January Be Gone...

...Lee over at The Light It Hurts is thrilled to report in his recap of January that he: increased his blogging thricefold (is that even a word?), redesigned his blog, moved to a new abode, paid his bills (I think that's what he meant), and has been to the gym a lot and now looks pretty good naked...all in all, a pretty good month by his estimate. But he remains down on his writing, and by that, I presume his screenwriting.

What does it mean to be down on your writing? I read it so often out there, the bitching... moaning... kevetching that either your writing's not good enough or you're not writing enough or something's not working or clicking or whatever - what are you people looking for? What are you expecting to happen?

I only ask because most of the complaining isn't accompanied by a reason for you to be bitching, like - an agent refused to take you on as a client...or, the show rejected your pitch...or, the studio/company passed on your script...or, you didn't make the finals of the screenwriting competition ...or even your spouse or best friend read your script and thought it sucked...none of that. Just complaining...

Well I've got news for you...most of us, even those who get paid for it, think our writing sucks. Or it isn't good enough. Or that it could be better. It's normal to feel that way. And if you're writing scripts as a hobby, fair enough...bitch and complain but state up front that you don't really expect anything to come of it. But if you are writing scripts to break into the film or tv biz...to get 'produced'...then shut up and write. And then get your stuff to into the hands of people that can at least give you a legitimate reason to bitch and complain.

If you are a regular reader of any of the blogs on the sidebar you already know all the rules and the do's and don't's, you know it takes hard work and disipline and smarts and yes, talent. But if you're just measuring your abilities by what you and only you see on the page, you're going to be down on your writing most of the time. Get it out there...solicit feedback...welcome the critiques...make it better...move forward....and hopefully upward and onward.

Rant over. Sorry.

My January was pretty uneventful. I did, however, hit 50 blogs linking here and had almost 5,000 visitors this month which was a little wild (thanks to Hart)...and though it's nothing when compared say, to the Craig Mazin's of the world (he recently stated he regularily hits 40,000 hits a month)...it's not bad when I consider I've told next to nobody about this blog. People have just found it.

And there's been several lengthy visits...one in particular from New Zealand, who over the course of past several days has spent hours and hours at Uninflected wading through the archives right from the first post to the present. I observed this in a bemused state of wonderment...who is this person? Why are they reading eveything? What are they getting out of it? Is it someone I know (I doubt it)? They're back again...why? At any rate...hello New Zealand person! Hope you enjoyed the sights...drop us a comment if you can.

So that's it...yes I'm still a little cranky and it's ungodly cold and I'm glad to see January behind us. Oh, and my writing sucks.


p.s. this post was what we in the directing biz call a 'oner before lunch'...as in, 'there's only enough film in the mag for one take and it's almost lunch so you get no rehearsal and no edits, just one shot and that's it' kinda post

p.p.s. in no way was this a slag on Lee...he merely provided the inspiration