do list!

Thursday
Thursday was starting to worry me. Some high profile person was coming to the office and I was going to have to keep an eye on him. I was hoping I wouldn't lose my lunch break again. I was also given even more project work due to my awesome performance Monday and Tuesday.

I very nearly did lose my lunch. I didn't end up taking a break until 3:45 p.m. But I finally managed to get the screenplay open on my laptop and I threw myself into writing an action scene. I had 5.5 pages done before I got a call at 4:20 from another manager asking for an impromptu meeting. I was thus at work until 6 p.m. -_-

Jeffrey had spent all day assembling our Kickstarter video! I was very excited about this. Most unfortunately I had another meeting to attend and I didn't get home until 9 p.m., at which point I was less than coherent, having been on the run all day long without anything more than a ten-minute break. We argued about the video for a while, then I settled down and we edited it together.

We got to bed at midnight.

Friday
So here we are. It's Friday. I'm planning to work on the screenplay on my lunch break again. My boss is blissfully away at a conference, so I feel like I can relax a little bit. And I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished this week, despite all of the crap life threw our way. We didn't give up.

Looking back on the week, the only day that I lost was Monday really, and I gained Friday, which I hadn't planned on. Usually Jeffrey and I go out for lunch on Fridays but Jeffrey didn't have time (did I mention he has a part time job that he does from home as well, in addition to running our audio production company)? So basically, I lost absolutely nothing in terms of writing plans.

How's THAT for awesome?

And Kickstarter approved our campaign! Yay! We'll have to finalize all the details and we're waiting for a little bit of concept art to add to the video and Kickstarter page, but it's definitely coming soon. :)

New screenplay

About two weeks ago, we started our next action comedy screenplay. We're breaking the story as we go along with this first draft, because we're pressed for time (I've set a goal of a solid draft by March) and we're also seeing what will happen when we let the comedy rise organically from the situations we've presented so far.

So far, things are going really well. I was able to work on the draft three times last week, and I had major discussions with my writing partner about the arcs for the main character and at least one of the supporting characters. There's a super clear goal and a great internal journey for the main, and I'm loving it.

Next week, my writing partner gets the script for one day, maybe two. If he ends up getting two days, I might not get two. Or I might. Not sure yet. On Monday, I'm definitely doing story work on a joint project we're working on with another writer. That one is likely quite a bit down the line, though, so you probably won't hear too much about that one for a while.