I have a number of events coming up in the next 30 days, so I fear my posts may become a tad more erratic. Luckily, indomitable blogger Mark Evanier had a post this past week that perfectly meets my needs: how actors are like cats. Yes, I know many actors who are dog lovers. Don’t worry guys and gals, you can still love your dogs (just as surely as they love you), but you’re still…
Somewhat riffing off my post from Wednesday, I’m once again considering our current golden age of television (aka Golden TV Age II: Serial Storytelling Boogaloo). There’s so much great television to check out, there are whole series that have come and gone that I haven’t gotten to yet. Alison Herman over at The Ringer delves into what this means for science fiction –and “genre fiction” in general– as they hold greater sway over pop culture on…
Working on a long, long term project due to launch later this year has me thinking about various film projects stuck in development hell that have finally seen the light of day -er- distribution. The new hotness that is Altered Carbon (on Netflix as of February 2nd) was adapted from a 2002 book. Several friends have already mentioned about the differences from the book (some bigger than others), but I only recently learned more about how…
Addressing the problem of gerrymandering and generally getting more people out to vote is something I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog (most recently being rather depressed by the solutions or lack thereof). Well, the wonderful wonks over at FiveThirtyEight have an interactive map where you can see different strategies for redistricting and what that does, either on a national or state level.
Mark Evanier added to his long-running series on “Rejection” last month. This one is about his own personal experience that writers (and others) don’t actually get hired by friends who then hire them back. I’m not going to lie, I probably like this because it scratches me right in the confirmation bias. Nevertheless, his personal experience rings true with mine. People like to work with people they know, sure. But they also want to work…
Columnist Chris Erskine has a humorous, but not inaccurate assessment of the state of the venerable spec script: the thing Hollywood doesn’t like at all…. until it loves it. I really want to see the Scriptnotes crew comment on this.
The writers at FiveThirtyEight have never been afraid to get wonky. So when they look into how to best pursue a regular course of exercise — surely something that people are grappling with now since we’re still in the glow of New Year’s resolutions — I found it worth reading.
Continuing on this week’s theme of writing and publishing, John August, has launched a new podcast called, well, Launch. I’ve mentioned his Scriptnotes podcast before, which is well worth a listen if you’re interested in screenwriting. But John August doesn’t confine himself to scriptwriting. He has a company that makes apps related to scriptwriting. He’s made writer’s aids and a decent card game. And now he’s written the first of a series of novels about…
When it comes to writing, most of the beginning of this decade, I was mainly focusing on regularly writing: simply putting in the time. That’s where I worked to write 20 minutes a day, every day (with occasional time off for good behavior). For the past year or two, I have been tracking pages written and finishing drafts — not simply time writing. This year, the logical continuation is to understand what to do when those finished drafts amount to…
88 years is no small feat, but when my wife and I talked, we agreed, it would have been nice to see Ursula K. Le Guin, who passed away last week, reach a hundred. Far and beyond the worlds she created was her perspective: on writing, being a writer, and, well, managing to live this crazy life and perhaps make it a better place while being a writer. I only discovered her work later in…