My archives keeps disappearing. This seems to happen periodicaly, but when I republlish them they come back. Not sure why I'm so worried, since I wouldn't be too heart broken if I lost my blog. No, I take that back. I would be just a little pissed because I've invested alot of time writing in this thing, although I know no one is reading it. Ah, the joys of blogging on the Net.
I'm on page 42 of my screenplay and I just finished scene 21. I'm writing total drivel, but Julie says all first drafts are shitty first drafts, so I'm just following what she says and wriitng a top notch totally shitty first draft.
The worst thing about being in this part 2 of screenwriting class is having your screenplay read out loud by people you don't know and don't particularly like. I read a book today called Movies in the Mind, How to Build a Short Story. There's a chapter in the book on critics where the author says "pick your critics carefully and make sure they're trained ... find critics that can actually help you write better ... never say anything about someone else's story unless you yourself could fix it."
Some people in writng classes I've taken love to critique a story but then when you ask them how to make it better, they have no answers. Then there are those others, and they're in every class, every seminar you take, who just talk and having nothing to say. They love to raise their hand and talk, but what comes out of their mouth is nothing. It's like they were taught in school, they just need to talk, never mind that what they're saying is bad BS. Now I don't mind people who talk and who are good at BSing their way into making themselves sound intelligent. But from my own personal experience, they are of BSing well is a lost art. Don't these people hear what they are actually saying? I don't think they do, because if they did, they would be so embarrassed for themselves. But alas, the gift of awarenss is a rare gift indeed.
My problem is I don't talk enough. I don't usually like to say anything unless I have something good to say and I hate critiquing someone else's work unless I can offer them advice on how to make it better. Screenwriting is so new to me that half the time, I'm at a lost as to what to say to anyone.
Five more classes to go. If the screenwriting teacher wasn't so great and if I didn't have as my goal finishing the screenplay by the last class, I wouldn't have taken part 2. I swear to god, this is the last writing class I'll ever take. I said that earlier, but screenwriting was a new genre for me. I'm glad I took the class because there was alot to learn with the formatting, the character development, the beat sheet and stickie notes and then the final outline for screenplays.
Every published author who's ever written a book of writing eventually ends up saying, stop taking writing classes. They're useless and sometimes destructive. They all say just keep writing and keep reading.
Well, I think It's time to take these published authors advice. Just five more classes and then yeah, no more writing classes ever. I hate saying never or ever, because then what always ends up happening is, I do the thing I swore you would never do. So I'm not going to say never or ever. I'm just going to say, I prefer at this time to not take a writing class until such time where I feel I may benefit from being in that kind of environment. I think that sounds better, doesn't it?
Sunday, April 14, 2002
Other mundane topics. I still can't decide which Palm to get, either a 505 or a 130. Or should I save the $100 and get a Vx like the on a friend of mine has. Do I really need color and an an place to stick an addon file?
Or now I'm thinking, maybe I should get one of the Palm knock offs like a Handspring Visor or something. I haven't even started researching those options yet.
The only this is certain is I want to spend as little money as possible, just in case I find out like so many of my friends have, that I don't even used the damned thing. I have so many friends who bought the latest and greatest most expensive palm pilots, only to find out later they hated it and missed pen and paper. Maybe they can afford to have a $300 and up little paperweight sitting on their desk, but I can't.
I called LG electronics on Thursday and found out I can upgrade my LG Phenom express to windows ce 2.2. Thank god. I was started to get so depressed about my little toppie. I love the size of it. I can just stick it in a bag and not a big bag either and take it with me to write anywhere. Hell, I've written at movie theaters and even on MUNI. The battery life is better than I thought it would be too. I was at a cafe a couple of weeks ago and I wrote in there for two hours, despite my batteries only being 30%. That's a long time.
I needed to upgrade the toppie so I could surf the net with it when I travel. My stupid ISP only works with windows ce 2.1 and up. I wish I'd thought of these things before I changed my ISPs, but who can plan for these issues. I thought I'd want to buy a real laptop too, and not a baby one. But these baby laptops are so much more convenient to carry around and cheaper too. It's so small, you don't have to worry about it being stolen. I keep in my travel cd holder, which normally hold 48 cds. That's how small it is. The keyboard is about 78% of normal size but I have small hands anyway and don't have a problem typing. Now if only I can upgrade my ISP to the right plan to use my windows CE machine, I'd be set for life. But upgrading my ISP, that's a whole other can of worms that I won't be able to deal with till May 19.
Or now I'm thinking, maybe I should get one of the Palm knock offs like a Handspring Visor or something. I haven't even started researching those options yet.
The only this is certain is I want to spend as little money as possible, just in case I find out like so many of my friends have, that I don't even used the damned thing. I have so many friends who bought the latest and greatest most expensive palm pilots, only to find out later they hated it and missed pen and paper. Maybe they can afford to have a $300 and up little paperweight sitting on their desk, but I can't.
I called LG electronics on Thursday and found out I can upgrade my LG Phenom express to windows ce 2.2. Thank god. I was started to get so depressed about my little toppie. I love the size of it. I can just stick it in a bag and not a big bag either and take it with me to write anywhere. Hell, I've written at movie theaters and even on MUNI. The battery life is better than I thought it would be too. I was at a cafe a couple of weeks ago and I wrote in there for two hours, despite my batteries only being 30%. That's a long time.
I needed to upgrade the toppie so I could surf the net with it when I travel. My stupid ISP only works with windows ce 2.1 and up. I wish I'd thought of these things before I changed my ISPs, but who can plan for these issues. I thought I'd want to buy a real laptop too, and not a baby one. But these baby laptops are so much more convenient to carry around and cheaper too. It's so small, you don't have to worry about it being stolen. I keep in my travel cd holder, which normally hold 48 cds. That's how small it is. The keyboard is about 78% of normal size but I have small hands anyway and don't have a problem typing. Now if only I can upgrade my ISP to the right plan to use my windows CE machine, I'd be set for life. But upgrading my ISP, that's a whole other can of worms that I won't be able to deal with till May 19.
Saturday, April 13, 2002
I saw The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at ACT on Thursday. What's so weird is that there was a loud bunch of older women in the section that I normally sit it in. That middle section of first balcony must be cursed. My section was quiet and it makes such a difference to my mood to have it be quiet and reflective and not like some Saturday at the local village market square. Is that snobby? Why do people have to be so noisy all the time. These women were older and white but god, they were so ghetto! I'm like hello, this isn't your stupid church social, it's the theatre and people want to read the program and be quiet before the play starts. You know these people are not from San Francisco but from some hick yahoo town up north like Napa, Sonoma or Santa Rosa.
I swear to god, it's true when they say that between LA and SF, it's Texas or some version of Tucky as in Kentucky. I've got to remember to change the rest of my season's tickets, so I don't have to sit with the church brigade for every play. There were three russian women sitting next to me and they were talking, but at least they were quiet and I couldn't understand a word they were saying. God, I am such a snob. ACT must be getting desperate to get people to buy their tickets since they're now selling to white ghetto church groups.
I've never seen The Glass Menagerie and I really enjoyed it. I think it's one of William's best plays. When you watch any of his plays, you see first had how many times he's been ripped off by other playwrights and in movies too. He had an opening scene where the character talks to audience and introduces the play. It's like voice overs in the beginning of movies. I've got a voice over in my screenplay. Thank you Tennessee Williams.
The actors playing the parts were very good, especially the mother and the daughter. Actually, I thought there were all quite good. I love how you see the bad parts and good parts of people in his plays. The characters are never all bad. They have their faults but as an audience you see that they're motivated by good intentions.
In acting class, I was taught that all characters want something and that something is usually love. A character will try anything they can to get that love, no matter how ridiculous it is. Tennessee Williams really shows you this in his play. I wonder if I will be ever be able to write great characters like he can. You can't hate the characters, you can try, but he makes it difficult, because they're so damned human.
And universal too. The mother character reminded me of my whiny mother. But aren't all mothers whiny? I also related to the shy freaked out sister character. I think I could have been her if circustances had turned out differently. Whose to say that I'm not her now, all freaked and shy?
I wrote 13 more pages of my screenplay and went from scene 12 to scene 17. I'm supposed to write 21 pages a week so I have 8 more pages to write. I'm seriously tempted to edit, but Julie said to just keep going and edit later. I dare not tell her I write directly by computer. She's a big believer in writing by hand. Most people freak out when I tell them I free write on computer. There is something to be said to writing by hand and I know that. I don't censor myself as much when I write by hand and the words come out faster.
But screenwriting is so format driven that it's easier for me write on my computer than it would be to write by hand and then transcribe and type in later. I went to Borders on Union Square before the play on Thursday to work on the outline of my screenplay. I've changed my outline so many tiimes that I needed to redo my the stickies for my movie. I bought some coffee and sat down and noticed there was a girl in front of me with a beat sheet with her stickies. She was writing her screenplay in Final Draft on a Mac, I think.
It was so strange to see someone else working on a screenplay too and at a place like Borders. I think I might go there and write at night. The cafe is not crowded and if you're lucky, like I was that night, you can sit by one of the windows and look out on Union Square. It's very cool.
That woman's beat sheet and stickies looked so neat. My beat sheet is so messy and full of stickies with my chicken scratch hand writing. Screenwriting is worse or just as worse as acting. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone except me.
Honestly, I think I like writing stories better. I like the visualness of screenwriting. I like how a picture tells a thousand words but because it's visual, you have to assume that your audience knows exactly what you're trying to do. If you've ever read a bunch of movie reviews for the same movie, you know that everyone interprets scenes very differently. As a screenwriter, you have to acceptt that. Not that the same thing doesn't happen in written stories either, but in movies there's more room for ambiguity. I don't know if I like that.
I'm probably the only person in my screenplay class who doesn't want to be a screenplay writer and would rather be a short story writer or a novelist. But then again, I was the only person in my acting class who didn't want to be actor. It's my karma.
But I'm committed to finishing and editing this screenplay and sending it off to be registered. I'm sure it will just wallow away in the script files, but at least I can say I wrote one and I registered it. And that's what important to me right now.
My children's book Missy Dreams of Duck, keeps replaying in my head. I came up with more scenes for the story too. Maybe this means it's ready to be written down. This is going to be a cool story. A young girl is unhappy and wants to run away from home. She wakes up and finds out she's become a duck. How cool is that. Ducks are my favorite creatures. It will be a riot to create a duck world or rather a child's dreams of a duck world, because in the end, my character wakes up and find out it was all a dream. There's a alot of freedom in creating a dreamy duck world. My duckies will talk like humans and behave like humans. In fact, duck society will closely mimic human society with a few exceptions of course for duck species behavior.
You can be so much more imaginative when you write children's and fantasy books. I won't have to agonize about writing character that are so human, you relate. Maybe Tennessee Williams did that easily, but I can't and I don't know if I'll ever be able to. I mean, Tennessee Willaims was a genius. How am I going to write characters as well as he did. I think it's impossible really. Sometimes, I don't know why I even try.
His characters were so multidimensional. They were so human with faults and failings and good qualities all mixed into very messed up people. You alternately despise and relate to all his characters. He had such a gift. And me, what do I have. Just voices in my head that tell me stories, just stories lines that play in my head like movies sometimes. How will I every measure up to him and his portrayal of humanity?
I swear to god, it's true when they say that between LA and SF, it's Texas or some version of Tucky as in Kentucky. I've got to remember to change the rest of my season's tickets, so I don't have to sit with the church brigade for every play. There were three russian women sitting next to me and they were talking, but at least they were quiet and I couldn't understand a word they were saying. God, I am such a snob. ACT must be getting desperate to get people to buy their tickets since they're now selling to white ghetto church groups.
I've never seen The Glass Menagerie and I really enjoyed it. I think it's one of William's best plays. When you watch any of his plays, you see first had how many times he's been ripped off by other playwrights and in movies too. He had an opening scene where the character talks to audience and introduces the play. It's like voice overs in the beginning of movies. I've got a voice over in my screenplay. Thank you Tennessee Williams.
The actors playing the parts were very good, especially the mother and the daughter. Actually, I thought there were all quite good. I love how you see the bad parts and good parts of people in his plays. The characters are never all bad. They have their faults but as an audience you see that they're motivated by good intentions.
In acting class, I was taught that all characters want something and that something is usually love. A character will try anything they can to get that love, no matter how ridiculous it is. Tennessee Williams really shows you this in his play. I wonder if I will be ever be able to write great characters like he can. You can't hate the characters, you can try, but he makes it difficult, because they're so damned human.
And universal too. The mother character reminded me of my whiny mother. But aren't all mothers whiny? I also related to the shy freaked out sister character. I think I could have been her if circustances had turned out differently. Whose to say that I'm not her now, all freaked and shy?
I wrote 13 more pages of my screenplay and went from scene 12 to scene 17. I'm supposed to write 21 pages a week so I have 8 more pages to write. I'm seriously tempted to edit, but Julie said to just keep going and edit later. I dare not tell her I write directly by computer. She's a big believer in writing by hand. Most people freak out when I tell them I free write on computer. There is something to be said to writing by hand and I know that. I don't censor myself as much when I write by hand and the words come out faster.
But screenwriting is so format driven that it's easier for me write on my computer than it would be to write by hand and then transcribe and type in later. I went to Borders on Union Square before the play on Thursday to work on the outline of my screenplay. I've changed my outline so many tiimes that I needed to redo my the stickies for my movie. I bought some coffee and sat down and noticed there was a girl in front of me with a beat sheet with her stickies. She was writing her screenplay in Final Draft on a Mac, I think.
It was so strange to see someone else working on a screenplay too and at a place like Borders. I think I might go there and write at night. The cafe is not crowded and if you're lucky, like I was that night, you can sit by one of the windows and look out on Union Square. It's very cool.
That woman's beat sheet and stickies looked so neat. My beat sheet is so messy and full of stickies with my chicken scratch hand writing. Screenwriting is worse or just as worse as acting. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone except me.
Honestly, I think I like writing stories better. I like the visualness of screenwriting. I like how a picture tells a thousand words but because it's visual, you have to assume that your audience knows exactly what you're trying to do. If you've ever read a bunch of movie reviews for the same movie, you know that everyone interprets scenes very differently. As a screenwriter, you have to acceptt that. Not that the same thing doesn't happen in written stories either, but in movies there's more room for ambiguity. I don't know if I like that.
I'm probably the only person in my screenplay class who doesn't want to be a screenplay writer and would rather be a short story writer or a novelist. But then again, I was the only person in my acting class who didn't want to be actor. It's my karma.
But I'm committed to finishing and editing this screenplay and sending it off to be registered. I'm sure it will just wallow away in the script files, but at least I can say I wrote one and I registered it. And that's what important to me right now.
My children's book Missy Dreams of Duck, keeps replaying in my head. I came up with more scenes for the story too. Maybe this means it's ready to be written down. This is going to be a cool story. A young girl is unhappy and wants to run away from home. She wakes up and finds out she's become a duck. How cool is that. Ducks are my favorite creatures. It will be a riot to create a duck world or rather a child's dreams of a duck world, because in the end, my character wakes up and find out it was all a dream. There's a alot of freedom in creating a dreamy duck world. My duckies will talk like humans and behave like humans. In fact, duck society will closely mimic human society with a few exceptions of course for duck species behavior.
You can be so much more imaginative when you write children's and fantasy books. I won't have to agonize about writing character that are so human, you relate. Maybe Tennessee Williams did that easily, but I can't and I don't know if I'll ever be able to. I mean, Tennessee Willaims was a genius. How am I going to write characters as well as he did. I think it's impossible really. Sometimes, I don't know why I even try.
His characters were so multidimensional. They were so human with faults and failings and good qualities all mixed into very messed up people. You alternately despise and relate to all his characters. He had such a gift. And me, what do I have. Just voices in my head that tell me stories, just stories lines that play in my head like movies sometimes. How will I every measure up to him and his portrayal of humanity?
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
I wonder if writing as a profession will be like my job now, where I spend two days working on one thing, trying to solve one problem, only to find out the problem is unsolvable because I basically wrote the program wrong in the first place and I delivered wrong information to the customer. Only a part of the information is wrong, but it's an important piece of information. I did a check to see how much I was off and it turns out I was off by 5%. That's alot though and probably unacceptable in any other industry except the one I'm in now.
God, I hate making mistakes. I try to be so careful but I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote up this analysis. It sucks too because now the customer wants to see more detail and I can't give out detail without letting them know the original number we submitted was wrong. I told my boss about it and he acted like it was nothing, but I knew he was pissed. I know he's like thinking, I really need to check that girl. I told him I could give the customer the names they wanted but not give them the detail, after all, they didn't ask for it. He agreed so I sent the information off tonight. It's bad customer service, but for me I guess it's I'd better save my ass first customer service.
I've really got to be more careful. I'm lucky to even have a job and my own office to boot. So many people I know are unemployed right now and having a hard time trying to find a job. I'm not exactly thrilled by my job, but I stay put because the job market is so bad right now.
I decided today that I just need to finish my screenplay and be done with it. I have so many other stories to write. I was thinking about the feedback I received in class about my story. I was going to make some changes based on the feedback I heard, but I decided not to. It's my story. I like that my characters are inconsistent. I like how my characters act one way with one person and act a completely different way with someone else. That is real life. I've seen it at work and I've seen it in my own family.
I've seen guys at work act like total dicks in meetings and then call their wives and talk and act all lovey dovey or cower and simper when their wives are reading them the riot act. I'm like, close your door for god's sake, or call your wife where nobody can hear you, because you sound like a total wussy on the phone. I've seen my own brother who's a jerk and half treat people like shit, but totally act like some little boy when my dad scolded him. I've seen my uncle do that too with his dad and he's 50 something and it was kind of sad, to see him talk to like some little boy to his dad.
I want to see that in a movie. I don't care if it's consistent, it's real life. The people in my screenwriting class said that my characters should act consistently throughout the movie. And I was agreeing with them. But today, I'm like, NO WAY! Who the hell acts consistent? No one. I know I don't. If people in class think they act consistently all the time, they're dreaming. And don't tell me that when they're with their parents, they aren't reduced to grade school children. Well I guess if they're not from a dysfunctional family, that maybe they're mature, but not my characters.
The people in my screenplay are like totally dysfunctional, like with a Capital D. Oh well. I don't care. I'm going to write it the way I see life. It's my world, it's my point of view, it's my damned story. Then I'm going to register the damned thing and be done with it. There are other stories that need telling besides this one.
I guess I should be glad because at least I have other stories in other formats to tell. For some people, this might be the only story they have to tell. I think I have at least two more screenplays in my head besides the one I'm writing now. And at least a couple dozen stories to write in either short story, novella or novel format. Then there's that play of mine that I started in 1998 and only just got the ending to a few weeks ago. I know I should finally finish the play and get that over and done with too. God, then there's that novel of mine.
The my love and S&M novel and my screenplay about first love are my story ideas from 1998. Crazy Eddie and the baseball screenplay are story ideas from 1999. I haven't even gotten to the other story ideas from the rest of 1999, not to mention 2000, 2001 and 2002. God, my production is so slow. I think I could be writing 8 hours a day, five days a week, at least until age 65 and still not run out of story ideas. And I think this is a good thing, right?
God, I hate making mistakes. I try to be so careful but I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote up this analysis. It sucks too because now the customer wants to see more detail and I can't give out detail without letting them know the original number we submitted was wrong. I told my boss about it and he acted like it was nothing, but I knew he was pissed. I know he's like thinking, I really need to check that girl. I told him I could give the customer the names they wanted but not give them the detail, after all, they didn't ask for it. He agreed so I sent the information off tonight. It's bad customer service, but for me I guess it's I'd better save my ass first customer service.
I've really got to be more careful. I'm lucky to even have a job and my own office to boot. So many people I know are unemployed right now and having a hard time trying to find a job. I'm not exactly thrilled by my job, but I stay put because the job market is so bad right now.
I decided today that I just need to finish my screenplay and be done with it. I have so many other stories to write. I was thinking about the feedback I received in class about my story. I was going to make some changes based on the feedback I heard, but I decided not to. It's my story. I like that my characters are inconsistent. I like how my characters act one way with one person and act a completely different way with someone else. That is real life. I've seen it at work and I've seen it in my own family.
I've seen guys at work act like total dicks in meetings and then call their wives and talk and act all lovey dovey or cower and simper when their wives are reading them the riot act. I'm like, close your door for god's sake, or call your wife where nobody can hear you, because you sound like a total wussy on the phone. I've seen my own brother who's a jerk and half treat people like shit, but totally act like some little boy when my dad scolded him. I've seen my uncle do that too with his dad and he's 50 something and it was kind of sad, to see him talk to like some little boy to his dad.
I want to see that in a movie. I don't care if it's consistent, it's real life. The people in my screenwriting class said that my characters should act consistently throughout the movie. And I was agreeing with them. But today, I'm like, NO WAY! Who the hell acts consistent? No one. I know I don't. If people in class think they act consistently all the time, they're dreaming. And don't tell me that when they're with their parents, they aren't reduced to grade school children. Well I guess if they're not from a dysfunctional family, that maybe they're mature, but not my characters.
The people in my screenplay are like totally dysfunctional, like with a Capital D. Oh well. I don't care. I'm going to write it the way I see life. It's my world, it's my point of view, it's my damned story. Then I'm going to register the damned thing and be done with it. There are other stories that need telling besides this one.
I guess I should be glad because at least I have other stories in other formats to tell. For some people, this might be the only story they have to tell. I think I have at least two more screenplays in my head besides the one I'm writing now. And at least a couple dozen stories to write in either short story, novella or novel format. Then there's that play of mine that I started in 1998 and only just got the ending to a few weeks ago. I know I should finally finish the play and get that over and done with too. God, then there's that novel of mine.
The my love and S&M novel and my screenplay about first love are my story ideas from 1998. Crazy Eddie and the baseball screenplay are story ideas from 1999. I haven't even gotten to the other story ideas from the rest of 1999, not to mention 2000, 2001 and 2002. God, my production is so slow. I think I could be writing 8 hours a day, five days a week, at least until age 65 and still not run out of story ideas. And I think this is a good thing, right?
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