A couple items: I got very nice note from the editor of the Chariton Review wanting to print a short story I submitted called “How to Write Your Own Biography.” I’ve been writing a treatment for new media project and last week I got a letter saying I’d soon be receiving a contract for an actual script. … Read more
(As promised at the end of my last post.) Much of the story we pitched for ADMISSIONS is built around three families — all New Yorkers, but with different backgrounds and socio-economic resources — vying to get their children into Ivy League colleges — and making some questionable moral and legal decisions in their pursuits. Last year, … Read more
Happy weekend, Ya’ll! So this week: I got an email from a screenwriting competition — through the Writers Guild, so a pretty good one — saying I had progressed to the next round. Yay. Then I did a pitch for a big job, and I didn’t get it. Sigh. Then I got an email saying … Read more
So, I did a little radio interview this week for a show called Let’s Get Reel on KPC Radio — which is the station run by Pierce College. “Reel” is like “film reel”– clever, right? We get to do that for a few more years I guess, until film reels are no more… It was … Read more
This Is Us Research… I have always loved to watch TV, and read books. Yet both of these activities tend to be tinged with guilt. Probably because, for most of my childhood, whenever I was doing these things, I was avoiding other things I was supposed to be doing, practicing piano, doing my homework, sleeping. As time … Read more
Because this blog is sadly neglected of late, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m teaching a screenwriting class this term. A friend alerted me to the opportunity around the same time that I was leaving my other day job, and it seemed like a message from the universe saying things would be all right. That … Read more
Everybody wants in. How can you tell? They opened the submission gates this morning, and the portal, WithoutaBox, is completely overwhelmed. I have the submit page open in two browsers and the windows are blank, trying to load, on both. Paul is texting our friend Nikki, and the situation is the same all around. The … Read more
Yesterday at the office we got a call from the mother of a recently admitted student. He wants to major in Philosophy, but isn’t ready to commit to law school yet, having just graduated from high school. The mother wondered if philosophy majors got jobs after graduating, and wondered what kind of jobs they got. … Read more
Sea of chairs.Standing around in our spots. Time feels long and a little boring, but not unpleasant.Tomorrow, when the kids (graduates!) walk off the stage, my job is to give them a gift. No one knows what the gift will be. It’s a mystery.But probably it will be a pen.
I’ve been gluttonously, without any self discipline whatsoever, re-reading The Hunger Games. Beyond the narrative, it makes me think of how we first-worlders, like the citizens of the Capitol in the book, are capable of cocooning ourselves in our own concerns, which of course are petty in the eyes of half the world. And it … Read more