Swamped!

So, last month - doesn’t seem like that long ago - CE over on the Inside Pitch blog announced he was throwing in the towel. He had a great blog, it really took you inside the walls of a major agency, and he often answered questions and discussed story. But CE said maintaining the blog was one more thing on his already very busy schedule (he’s a newlywed - actually, I think he started the blog around the time he got married). I wanted to beg him to keep the blog going - but I knew exactly why he stopped blogging.

My blog is often the very last thing on my never-ending to do list.

After CE announced he would no longer be adding to his blog, I ran over here and posted something. And then I posted a couple more entries. I want to keep this blog going and make regular entries.

Then a million things hit at the same time. I had to pinch hit on a panel, I went to the Fango Convention, I had to do my 2 day class, I had a bunch of friends in from out of town, a last minute article for a European screenwriting mag, I had a friend’s birthday party, I had 2 script rewrites to do, I had this insane Sequel Project to work on, and I wrote a new tip that ran on Thursday (yesterday - if you missed it, wait until it reruns next year). The Blog? Not even on my radar.

Now, the amusing thing about all of this is that during this time I also posted on a bunch of message boards answering questions. That’s kind of a coffee break thing that I do when I need to get away from the rewrites or class prep stuff. So why can’t this blog be that coffee break thing? Well, writing in the blog is *work* and a responsibility... but answering someone’s question is kind of reactive.

And one of the problems with *this* blog is that the contents seem to be informational in some way - every time I’ve done a "dear diary" entry bitching about something that happened in my life, the response has been "We don’t care, tell us about screenwriting". That means I have some sort of requirement to be on topic...

And I already have a website that is on topic.
I write articles for magazines that are on topic.
I teach a class that is on topic.

I am not UNK ! His blog has some of the best screenwriting articles I read on it.

So, folks, screw you.
Yes, screw you.

Sometimes this blog will be about screenwriting, sometimes it will be about getting stuck in traffic on the 405 when I’m *not* going to a meeting. And sometimes I’m going to grab some answer I gave someone from some other message board and paste it here (copyright issues be damned). And sometimes there may be a big gap between posts (so, what else is new). But I’m hoping that taking away the on topic requirements will help me spend more time posting here... and maybe that will turn into more stuff about screenwriting.

So, be prepared for some freakin’ boring dear diary entries about what I had for lunch.

NEW FORMAT:

Today's lunch: Carrot Cake at Starbucks.

Movies: A Simple Plan on DVD - a film so well made it's almost impossible to watch. I squirm and cringe and cover my eyes and just want to turn it off to escape.

Pages: Finished the Studio Sequel project.

- Bill