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With the time for the meeting with one of the judges from the Page Turner screenplay competition set, and with no obstacle preventing me from attending that meeting, the only things left to do were to wait for and review the notes. And as I mentioned in a previous post, I was told to expect a very positive meeting, so I was early awaiting this feedback.

I received the notes on March 7, which gave me 3 full days to soak in the notes and prepare for the meeting on March 10. I planned to have a readthrough of it when I first received them, then take notes to organize my thoughts and talking points so I could be prepared for this conversation.

The notes came in two files, one the general notes on the script as a whole, and the other was the page by page notes. Luckily for me, the page by page notes were mostly just small grammar and formatting issues, easy to correct. The real meat was in the general notes, which turned out to be 7 pages.

I’m going to be sharing the full set of notes I received over the coming weeks, breaking it up into manageable sections for a blog post, starting next week.

Until next time.

Happy New Year!!

When I last left off, I shared that I had to make a decision when I double booked my time to sit in on an interview panel for work, and when I booked a meeting to discuss my script for Dig Down. While this tricky situation wasn’t foreign to me, the outcome was.

I mentioned in my last post that I believed this was a test from the universe: asking me if I really saw myself as a writer. I also said this was one of the easiest decisions I ever made.

Well, when I made it, I fully expected I would need to come up with some excuse to get myself out of the interview panel. Calling in sick was a possibility, I had plenty of time, didn’t do it that often, and another member of the panel had to miss an interview earlier that week. It was early March, so this was a likelihood for this time of the year.

Or, if I felt I couldn’t make myself sound sick, I could always say something went wrong at the house and I needed to address it. My home has a high water table, and I did have some water in my basement, so this wasn’t even a lie.

But then something happened. Something I’m not used to happening when I get myself into these predicaments.

Things just worked themselves out.

The interview I was supposed to conduct-what had been double booked with my meeting for the script consultation, and literally the ONLY thing I had on my work calendar that day-was cancelled. Now, this in all likelihood was because something came up with the candidate and they were no longer able to make the interview, or no longer interested. I honestly don’t remember, because I had a complete interpretation of what had happened.

The universe had tested me. I had passed. And so it rewarded me.

With my decision made, there was no scheduling obstacle to overcome anymore. So it disappeared. I know, I know. This was really because of the candidate.

I just like my version better.

Until next time.

Picking up where my last post left off, I had committed such a careless blunder with my schedule. I had double booked myself with an interview panel I was supposed to sit in on, as well as a phone consultation to go over my script of Dig Down.

I’ve always worked really hard to keep my work and writing life separate. My dream has always been to be a writer, and it was something that I finally realized in 2019 when I published my first book, Dig Down.

At the same time, while I still strive to turn that dream into a career, I have my own career that shoulders the weight of paying the bills until my writing and other pet projects can do so on their own. Its always been important to me to not do anything to jeopardize the career I currently have, because losing it might result in losing both. If I had to find a new job, that would take away from my time to write, and who knows how much a new profession would allow for my passion.

So this was tricky for me, and a difficult situation. I’m not kidding when I say it wasn’t until I wrote this blog post that it even crossed my mind the money I committed to get this phone consultation. At the time, I was thinking I either needed to find a way out of the interview panel, or to ask to reschedule the meeting. In both cases, I knew I’d be coming up with a lame lie that I hope didn’t irritate either my job or the contest judge too bad.

What honestly helped me put things into perspective was the last line of the email that I had shared in the previous post:

‘I’ve attached all the notes and Joe was excited by the script so should look forward to a great call on Friday at 2pm.’

To that point, I was leaning towards taking the call, but it was still a toss up. This one line reminded me of something.

I had submitted my script for Dig Down into the competition for the same reason that I submitted it to an editor when I was recovering from knee surgery. Because I believed in my writing, and I believed in myself as a writer. These are two beliefs I’ve held ever since I was a kid, growing up, writing stories that people wouldn’t see for years, because I was so firm in that belief. These were absolute truths to me.

When I read (and re-read that line) over and over, I saw this double booking for what it was. The universe has given me validation for my belief of being a writer time and again. I got it from the feedback of people I first shared my stories with. I got it from my editor, someone I’d never met or interacted with who could tell just from a few pages I wasn’t like most first time writers. And I get it all the time when people tell me what they enjoyed about my stories. The message from the contest wasn’t just another example of praise for my writing though. It was a test.

It was like the universe was saying “It’s time to put up or shut up. Yeah, you wrote some stories, but your only sacrifice has ever been your free time. What if something you valued was actually at stake? What if you did have to jeopardize the career that allowed for your cushy lifestyle, would you still follow your dreams?”

In short: Do you really see yourself as a writer?

It was the same situation I was faced with: career and dream were fighting for the same time. But with the perspective of this test, the decision was one of the simplest I’ve ever had to make.

I was never going to be on that interview panel.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was on the cusp of making changes to my script of Dig Down based on the first set of notes I’d received from one of the screenplay competitions I’d entered. This didn’t take a backseat, but I decided to hit pause when I was informed I’d be getting my second set of notes from another of the three contests I’d entered.

To give a little backstory on this, the second set of notes would come from the Page Turner Screenplay Competition, which was actually the first of the contests to get back to me. This was the last of the three contests I had entered in January, and the one that I had to think about, because there were several different options for how to enter, including the one I selected, which was to get a live consultation with.

So I was a little surprised when they were the first to reach out to me (though I guess with the entry free associated with this service, I should have expected this). The contest was also really good about giving me updates, and the communication overall was really excellent.

On March 1st, I got an email from them letting me know that the reader was almost done and would have my notes soon. The date they proposed was the following Friday. March 10 would give me time to receive and digest the notes, and since this would be the second contest I’d received feedback from, I could compare the notes to see what specifically might need to be addressed.

I’d responded that the date worked for me, which it did. And here’s where things get a little haywire.

Our emails had stopped on Thursday, March 2nd, and resumed again on Monday, March 6th. Nothing out of the ordinary, definitely not an exorbitant amount of time had passed. The message I received included an apology that I hadn’t received the notes already, but that the reader wanted to look it over with a fresh set of eyes. I had initially noticed I hadn’t gotten the notes the previous week, but had otherwise put it out of my mind (this will be a trend), because I agreed to sit in on an interview panel for a couple days this week, including March 10.

When they asked if Friday, March 10, still worked for me, I immediately put the interview I was scheduled to be part of out of my mind (like I said, it was a trend), and told them the date still worked without checking my calendar. It wasn’t until the next day when I was about to submit a time off request for Friday that I noticed the conflict.

I couldn’t believe I’d done. I guess I should have though. Its always the one time I don’t check something that it comes back to bite me.

At first I thought this might not be so bad. Sure, the consultation and the interview were on the same day, but what were the odds they were at the exact same time. In my case, the odds were absolute. They always are when things are stacked against me.

Then I thought I’d found a reprieve. Both were scheduled at 2, but the contest was located in California. Maybe I was in luck, and 2 for them actually meant 5 for me. I sent an email to ask them, thinking I was stewing over nothing. Like I said, their communication was excellent and very responsive. They had taken into account I was on the east coast, so the 2 was my time. The reader was also in New York, so there’d be no issues there.

Great. Or as Rob would say, “Typical.”

This was like an episode out of one of those old sitcoms, where someone makes plans to date two girls at the same time, and tries to keep both, only to have it all blow up in his face. I was having that same sinking feeling.

Until I read the last line of the email:

“I’ve attached all the notes and Joe was excited by the script so should look forward to a great call on Friday at 2pm.”

I’ll continue this story…next time

I was really excited to get notes on my script for Dig Down. Not only was I getting feedback in a medium that I still felt I was a novice in, a lot of it was also positive. This really helped give me a direction in terms of what I needed to do with my screenplay.

I read through the notes a few times, first just to see everything they had to say, then again to really start to consider the advice, questions and recommendations they were offering. As you could see from the three posts I had broken their notes into, there was a lot to digest.

I knew it was best not to just rush into it and address every note one by one. The notes offered lots of observations, but not all of them were on the same scale. As you saw, some were small grammatical changes, or just a need to explain something a little better. A good number of the notes were just positive: they liked how I had written something.

But there were also critiques that would have an impact on the screenplay as a whole. These needed to be carefully considered. While I agreed with most of them, addressing them potentially meant making big changes to the rest of the script, the way it was presented, or maybe the structure overall. This in itself could negate the need to correct one of the smaller suggestions made in the notes, either by addressing this at the same time, or possibly eliminating the scene where this note occurred.

As an example, one of the notes was that Ruth, and her storyline, almost come out of nowhere. While to me her presence is there throughout, because it was that way in the book, its more natural in literary form than in the screenplay. While the audience for both mediums doesn’t fully comprehend her existence and relevance to the story, the same scene really hits at the pivotal twist in the book, but in the screenplay, she seems to come out of left field.

I think this was a fair point, and agreed that she should be added sooner. But how do you go about doing that? Does Rob have a scene with her earlier in the screenplay? Is there a scene where she’s making calls, or talking to a private eye? Does she interact with other characters? If so, does this new scene introduce new information, or does it repeat something the audience already knows?

You can see how this one change can have a monumental impact on the screenplay. It isn’t as easy as just adding a scene to introduce Ruth and her context to the plot. This potentially means another scene would have to be replaced, but before I could cut it, I’d have to review what other relevant details were imbedded in that scene, and if it could also be incorporated in the change I was making. If I were to add just one scene to establish Ruth that forced me to cut another scene (this is changes to two scenes already), I might have to take other details from the removed scene and find ways to incorporate them naturally in the rest of the screenplay (now potentially three scenes altered, if not more!)

So the first thing I needed to do was rate how big of a revision each note was requiring. This was something I included in the three blog posts, my own notes of what I thought on the feedback. This way, I could not only gauge how much work was required for each note, but also whether or not I agreed with their point. Some notes I thought were self-explanatory, or could be explained with details later in the script. Others I felt they just might not have been grasping the scene (there were some notes involving the veterinarian that made me think this).

In the end, I compiled a shortened list of notes I would address. From them, I rated them into groups, from easy to handle all the way to overhauls of portions of the screenplay. The grammatical errors and formatting notes for scenes I believed would stay in tact were taken care of.

I was contemplating ways to address the more intensive revisions when I hit pause on the process. My second set of notes, this one involving a phone consultation with one of the judges, was coming in. This had been a process that ended up stretching across a couple of weeks.

And I’ll share the backstory to that…next time.

This week will be a quick break from the screenplay updates. They’ll resume next week.

A short update: about a month ago, I had briefly mentioned that while taking time off from screenwriting while waiting to get feedback from some contests I entered, I had listened to an audiobook that gave me an idea for a new story.

As of the first of this month, I have entered into this year’s NaNoWriMo. The idea that I had gotten from that audiobook has festered in my head this whole year, and for the past few months I’ve been outlining like a madman because its a story I want to tell.

Until next week