If I Could Turn Back Time

"In an effort to avoid a mountain of paperwork, two Heavenly office workers send a recently deceased librarian back in time to try to prevent the school shooting that killed her."

So I finished the script in 3 weeks with 87 pages. I then spent the next week or so struggling to get it to 90 pages. Once I hit the magic 90 (most contests and such like won't take a script shorter than 90 pages or longer than 120) I put it up for review on the Zeotrope Virtual Studio. I then tried to promote it on that forum. Apparently I am an evil woman who likes mass murder because I dared to call it a comedy about a school shooting. It might not be funny to everyone else but it has a more lighthearted tone than you think while dealing with the actual shootings serriously. The people who said I shouldn't have even tried to write a comedy about such a thing didn't read it or stopped 33 pages in.

I have had two reviews and those scores are good enough that if I get two more like them the script goes into a database for producers at American Zeotrope and else where to read through. One reviewer didn't like my subject matter but thought I was a talented writer.

I've also had a couple friends read it and give feedback. One is a local independant film director and he had some real good suggestions on how to improve it but overall he liked it. He also called me a talented writer.

Overall I'm feeling positive about this script and my writing in general. I feel like I might actually be able to do this and make a career out of it. It would be great to make my revised dreams come true. (The original dream career and why I'm not chasing that one is an entirely sepperate blog post for some other day when I've imbibed some tasty adult beverages. It is too painful to talk about very much sober.)

I'm making the changes to make it better and it will be submitted the Nicholl Fellowship competition this year. I will probably query some production companies/ management companies with it too. Wish me luck/ pray for the script to find the right hands who know what to do with it.

not another new script

What is it about getting halfway through one script that causes a fully formed idea for another to come bursting into my head? This one sort of scares me but it actually says something important that I think needs to be said today. It deals with school bullying and school shootings, but the weird thing is that it is trying to be a comedy. What the hell? I'm not sure how this will be recieved if it ever sees the light of day. I guess I'm going for the Mel Brooks theory of if you can't laugh at the evil then the evil has won by making the topic too sacred.

I didn't enjoy high school and this will touch on those topics. I've always said I don't agree with those who shot up their schools but I understood where they were coming from. I was in college during the times of the shootings at Springfield and Columnbine happened. So I was close enough in age to remember being the loner in high school and not feeling like I was accepted by the in crowd to understand.

Anyway i need to get back to writing but thought I'd put this out there.

Writing update

So I need to do a rewrite on The Zephyr Adventure (this would make a third draft of the script for those keeping track). I need to do more to motivate my villain and add some conflict.

But in the mean time, I've reserected a script that I had written 8 pages on and then let sit on the hard drive. I am now up to page 45 and still only about half done with the plot. This is a new thing for me. I usually get to page 60 and run out of basic plot so I go back and add filler. I might not have to do much filling with this one. It's a fluffy rom-com. I like writing fluffy stuff.