Columnist Chris Erskine has a humorous, but not inaccurate assessment of the state of the venerable spec script: the thing Hollywood doesn’t like at all…. until it loves it. I really want to see the Scriptnotes crew comment on this.
Continuing on this week’s theme of writing and publishing, John August, has launched a new podcast called, well, Launch. I’ve mentioned his Scriptnotes podcast before, which is well worth a listen if you’re interested in screenwriting. But John August doesn’t confine himself to scriptwriting. He has a company that makes apps related to scriptwriting. He’s made writer’s aids and a decent card game. And now he’s written the first of a series of novels about…
When it comes to writing, most of the beginning of this decade, I was mainly focusing on regularly writing: simply putting in the time. That’s where I worked to write 20 minutes a day, every day (with occasional time off for good behavior). For the past year or two, I have been tracking pages written and finishing drafts — not simply time writing. This year, the logical continuation is to understand what to do when those finished drafts amount to…
88 years is no small feat, but when my wife and I talked, we agreed, it would have been nice to see Ursula K. Le Guin, who passed away last week, reach a hundred. Far and beyond the worlds she created was her perspective: on writing, being a writer, and, well, managing to live this crazy life and perhaps make it a better place while being a writer. I only discovered her work later in…
Copyright is always a topic of interest to writers and public domain in the United States is of added interest what with Congress’ tendency to extend copyright. As it happens, a whole host of published works (films and books) are set to enter the public domain next year. Timothy Lee notes in an article for Ars Technica that, strangely, that might happen. (He also links to his excellent 2013 article on the same subject).
I started this site a little over two years ago — in part to just get in the habit of regularly writing and putting said writing into the world. One of the blogs I habitually read, Mark Evanier’s “News from ME,” reached its 25,000th blog post earlier this month. He decided to mark the occasion with an introspective post about why he writes the blog. At my current rate of posting, I won’t get to 25,000 posts for another eight…
100 years ago today, in a small town in England, Arthur Clarke was born. Perhaps he’ll always be best known by the public at large for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is certainly how I was first introduced to his work. Later, when I had a chance to delve deeper into my Dad’s collection of 50s paperbacks, I came across Childhood’s End and later still, “The Star” — a very short story that nevertheless haunts…
I am overdue in continuing the “Monday Motivation” posts, so I thought it’d be an opportune time to note that sometimes it’s good to just do what you’re doing and keep on doing it. Especially for those of you in the middle of the slog that is NaNoWriMo: just keep truckin’. Don’t edit, write! As “they” say, the first draft is always garbage anyway and editing is another month. One thing I thought of in…
Life in the offline world has been demanding much of my attention this past month, so I haven’t been posting as much. I feel somewhat remiss in my Internet duties to pass along useful information and interesting things to read. With that in mind, I direct you to 50 screenplays made available for free from some darn fine movies, from “Alien” to “Up in the Air.” Happy reading!
I’ve been thinking of writing a longer post about fandom and perceived ownership — all the more so with the launch of Star Trek: Discovery. Mark Evanier’s post, aptly titled “Creative Custody,” refutes the notion of fans “owning” comic book characters, but it can be applied to lots of other fan-beloved intellectual property (IP), such as IP that involves warrior races called Klingons. Much of what Mark Evanier says could be said by someone who hasn’t been an avid…