Archive for February, 2018

So, as I have explained in previous posts, I started my journey into writing with a dream of being a screenwriter, more specifically, a screenwriter for television. I finally got my feedback from the pilot I submitted to a screenwriting contest last fall. It wasn’t good. What I mean is the feedback was honest and very reasonable, but my submission wasn’t good. Let me clarify that this is the third submission in about ten years that has failed.

Admittedly, I’m feeling pretty sad. That can’t be helped. There’s always a grieving process that takes place when a creative project is rejected. It’s necessary to move on. And honestly, this is a project that needed to fail. This is a dream that needed to die.

How I write has changed because my life has changed. Presently, I am engrossed in the world of a toddler, simpler, more innocent, more socially sensitive. I honestly couldn’t tell you what’s good on television beyond the small 90 minute window I allow myself on Sunday nights to watch Masterpiece on PBS. Sometimes, even that’s a stretch, if it’s a mystery and it’s too violent to have running while my full time job is still awake.

The sharpness of dialogue, the veracity of action and story, the clear conveyance of emotion, these are all elements of good screen writing that are foggy to me at the moment, like they are buried in some murky tide pool that I just don’t have to stones or energy to dig into. That’s a hard reality to accept, but reality it is, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that I am finished as a writer. It just means that I need to continue my journey from where I am in the present moment and not force my perspective into a future that doesn’t exist.

I am happy to be able to continue my journey with Bernice and Evan and Darlene and Cameron and the all their friends, enemies, baggage, foibles, and dilemmas. They still need me.