Excuses? I've Got a Few...

Recently I signed up for another email list. Most of the time, I'm trying to exit them, but this was an additional list from Stage 32. It's a list that provides updates on the opportunities for writers at the site, including script coverage, consulting, pitch sessions and more. Even though there are a lot of emails coming at me from this list, it made me realize that my favorite excuse for feeling guilty when working on scripts (and then not finishing them) has been proven false--there is a way for me to break into scriptwriting.

While these opportunities are great, they do also come with costs. The costs seem reasonable, so I wouldn't mind indulging with one of my scripts--if I could get one finished to the point that I'm ready to share. That, and the fee would come out of a tiny portion of my budget that currently serves to pay for fiction and poetry contest entries. So I would have to give up contest entries for other projects for a couple of months, but really, who's winning contests around here anyway?  (not me, I assure you...)

That leads me to Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to measure April's session in minutes. I will be dedicating 1800 minutes of the month to writing a pilot I haven't started, but have plenty of notes for. It's a strong female-driven comedy. I hope I can pull it off. Then I can start thinking about where I'm going to take it next.

This week's post wouldn't be complete without a plug for my latest project, now would it? Remember that my latest collection of poetry, If It Was New York, Summer 2009, is coming out on MARCH 26. You can PREORDER it now from Amazon and other retailers worldwide. Paperback will be available for purchase on March 26, as will copies through subscription services such as Playster and Scribd.

Various Directions

Now that Camp NaNoWriMo is officially over (I happily left with 10,345 words) I have shifted my attention back to other projects. The first on the list is of course that script I wanted to use to apply to a script writing program. I'm still not happy with it, so it's in a serious revision state with only three weeks to go until applications close, but on top of that, I've never put a TV episode into the proper format before, so there are a lot of little annoying things I have to get just right. Usually I just write TV episodes in feature format, which is wrong, but everything else is still first drafts, so I guess I would have had to bring them up to this standard at some point anyway.

I also jumped into the world of Episode. I downloaded the app just because I was bored and needed something to do for ten minutes, and I've always loved the choose-your-own-adventure format. Once I opened the app, I noticed that there was a write tab, so I checked it out. It turns out that you can write your own story on Episode, and that intrigued me. Most of the stories are geared toward flirty romance and light mystery (the target audience being female 13+). I thought, why not? I could come up with something fun, and it says there is a paid program for writers.

A sneak peek of Love Bites the Big Apple (I promise, it does get better!)

I started my story, but then I found out there is a lot of other aspects of writing a story for Episode that I wasn't thrilled with. First, you can't just plug a script into a form and get it animated. You have to control the movements, directions, and facial expressions of all the characters. Some people compare it to something like coding rather than simply writing, but I think any true coder will tell you it's nothing like coding either. I found that it's closer in comparison to a technical script--where it has camera angles and specific shots along with all of the dialogue.

It is tedious to do all of the directions, set changes, and clothing changes, but once I really got into it, I was starting to have fun. The story is still working itself out--since the look of the characters seems a little Barbie-esque to me, I decided to plug in the story I used to use when I played with my dolls. I can't publish anything to the app until I have three chapters that meet a certain length requirement, so it may be awhile before it goes live.

And about that payment program. I'm pretty sure this is going to be a passion project rather than a paid project. To qualify for payment, a writer must get 500,000 reads in only 60 days. Once you meet that, then the payment program signup is available. Anything about what you get paid per read after that is information that I have yet to get my hands on. I'm going to say that even if people fall in love with my story and clamor to get more chapters, I would still have less than a twenty percent chance of qualifying. Half a million is a giant number. I still have to get through the popular stories on the app to see what it takes to really get noticed--and since I started this journey on my Kindle, which hasn't had an Episode update in the past four years, I'm going to have to switch to my phone to read more of the recent stories for research. With only a small chance of ever turning this into paid work, I've been trying to restrict myself to an hour a day working on it.

Even with all of this work, I managed to think up a short story idea in the shower this morning. Today is looking to be a very long writing day.

What's on the Plate for February

It's February, which for writers with monthly goals means that you have to cram more words in a short amount of time. After the January I've had, I feel like it's totally doable.

The year 2018 will go down as the year I finally got back on track. I spent January releasing Melody's Valentine, finishing up the first draft of the diamond thief novel (title still TBD), launched Pieces on Wattpad, submitted a wide range of poetry and short stories to lit journals and magazines, and I even managed to finish up the first draft of a television pilot. The script is pretty terrible right now, but I'll fix that. All of this progress puts me halfway to my goal of having four works published in 2018. It's a pretty awesome place to be. 

This month I have planned to work on three separate projects. First, I'm going to finish the first draft of Avery Night, P.I. It's been a really fun story to write so far, and I already have the plot outlines for the next five books with these characters--I'm in a good place with this one.

For my revision project, 277 Miles is getting the full treatment (thanks to everyone who voted in my Patreon poll and chose this as my next revision project). Like almost every other first draft I've finished, it comes up short in the word count to be labeled a novel. The fix for that is to get into more of the character's heads and dig into their backgrounds. It'll still lead to the same conclusion, just with a wider understanding of where all the characters are coming from.

I will also be working on a brand new poetry project that I have a title for, but not much else. That's a strange place for me to be in because I almost never have titles first. I'm taking the plunge into the modern style with this collection--not what poetry professors label as modern, which is something like a century old by now, but what's going on in contemporary poetry right this minute. I know I've scoffed at it a little before, and it is taking a big hit by critics calling it consumer-driven and populist drivel. I clearly don't want to mimic a style, but instead take the same accessibility to readers that these poets have had and put my own twist on it. Simple, but deep. I guess that's what all poetry is supposed to be, but you know how taste can range.

I'm in the middle of reading some new releases of these poets, so I'll have to be careful that I'm not overly influenced by their style or subject matter. I have quite a few ideas. I'll just have to see where the pen and paper takes me.

What are you planning to work on February?