Monday, August 31, 2009

A long walk, a short pier, and much more

It never fails - I sit down to finally blog after so long and my mom calls. And then My Fair Lady wants me to proof her email correspondence. Hahahahahaha.

Let me start off by saying in the grand scheme of things challenging Yours Truly, My Fair Lady, and Lil Max, keeping up with "Now Playing At" hasn't been real high on my priority list. In fact, looking down at the floor I'd it's closer to if not under the stack of "must do now" items that have piled up. At the top of that pile?

Find a job. Like, right now. Right this second would be helpful too.

Basically, we've in a major bind since the first of the year when I was laid off. Two days later, My Fair Lady was hired in a contract capacity as a real estate attorney and has done a bang up job for her employer... who has kept her on contract. I signed on in February with a non-profit start-up as a writer/project manager and they're funding dried up in July. In the meantime, we've had to deal with an infant, an inability to afford daycare, and massive amounts of juggling as one will take him while the other works and so forth.

So here we are at the end of August when things have, in theory, started moving again. I've applied to practically every writing job I can find (four today if you can believe it) and I've even had a few interviews. Actually landed a quickie contract job for a company out of Florida last week where I rewrote all the text on their website. The worry here is we're majorly up against the wall, massively stressed out, and feeling more than a little terrified over what's going. I've applied to so many jobs I've had to start a Word document to track them all so I don't get confused.

In other words, the blog has been on hold for a while now due to market forces strangling the holy hell out of me.

I'd love to get back into doing this on a regular basis, I really would, so I again must hope for the best. In happier news, I've completed my screenplay and sent it off to a horror script contest in LA, and have a few friends hunting for agents that will take my call. I've also continued outlining and actually started a book, as well as outlined three new scripts that someday I hope to actually write. I strongly believe that in the next few weeks, good things will happen but it's the waiting game that is absolutely killing me.

But enough about that. How's Lil Max? In a word, exhausting.

Earlier in the year, he would lay on the floor like the blob a three month old is and just whine and whine some more. We'd feed him, try to play with him, but he'd just whine. Strangely enough, once he figured out how to do the Army Man Crawl™ he stopped whining. Why? Because then he could follow us. He quickly graduated from Army Man Crawl™ to Man In The Desert™ to finally Full Contact Crawling™. But a few weeks ago, he made two bigger discoveries:

1) Sleeping all the way through the night means Lil Max is even happier during the day.

2) Standing up and cruising along Mommy and Daddy's furniture is nine kinds of nifty.

When I say he's a handful, or he's exhausting, or both, it's because there's more energy and joy of life packed into this little nine month old than anything I've ever seen. From the second he wakes up, his grin is ear-to-ear and he's excited to play.

Then he does something way advanced like he did last night and My Fair Lady and I fall out laughing.

We have a large box (courtesy of buying diapers in bulk online) and since he prefers playing with random household items instead of his toys (for the most part), he uses the box as a climbing tool. Yesterday I decided to try to chase him around it so I dropped to all fours and threatened him with tickles. He giggled loudly then squealed with glee when I moved after him. Around and around the box we went, laughing all the time.

Then he ducked inside the box (it was on its side) and "hid." I was under the impression that a nine month old shouldn't be able to initiate hide and seek, yet there he was doing just that. He would "hide" in the box, and squeal when I "found" him. It was hilarious.

At the very least, watching Lil Max grow and learn every single day for the last several months has been a joy. It's been stressful due to the financial situation, but bonding with Lil Max has been one of the best things I've ever done. He's been down for his afternoon nap for about two hours now (he caught the sniffles last night) so it's time to wake him.

After I swing by the kitchen and hit the pan of brownies first...

Friday, August 7, 2009

Script #1 = Registered

This should have gone up on Monday after I did it, but better late than never. I registered my first screenplay with the WGA on Monday and I feel pretty dang good about it. This is a day that has been a long time coming and I'm excited. I have my feelers out there looking for agency names, and people who may have an interest so here's hoping things come to fruition sooner rather than later.

I'm also prepping to fire it off next week to a screenplay contest so we'll see. Right now I'm condensing a 108-page script into a single paragraph synopsis, which is tougher than it sounds. Oddly enough, condensing it down into a single sentence logline was simpler. Go figure.

As for the near future, I'm making notes now on a book I've been playing with off and on for the past year, as well as beginning to outline a script I wrote a rough draft for last year. Didn't really have an outline at the beginning of that one, which explains why it only runs 85 pages and sucks. But that one, since the first draft is done, should probably be my new focus so I'll at least have two scripts ready to go.

And yet again, this blog suffers from my inability to find time beyond Facebook status updates to let the world know what I'm doing. I'd get a Twitter account, but I feel stupid every time I go there so that's a non-starter. Even posting new GamingTrend reviews in our Twitter account leaves me feeling worried about the mental capacity of future generations. Though, in a hilarious bit of irony, ABC News last night commented at how John Quincy Adams essentially wrote journal entries of comparable length to Twitter posts, and he became president.

History may not always repeat, but it does often rhyme.