Howdy, Strangers!

I've been busy. Working. Writing. And vacationing.

The last few years I've been really focused on writing, and learning to write, and haven't really generated any producing projects to speak of -- other than the ones that have fallen into my lap I've mostly just been collecting ideas. Well, this fall I've decided I'll try my hand at setting up a few things and see how I feel about diving back into that end of the business. Baby steps.

My first effort is towards acquiring the rights to a film that was made about 30 years ago. I'll keep you posted if it works out. I've contacted the rights holder and am waiting to hear back if there's any interest. If there is I'll write up a sales document -- basically a 1-2 page story idea which details my "take" on the re-telling and see if that gets any traction. If it does then I'll find an "element" (writer, director, actor or, given the state of the business, a financier) and walk into one of these big friendly agencies (*snark*) and give up a few percentages of my speculatively nice fee to have a package put together.

I think I've written about packaging before, so I won't go into the details of it here, but suffice to say that it is the best and worst thing to happen to the producing side of things since the studios were all sold to conglomerates and greenlight decisions started being affected by stock prices.

I'm planning to do a few book and short story options as well. *Sigh* It sucks to be working alone, so I'm hoping to find someone to partner up with, either another "creative" type or someone who really is just trying to produce. That would be nice since I hate all the paper-pushing that goes along with the job.

OK, last part of the update (and I promise my next post will be a real post, not this information dump) I recently started meeting with a group of kick-ass screenwriters, all relative newbies, and it's been great. The pace is fast which is part of the reason I joined the group, and we turn in pages every week. Some of these guys are turning scripts around in 1-2 weeks which is intimidating since I'm an unrepentant chiseler-in-stone type of wordsmith, but I thought it would be a good idea to pick up on the habits of people who can pour the pages out. I've learned a tremendous amount just talking to these guys and I can feel the studio story-development plaque shaking free. :-)

I'm off to the gym, trying to get my sexy back (still) after a long, lazy winter. Or two. LOL.