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So my niece’s birthday party is tomorrow, and since my To Do list is longer than the list of diets I’ve tried over my lifetime, I’m just now getting around to figuring out what to get her.  This was one of those things I meant to do every day for the past two weeks and I just never quite got there.  So, first thing this morning, I’m out surfing Toys R Us online for toys for 2-year-olds and hoping like hell if I find a good one that it will actually be sitting in the store waiting for me when I get there.  A lot of people in my position would just run to the store, grab a present and be done with it.  But this little girl has a very special place in my heart and of course, I want her to love the present Aunt Tina & Uncle Jon got her!  (Yeah, yeah, I was just reminded that Cousin Darian as well as Rusty & Katie–our tabby cats–are giving this too.)  Too bad they aren’t all chipping in on the gift!

I call Roo the little miracle baby.  Her name is actually Megan, but she was born three months early and spent her first three months in an incubator at Phoenix Children’s Hospital (a place that definitely gets my donation dollars!!)  She was soooo tiny when she was born - in fact I have a picture of her next to a dollar bill - and she was no wider than the bill, and the bill went from her head to mid thigh.

I got to be there while my sister was in labor, and this little tiny red bundle was born, and then she stretched out her long skinny little kangaroo legs and I immediately dubbed her “Roo.”  (By the way, if you don’t know who Roo is, you really need to brush up on your Winnie the Pooh! :)  Then for the next three months and even after she was able to come home, she had several of the normal “preemie” problems.  But now, she’s a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed two year old with a constant stream of energy and an even bigger streak of curiosity and creativity to enable her to get into mischief
Now my poor sister and brother in law are in the line of fire, so to speak, but I get to be the Auntie who spoils her, and I’ll most likely be the Auntie who tells her all the stuff her parents won’t when she gets older…lol.  (Shhh!  Don’t tell my sister!)

Anyway, I digress.  Not sure if you’ve looked at Toys R Us or even the toys on Amazon lately but there are enough choices that it makes your head swim.  Not to mention that this little cutie has lots of toys already, so creative gift buying in order.  And unlike her Auntie, she isn’t a hard core tomboy - she’s an equal opportunity girl.  She likes dolls and pink and high heels and dress up as much as she likes trucks and getting dirty.

So after an hour of surfing and reading reviews, I finally narrowed it down to My First Purse, which is a sturdy little purple and pink purse with fun plastic stuff inside like play lipstick and cell phone and keys etc.  and a GeoTrax:  Working Town Railway System which is a durable train and train track that can either be played manually or with a remote control, and makes cool noises that will probably get on my sister’s nerves - tee hee!  And best of all, there are several other sets that will hook into this one like an airport, a lifting barrel loader and other cool stuff.  I’m still wavering, but I guess it will come down to which one is sitting on the shelf when I get to Toys R Us, or worse - if neither is there, I have to start all over!!  Damn - me and my procrastination!
Anyway - once I figure this out - then the actual birthday party is tomorrow.  Party - no problem, throw in family from both sides and a few select friends…and I’m really looking forward to the male review Brit is taking us all to tomorrow night!
I know I should’ve asked this earlier, but does anyone know any great toys for a 2 year old cute & rambunctious girl?

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That is the question.
 

I always had mixed feelings about contests.  Over the years I’ve entered a few.  I’d get good scores, then I’d get the one that always kept me from finaling and getting to an agent or editor’s desk.  I gave up on them, and decided to try my hand at submitting to agents and see where that lead me.
 

Well, it lead me to a thick folder of rejections.  Oh, I’d have a couple of nibbles asking for changes, but I never got that big bite.
 

After a couple years of this, I thought I’d try one more time going through the contest route.  Heck, what did I have to lose, other than some money?  So I tried one more time and entered five contests in over a month.  Hey, the more the merrier.  This time I did my homework.  I checked if each chapter had a score sheet online so I could gage where my entry might fair.  I weeded out the ones where the hero and heroine’s meeting was paramount, because none of my books worked that way.  Next, I checked the agent and editor looking at the final three entries.  I checked their background by word-of-mouth and on the internet.  Then I picked the ones I really, really wanted.  I didn’t want to waste my time and money on a house or agency I didn’t feel comfortable with. 
 

I plopped 5 in the mail to the contests I thought each book had a good chance with and I waited…and waited. 
 

Suddenly, the calls started coming.  Soon a find out that I’ve finaled in all five of the contests I entered.  I was absolutely floored.  The odds were just not in my favor for something like that happening.  Then I realized that many factors were on my side this time.  I did my research, I had more time to work on my craft and I persisted and didn’t give up.
 

And now I’m waiting…and waiting to see if I get another call. J
 

But I’m not going to give up if that phone doesn’t ring.  I’m too damn stubborn.
 

Carol Webb
 

2007 - Emily Finalist for Shrouded in Mystery in Paranormal
2006 - Suzannah Finalist for Shrouded in Mystery in Paranormal
2006 - BEACON Finalist for Shrouded in Darkness in Paranormal
2006 - CTRWA Connections Finalist for Shrouded in Illusion in Paranormal
2006 - 3rd place in VOS’ Hot Prospect Contest for The Long Road Home in Short Contemporary
Two Time Gold Heart Finalist
 

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http://www.glendaleaz.com/events/GlendaleChocolateAffaire.cfm

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 Today’s my day to blog and I haven’t much to say. I missed all the snow. That will teach me to take a nap. Darn. I had to see it all on tv. Well, maybe in another 10 years.  

I still need a subject to write about.  So let’s see, somebody, I think it was Brit, said it might be fun to write a screenplay someday.  I mentioned this to Gordy, and he said to let you read his article on how he starts writing.  I think today is a good day to let him take over my blog. Who knows, we may pick up a tip or two.  And in the end it looks like he does what we as writers all must do, trust our gift and just go for it.

How to Start a Screenplay: Treatment or Free Fall?

By Gordy Hoffman

Starting a screenplay can sometimes be as hard as finishing one. Impatient to pull up to the front door of a classic motion picture, I want to get everything right so quickly. This impatience challenges my trust in the work, the creative process of screenwriting. What exactly does trust mean? If I don’t trust my writing, then what am I? Frightened. This is the battle. If I’m scared that everything I’m typing is worthless, then what? My hands find something else to do. So trust is good and important and essential to beginning this journey, alone, a trip that will eventually take what comes out of you into millions of people. But it’s just you now. And your trust.

Now, does trusting your writing mean sitting down with no ideas, opening a new document, and starting to type? Of course. And no. What I need to do is make a decision and execute. And this decision often comes back to whether I should write an outline or treatment before I start writing my screenplay, or, with a rough idea, a shadowy shadow of something calling from my brain, start writing?

I have done both in the past. When I wrote the first draft of LOVE LIZA, I really had very little idea of where the story was going. I had a few things to start off with, and somewhere I wanted to end up down the road, but that was it. It was terrifying and difficult to remain seated. But the most original characteristics of the screenplay came out of the immediacy of trying to come up with what’s next, with my fingers resting on the keyboard. I became sold on this process. Outlines killed creativity, because writing an outline is not actual screenwriting. It’s outlining.

But then I came to Hollywood and tried to tell executives the little ideas I had. I would very proudly announce an image, a picture in my head, that I knew contained the fire of an entire epic. I was shocked when they asked, “Then what happens?” I didn’t have an answer. Why? Well. BECAUSE I HADN’T WRITTEN IT YET. It seemed like a completely stupid question. What happens? What happens?? Did I say I had a complete screenplay to show you?!

You know the rest. No phone calls and bewilderment and then I found myself in the city of pitches, and starting to flesh out things into 14 page screenplay treatments. I did so, convinced that it could never be that good, that it was forced, and staged, and predictable. I was shocked to find out that it did not destroy my creativity. I was still able to come up with interesting, original things. But deep down I knew. This was still not screenwriting. This was not the art of screenwriting. And I’m right.

So now what was I going to do? What was better? If I was to sit down and spec something out, how was I supposed to go about it? First off, I’m lazy, so having a treatment or an outline sitting next to my laptop to walk me through the first draft is very appealing, despite knowing that the inspiration driving a treatment is different than the juice that comes when writing the screenplay blindly. And I have sat down and written 90 pages, trying to find the story, only to simply start over. This is a lot of work, but I’ve come to recognize that this work is not lost. This is the path. It hurts, it kills, it bludgeons, it fatigues, it flattens, but it’s the road. Believe me.

But what about a heist movie, or a mystery? A thriller with twists? Aren’t movies sometimes puzzles? Can we find this stuff without a plan? Don’t you have to figure this stuff out? Yes and no. Flying by the seat of your pants often produces jaw-dropping turns the audience will never see coming. Why? The writer didn’t. This is the largest reason why studio movies are predictable—-the fabric of the script is shot through with the knowledge of the ending of the story.

If we are to plot out the map of our movie with a treatment, beat sheet or outline, we better be damn sure it’s the real thing. Putting our best foot forward with a very strong outline is only the start of what will end up as a screenplay. Despite putting that golden outline next to our keyboard, we will find that turning it into a screenplay is still, I’m awfully sorry, a lot of work. Scenes that we imagined to be amazing will suddenly be impossible to write. And why does that upset us? Why does that frustrate the writer?

Well, we thought we had a short cut. We thought we were going to sneak into the back of a classic movie. My journey as a writer has been marked by the learning and relearning that all that wood has to be cut out there in the back yard, whether I like it or not. If I wanna do this, I have to swing the axe.

But we know, if we trust our gift, that something beautiful is coming, regardless if we have an outline or not. Perhaps the writers who work from outlines should throw them out. Perhaps the writers who write like the house is on fire, with nary a note within miles, should sit down and write a treatment. Treatments are fun, too.

I do both, switching back and forth when I need to. When I’m writing and I start to feel blindfolded, I turn to jot down a few notes, sketch a few ideas, track a character arc, reorder an act. But when I think I’m caught up in pitches and notes and beat sheets and the safety of plans, I chuck it all and write like I did when I was a kid.

Did we use notes when we were kids?

About the Author

Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA, Gordy Hoffman has written and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. He made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW, which world premiered at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival. He is also the founder of the BlueCat Screenplay Competition. Dedicated to develop and celebrate the undiscovered screenwriter, BlueCat provides written screenplay analysis on every script entered. In addition, Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering personalized feedback on their scripts through his consultation service, www.screenplaynotes.com. For more articles by Gordy on screenwriting, visit www.bluecatscreenplay.com.

I hope you enjoyed reading Gordy’s article. Check out his contest. Great prize for the winner! And BTW, Brit anything sound famiiar? Did you ever pitch a story without having it written first?

Cheers,

Bev

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Let it snow!  A memorable past couple of days!  Winter wonderland!  Has this weather been great or what?!  Snow topped cacti…golf was cancelled.  These are the headlines.
 

Just our luck this happened when my husband’s sister Judy came for a visit.  She and her husband Louie live about an hour from Chicago and the last thing they wanted to see was snow.  They arrived on Wednesday, and I immediately took off for the butterscotch-girls-do-Tucson event.  I didn’t ask, but I believe my husband stopped to buy a honey baked ham and took them straight home after dropping me off.   
 

The next day, I had them meet me in town for lunch and I took them on a mini tour of Cave Creek.  Thank goodness, because winter came to Arizona the next day.  And wouldn’t you know…today it’s sunny again, so the drive to the airport was lovely. 
 

The weather aside, our visit was great!  Of course, I planned to eat out every night so I wouldn’t have to cook.  And just in case that plan went awry, Mike bought a new grill to use.  He’s the grill-cook ever since I tried to burn down the house about twenty years ago with a grill. 
 

He was so proud,  He found a huge grill at the best sale price, and he didn’t even complain (much) about putting it together.  The rain nixed using the grill. 
 

By the last night it became clear I’d have to cook…and I hadn’t shopped.  Yeah, let it snow.  Snow ice cream makes a good meal.

Brit - who also had a story due in the middle of this!

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