It’s that time of year again... We’re beyond excited to announce that we are once again offering a FREE 6-MONTH FELLOWSHIP to theOffice. theOffice is a quiet, communal workspace in Brentwood, CA right across from the Country Mart. Our members get free coffee & tea, wifi, Aeron chairs and peace of mind, all in the … Continue reading CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: 2014 Fellowship to theOffice
Let It Go
First Draft I recently finished the first draft of the comedy pilot I’ve been working on with a writing partner. It’s great except that it’s about twenty pages too long and not funny. We cringed every time we read it. The thing needed rewrites. Not the kind where we could just go through the script … Continue reading Let It Go
QOTD
"When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles … Continue reading QOTD
My Favorite QOTD
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, … Continue reading My Favorite QOTD
QOTD
"I’ve found my productive writing-to-screwing around ratio to be one to seven. So for every eight hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done. The other seven hours are preparing for writing: pacing around the house, collapsing cardboard boxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from the … Continue reading QOTD
Before I Write…
A few things simple things need to be in place before I can write a thing. I need a cup of coffee on my desk. Sometimes I don’t even drink it. I just need to know it’s there. The promise of caffeine. Then I turn on the Self Control app. How it works: You select the … Continue reading Before I Write…
QOTD
"My motivation has never been to break into the business. Maybe that has allowed me to ignore a lot of the things. There’re a lot of people who like to tell you specific things that you need to do in order to make it in this industry. I was at the stage where I was … Continue reading QOTD
New Year, New Habits
Like everyone else on the planet, I’ve been looking back on the past year. As a writer, I don’t really need the New Year in order to evaluate myself. I have daily resolutions to write more, and I look back on my progress all the time. But the New Year offers that fabulous blank slate. And writers … Continue reading New Year, New Habits
QOTD
"Be willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: 'This bad stuff is coming out of me…' Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to … Continue reading QOTD
QOTD
"Write out the scene the way you hear it in your head. Then read it and find the parts where the characters are saying exactly what you want/need them to say for the sake of narrative clarity (e.g., “I’ve secretly loved you all along, but I’ve been too afraid to tell you”). Cut that part … Continue reading QOTD
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