The (supposed) moral implications of selling children according to libertarians.
Having said that much, I’m sure you know exactly what you’ll find at the other end of that link.
Reviews for Child of Fire, part 9
StandardThis time I have some interesting ones, but they’re still… Behind the cut! Continue reading
Quote of the day
StandardThis is a long one, from an interview with Terry Rossio, one of the highest-paid screenwriters working today, and the man who runs the Wordplay site, which is full of writerly advice. I learned a lot on the Wordplay message boards, and in the columns, and I learned a lot from this interview (even though I’m supposed to be MAN BITES WORLD.
Anyway, this is about screenwriting, naturally, not writing books, but I think it’s pertinent:
JRM (interviewer): How did you break in, and how did you come to be where you are now?
Terry Rossio: I’m going to try to not give the usual boilerplate answers in this interview, and that means not going along with false presumptions, no matter how seemingly benign. The question about breaking in seems perfectly legit, but really it’s not. A writer must create compelling work, and then try to sell it. Once sold, the writer has to do the same thing again. It’s really not true that the writer ‘breaks in’—that’s an artifact of the belief that the person is being judged, not the work, and also of the belief that there is an inside and an outside, which I don’t think exists. There are too many screenwriters out there with only a single credit for there to be an inside, and too many writers on the outside making sales, to too many markets which are either new, changing, or undefined.
In truth buyers are just not that organized, your buyer is not my buyer, or in some cases, you can become your own buyer. Courtney Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award this year for best screenplay for Frozen River, and she’s never sold a screenplay. Is she on the inside or the outside? In truth, anyone, at any time, can come up with South Park or Superman or Sandman, and that’s all that matters.
And I can’t resist adding this one:
Screenwriters are the Charlie Browns of Hollywood, and everyone else holds the football.
I recommend reading the whole interview. Yeah, it’s a little long, but the stuff on constructing a story is wonderful
Remembering 2009 as it should be remembered
StandardBy the worst movie of the year!
It played in four theaters, and I’m told the distributor asked the theater owners to burn the prints so they wouldn’t have to pay to have them shipped back.
Here’s the trailer, which I imagine was supposed to interest viewers instead of drive them, laughing, to other theaters.
“They’ve got, uh, printers in the basement you can use.”
Public Access TV would be a step up for these guys.
New morning, new year
StandardThis past year saw a lot of changes for me. Child of Fire (Amazon.com | Indiebound.org) came out, obviously, which is a goal I’ve been working toward for a long, long time.
But I also went through a round of major revisions on Game of Cages (Amazon.com | Indiebound.org) which was extremely challenging and made me question myself and my actual writing/career plans. I went to San Diego Comic Con and endured the press of a hundred thousand people. I did face-to-face interviews. I did a signing.
Basically, I came out of my shell (a little). I can’t say I liked it much, but I’m willing to do what I have to. Let’s call it a year of personal growth opportunities (translation: I was pushed into a lot of uncomfortable situations).
One thing I didn’t do, which I’d planned to do, was steal time from my schedule for exercise. I’m not any bigger than I was at the start of the year, but I’m holding steady at a point I don’t want to be in. More on that later.
One thing I learned that I didn’t expect was that I don’t read fast enough to be a writer. It’s not just that I take forever to do my research, I take forever to do my revisions, too. I only read 15 books a year.
It’s untenable and has to change. I’ve already started working on this, but I’ll have to put more effort into it this year.
And, since so many others are doing it: Ten years ago, I was working for Children’s Hospital in Seattle (temping, actually), while they stocked up on medical supplies in anticipation of Y2K. In the years since, I tried to move to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting, ditched that idea. I tried my hand at low-budget filmmaking but found I wasn’t suited for it. I started writing novels and found success. My family came damn close to bankruptcy because of health care issues, but we came through it, stronger than ever.
And of course my son was born. I don’t talk about him too much here for his privacy’s sake, but he changed my whole life; I remember the time before he was born as though it had been lived by a different person.
New morning, new year. I’m going to start working on book 3 now.