Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Maui-tude

I'm in Kaneohe Bay, O'ahu right now. Tomorrow I head to Maui for my annual writing retreat with my novel-writing group. I'm very excited. I finished the latest draft of my pilot on Friday and am waiting for feedback so I can polish it up before sending it out into the wild. For the next two weeks, though, I'm working on my tan, my book, and my sanity (in that order).

I'd much rather blog about how great it is out here -- my family grows a little coffee and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some fresh beans -- but I'll try to focus and blog about business-type things. I'm actually watching clouds roll down a volcanic ridge as I type this, so please excuse any randomness which results.

When I get back to LA I'll do a post about agency pitches. Until then, Aloha!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

It's Pilot Season!!!!!

I'm putting something up to let you all know that I'm still alive. Still pounding the pavement out here in LA. It's pilot season which means it's almost time to PUT YOUR PENCILS DOWN and TURN IN YOUR EXAMS! That's right, staffing season is starting up in a matter of weeks. Some shows are already lining up their senior writers, but for us baby writers trying to break in, this is our chance to polish things up one last time and hit the party circuit to get our little faces out there for jobs.

I've been reading every drama pilot I can get my hands on, and there are tons out there. I think I've read about 20 so far, and the competition is pretty stiff for shows this spring. Lots of good stuff, plenty of procedural-esque shows, but many many more soap opera type shows set against various backdrops. I'll check with my suppliers to see which scripts it is okay for me to talk about (i.e. the drafts aren't under wraps on pain of someone's death) and I'll blog an update. I'm happy to say I've read a bunch of shows I liked, last season I wasn't as impressed -- the writing was almost universally solid, but the show ideas were... eh. This year, I feel like the show concepts were interesting (minus the soap operas which aren't really my thing), but I'm withholding judgment on most of them until I see the casting choices because they could go either way.

There are a couple of very interesting sci fi/fantasy-type shows that I'm excited about, so I'm going to see if I can write about those first. I'm happy to say that no one has written anything even close to the spec pilot I'm polishing, I've still got two more networks worth of stuff to get through, but, so far, all clear. :-)