Added an old spec....

 Was watching the excellent Fuller House yesterday, then this morning read a discussion in a forum about writing spec spin-offs. Most people gave the excellent advice of "don't do it", "it'll never sell", "intellectual property"....Then I recalled I wrote a spec spin-off a few years back called, Gibbler. It set up a world where Kimmy Gibbler was spending her thirties recovering from addiction and living on the fringes of society in the Mission District. It's not great or anything, but was a fun excercise. So I posted it up to the television script section.

Writing and other progress...

With fellowship season here, I have had to stop work on editing of the Future Doo-Wop novel. Just a bit too far behind on writing that is more mission critical.  That will be on pause until I feel a bit more caught up. I am posting a new spec for Man Seeking Woman. I am currently revising a feature script that I will post soon and writing a pilot. 

I am not too psyched about the Man Seeking Woman spec. It is a show that on its face is tonally loose and carefree so I felt fairly empowered to write in its world. Having done it though I came to realize that for a program with a moving target it feels hard to tell if I hit the bullseye. I can safely say I didn't. My favorite episodes of MSW have very distinct acts, with a unique hook to each of them . They don't all do this but, my favorite ones do. I attempted to do this in outlining, but the dense plotting I did made the whole thing overlong so I felt compelled to stay riffing on a play on noir that I was going for. But I am happy that I took a romantic comedy trope theme/idea and explored it from an obtuse and heightened angle like the show often does. There are other moments.

Happy to have written it though and on to the next thing. Things are chugging along!

Added short - PISSER

Just added a short script, PISSER to the site here. There may still be a few drafts left, but I'm wanting to get this out there. This is based off the very first feature script I wrote more then ten years ago. I lost that script in a computer crash, I think it also exists in an old AOL e-mail that I have no idea how to find. I was so upset over losing not just that script but a huge chunk of creative output when the computer died, that I was very much stunted creatively for some time. 

The premise of that script has stuck with me for a long time and I have played with the idea of re-writing it. This short came about because I realized the conceit of idea would work well on a smaller scale. Also, it solves the issue I always had with the clumsy third act of the feature. 

I am hoping to actually produce this. If I can rally a few other folks who are excited about the premise, I would love to make this my next project. I think the outrageous concept, if executed with realism, is something people would want to see.

I think every writer or creative person has toyed with the idea of writing reviews/ being a reviewer. I don't say critique, because I see some academic and cultural merit to that, while I increasingly see Reviewers as  sad, filthy piss-heads. It struck me that, as I have tried my hand and more things and create more of my own unique things, I lose any interest in judging others work. There is exceptions, it can be fun to have an outburst against something I perceive as hack and I have written reviews myself in the way way past. But the more you understand the rarity of an idea and the difficulty in executing it, once you see others misunderstanding of your own expression and know that you will be guilty of this fault towards others, it all becomes very so what and why.  I guess this is a rant or review on Reviewers.

I plan to expand later: to talk about why I don't write screenplay coverage professionally anymore, why I am an anti-perfectionist and other related topics.