Screenwriting Tip #919
Repeat after me: “I will write it now. I will fix it later.”
Things Panic Attack Andrea should’ve remembered while trying and failing to write last night.
Oof.
March 2012
February 2012
APE IN A CAPE: One MillIon Moms Protest Comics →
gailsimone.tumblr.com
…and what should be done about it?
The bigot group ONE MILLION MOMS is protesting Archie Comics for their positive and prominent portrayal of a gay male character, Kevin Keller, in their recent books. They are also protesting Toys R Us for displaying and selling these books.
…
“True gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.”
My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.” —
And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.”
My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.” —
- Lucy, When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege. (via seaofbadstories)
I might have reblogged this already but it’s so good I don’t care.
(via stfufauxminists)
Kyriarchy in action.
(via transstingray)
Also the study where they had women and men talking in a discussion and when women spoke around 30% of the time, men perceived them as dominating the discussion. They didn’t consider it “equal” until something like 5-10% of women talking.
(via dumbthingswhitepplsay)
Voila. A beautiful example of why fighting for equality becomes a gross exaggeration in the eyes of the oppressors.
(via curiouslycool)
OH IS IT REALLY NOT GOING THE WAY YOU WANT IT TOO? DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE IN TO DEEP
I don’t even know what this means but everything hurts and I’m trying to start over but failing so maybe I’ll just go with my original idea I’m just freaking out and don’t know what to do.
Wait, Taylor just explained this to me. Fuck off I’m broken enough as it is.
This story isn't really going the way I want it to, but I'm in too deep.
Ngh.
“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”
—Steven Millhauser (via alexlaika)
Slushkiller - On Rejection, Acceptance, and Poor Reactions →
nielsenhayden.com
That’s assuming we got to page 27. I don’t, always. Nobody does who knows what they’re doing. I frequently see denunciations from writers who say an editor can’t possibly judge their novel from three chapters and an outline. Sure we can, even if the chapters are short and the first one’s atypical. In many cases, three pages are enough. You don’t have to drink the entire carton of milk in order to tell that it’s gone bad. And in any event, three chapters are certainly long enough to tell you whether you want to look at the rest of the book.
Worth the read for all writers — poetry, prose, film/tv, what have you.
Topshop/Topman
announce their fourth flagship store
in the USA at The Grove, Los Angeles to open Spring 2013
On Writing. (A bit long. Sorry.)
I got up this morning, and read the thirty or so questions that people had left in the last 8 hours. And apart from the few that wanted to tell me that, honestly, there’s nothing in the whole world like a photo of a gentleman holding a small yellow chainsaw, most of the rest of them were writing questions, about how you start writing and how you continue, and how you keep going when people criticise you and so on. And I thought, all this is stuff I’ve covered so extensively over on my blog at neilgaiman.com… and 90% of the answers were probably in one post. It was called On Writing.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/02/on-writing.asp
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2004
POSTED BY NEIL AT 8:01 PM
I really don’t want to sit here giving you my life story. It’s boring and too long for me to write or for you to sit and have time to read. I was just told by a graduate school that because of my shabby GPA - a 3.07 - (not my writing sample)that I wouldn’t be admitted to their creative writing program. Anyway, with my writing, it’s just seemed like one thing after another, and I have no one to give me input on any of it since I, quite literally, come from a family of engineers, all very concrete thinkers. My question is this: when do you just give up? I don’t want to but it seems like the only logical thing to do. I’m so tired and frustrated with being deemed a failure. The one week I was actually able to give up writing was the most miserable week of my life. I know you’re busy and I really don’t expect you to answer this email. I just thought it might be nice to talk to someone who might just be able to understand, even if - at this point - I’m just sending a message out into the ether.
Jarett Underwood
I’m not sure what getting into a creative writing program has to do with being a writer. Go and look at Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s list of the 14 things a slush-reader or editor is looking for , and whether you’ve done a creative writing program, have an MFA in writing, or are in fact currently teaching a course in creative writing isn’t on the list.
(For the record, I’ve never been involved in a creative writing program. In my case, that was mostly because I knew I wanted to be a writer, and had enough hubris to know that I’d rather make my mistakes on the job. It was also because I had a vague suspicion that people in authority might suggest that I should write respectable but dull fiction, and then I’d be forced to kill them, and it would all end in tears or in prison. Many of my friends have enjoyed creative writing programs no end. Some of them teach them.)
As for giving up, well, sure, if you want to. Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins. It has no job security of any kind, and depends mostly on whether or not you can, like Scheherazade, tell the stories each night that’ll keep you alive until tomorrow. There are undoubtedly hundreds of easier, less stressful, more straightforward jobs in the world. Personally, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do, but that’s me.
If you want to be a writer, write. You may have to get a day job to keep body and soul together (I cheated, and got a writing job, or lots of them, to feed me and pay the rent). If you aren’t going to be a writer, then go and be something else. It’s not a god-given calling. There’s nothing holy or magic about it. It’s a craft that mostly involves a lot of work, most of it spent sitting making stuff up and writing it down, and trying to make what you have made up and written down somehow better.
I think for me the tipping point was when I was a very young man. It was late at night, and I was lying in bed, and I thought, as I often thought, “I could be a writer. It’s what I want to be. I think it’s what I am.” And then I imagined myself in my eighties, possibly even on my deathbed, thinking that same thought, in a life when I’d never written anything. And I’d be an old man, with my life behind me, still telling myself I was really a writer — and I would never know if I was kidding myself or not.
So I thought it might be better to go off and be a writer, even if what I learned from the experience was that I wasn’t a writer. At least that way, I’d know.
If it’s input you need, find a helpful bunch of likeminded people, either in real life or on the web. And, as mentioned here before, there’s Clarion and Clarion West and Viable Paradise among others for the would-be SF-Fantasy writers. The SFWA has a list of workshops and groups, both virtual and visitable at http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/links-to-writers-workshops/.
It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn’t allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write. Because the rejection slips will arrive. And, if the books are published, then you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will be as well. And you’ll need to learn how to shrug and keep going. Or you stop, and get a real job.
