Craigslist and the art of frustration

So, I hate to complain about the writing world because every author knows it is an unpleasant place at best.  This is exemplified by the complete evil that I see on craigslist for writing gigs.

I was on craigslist looking for work, because apparently when you work you get money and that is important for eating and paying rent.  Anyway, something caught my eye for the first time, the link for writing gigs.

“Helloooooo…” I said to myself and eagerly clicked the little blue phrase.  What I found beyond the now purple words was complete insanity.  Is the world crazy? Most of the posts were for “co-authors” who were expected to do all of the work for half of the profits.  When it wasn’t something like that, it was someone who wanted a signed non-disclosure agreement and a time-line for writing on a subject that they would not reveal, and those were the paid gigs…

I totally understand that it is craigslist, and that I am as yet an unknown author, but give me a break.  The rest of the world doesn’t know what we go through.  There’s the constant rejection that we all take in stride as part of our carreer, there is the sense of inadiquacy that we have to squash almost every time we sit at the keyboard or pick up a pen, and that doesn’t even cover the fact that there are so many internet preditors and vanity presses that want to make us victims or make an easy buck off of our hard work.

I am well aware that the people who posted ads for a writing workhorse will likely never see this post, but I really needed to get this little frustration out of my psyche before I begin my writing for the evening.  So take this for what it is, a rant.

Neglect and the art of playwriting

I have been neglectful in my blogging duties, but I do have an excuse.  I have discovered a new and wonderful world called script writing.  At first I was skeptical, unsure if I could ruthlessly hack out flowery prose in favor of dialogue and stage direction, and though I am far from proficient at this point, the whole practice is becoming more familiar.

It was akin to trying to draw with my left hand at first.  I adapted a few of my existing short stories, hacked everything that wasn’t essential to the plot and boiled it down to a concentrated version of what I had before. The result? Crap.

This was all brought on by an offer to collaborate on a musical that a friend has been trying to get on to paper for a long time.  I am a big fan of collaboration, it makes my life a lot easier with the correct co-author.  The fact that my collaborator is an extremely attractive actor who is also attracted to me had no small part to play in the agreement, however the plot of the play is also really amazing and the underlying message is definitely going to resound with audiences.

So with that, I decided it was time to figure out just what I had gotten myself into.  Google is an invaluable ally when you are trying to do something that you have never attempted before.  I first started to read about writing plays in general, sticking mainly to websites that professed to be penned by actual playwrites.  It’s very easy to tell if someone is an actual published playwrite or if they are just saying that they are, their diction is different, they use jargon of the business so fluently that you get confused.  Playwriting 101 was where I started, and thank the muses that Jon Dorf linked all of the jargon to an appendix of definitions.

Anyway, I read through that page and then a few others that weren’t all that great.  I was about to give up and just start reading scripts when I found something truly interesting.  Celtix is an open source software suite that has pretty much everything anyone would ever need for pre-production work on plays and movies.  The software itself is open source, so if you are proficient in coding and programming (which I am not) you can customize it.

Now that I have this software, I figure I can safely go out into the world of plays and figure out what makes them work.  I have read plays before, enjoyed them thoroughly, but I’ve never looked at them with the critical eye of someone who intends to make something of the same calibre.

It’s a brave new world, and putting script writing on top of fiction writing, some may say that I am almost totally insane.  Those people are completely correct.  What author isn’t just a little bit insane, save those who are completely nuts?  We have a drive, and we have a creative spirit, it keeps us going.

You see it time and time again, authors tell you that they can’t imagine their lives if they didn’t put words on a page in a pretty way.  I don’t think I need to rehash the old adages here, there are hundreds if you want to go look for them, and mine would likely pale in comparison.  Suffice to say that I suffer the same affliction with a little mania and some scattered focus.  I need to experiment as well as write, so I am going with playwriting for now, it’s new enough that I feed my curiosity, but familiar enough to not through me off the deep end.

I am still going to write fiction, I promise (for those of you who enjoy my writing.)  I am still working on a novella that will be ready to send out for rejection letters (and hopefully one acceptance letter) soon.

Initialization

My first post on my sparkling new blog.  How exciting, well it would be if it wasn’t 5:24am, but I really have to concede a nod for insomnia, it has a particular way of moving me in a forward direction.  If I’m not sleeping I might as well be doing something.  Thus the blog comes into existence from the infinite black pit of internet abyss.

My plan, however ill fated it may be, is to garner more recognition for my writing abilities through writing on the internet about various interesting tidbits of randomness that flit through my consciousness.  Yes, I am well aware of the vast selection of complete crap that has littered the internet, which is where the “ill fated” statement comes in, but there is always hope that my witty reparte and overuse of $5 words (and run-on sentences) will bring more attention my way.  Whatever the case, if you are reading this post, then I have succeeded in some small way.

I do share many of the quirks of other authors, I have named my muses, I refer to my dog as if he were a person, and I am apparently overfond of commas.  I go through bouts of writers block and I have days where the words come so easily that I write thousands upon thousands of words in one day.

As for what I write, well that is something of an enigma.  I like to think that my focus is on dark and high fantasy, but I have been known to write a pretty decent mystery, fluffy chick-lit, and even erotica.  To be honest, what I am writing at any given time is heavily dependant on which muse with whom I am on speak terms, or which unfinished draft I happen to see first.  Once I am a fully published novelist, I will worry about genre, but at this point I don’t think there is any need to put myself in a box creatively… I’ll leave that to agents and editors.