Friday, December 18, 2009

Busy night last night

First there was the office holiday party, for which i had to remove everything on my desk to make it a food table (all recently put back together this morning). Shared a couple glasses of wine with bosses, talked to some colleagues. They invited Writress as well which was nice of them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stick around for all of the food because my college alumni network set up an event last night as well, in which some alum actors were reading work by alum writers for workshopping purposes, and they were reading pages from my webseries.

The event was hosted by an alum in her husband way out by Malibu, so it took a while to get there, but their place was really nice. The husband is a very prominent screenwriter. I won't say who he is, but unless you're living in a cave in Afghanistan you've seen at least a couple of his movies. The cave-dwellers may have only seen one. They had this amazing screening room/home theater set up where we met, and the screenwriter and his wife were very welcoming, made us fresh popcorn with their popcorn maker, and listened into the readings and gave great notes. Makes me wish I had a better sample read instead of my foul-mouthed web series.

Tonight I'm having a "last night in town" dinner with Writress, drinking some coffee, then going to a very late screening of Avatar in IMAX 3D. I've been avoiding spoilers as much as possible, so I'm excited to see it.

Then tomorrow morning I'm finishing up all my packing, heading to the airport, and flying out to Boston. Looking forward to sleeping in a lot for the next couple weeks. That and seeing family and friends.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Glad people are flakey

We had this big amazing holiday dinner last night at my apartment, and everyone brought something. I made Wassell, this traditional hot holiday cider, and the Writress made home-made lasagna (and scored about a zillion girlfriend points in the process).

I can't wait to just go home and eat leftovers and relax tonight, so I'm very glad that the person I'm supposed to meet for drinks tonight had to reschedule. I'm going to go home and get my comfy on, and it'll be brilliant.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Story-crack

I'm a story junkie. Ever since I was a kid, I've always loved telling stories, being told stories, reading great stories, and watching great movies and TV.

Then came the video games. Specifically, RPG's. Even more specifically, Bioware RPG's. That company makes story writing the very most important element of their work, which is why their games always elicit great joy in me.

Case in point, I got a copy of Dragon Age: Origins when I was shopping on Cyber-Monday and got a great deal. This past weekend went to playing that game with the Writress. While it is technically a one-player game, you spend most of the time making choices, and choosing dialogue. These are things you can do with a friend or two, and the game is engaging to watch. We're playing this great choose-your-own-adventure with awesome cause-and-effect stuff going on, and it's just great.

I call it "story-crack" because it's so addictive and fun for story freaks like me and the Writress. It's a rainy day here in Los Angeles, and LA's version of winter has settled in so it's a chilly high of 55 degrees. I was gonna have drinks with an agency assistant/aspiring writer tonight, but I'm postponing them because all I wanna do is get comfy with the Writress and kill darkspawn. She was about to text me that all she wanted to do tonight was that as well when I sent her the message. We're very in sync like that, which is why she's great.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Yep, getting sick

I think I was also sick a year ago. I blame the airplanes.

There's this big Junior Hollywood party tonight that I could be going to. It's right near my apartment and everything. But I don't see the upside in paying $30-40 when it's a cash bar. I won't be making that many useful new connections. I have a girlfriend, so I don't need to go to these events to get laid.

I need to be at work early in the morning, so I think instead I'm going to go home, make some soup, and watch Colbert while doing my laundry. Is it sad that I'm getting excited for this?

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Pitched my new idea last night

My writing group has the advantage of being able to pull from alumni to speak at panels and give ideas. Last night I was able to pitch my half hour sitcom idea to a comedy exec from ABC and a writer from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia."

I've pitched before, a bit, but have been on few official, in-office pitches. I didn't do much planning, really just beefed up my character bios and went through it in that way. To be frank, I was kind of winging it.

And the first reaction I get from the ABC guy is, "Very well presented, I liked the structure of your pitch." The conversation then steered into notes on the idea itself, which were very helpful, especially since I'm approaching this as someone who thinks like a one hour writer, not a sitcom writer.

It's just funny that I got a note praising my preparedness when I was pretty sure I was under-prepared.

I think what it really comes down to is whether or not you can speak clearly about a subject in a room. If you're writing a script, you should know it well enough to not really need to read from a crib sheet in giving your presentation.

Hopefully this means I'll be good at pitching. It's a necessary skill that a lot of writers either don't have, or struggle to develop.