One Month!

It sounds cliche, but it really does just seem like yesterday I was starting film school. And now, there's one month until I graduate. It's insane!

So, I haven't updated in a long time, but last post, I was excited and looking forward to something cool. Well, that something cool happened. All of us writers got to go to LA in May to do pitch meetings and meet with alums and industry people. It was so great to learn from these amazing people and meet so many new friends. We even met with the screenwriter of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" remake, Eric Hesserier, and Alan Ball, FSU alum, and Oscar winning screenwriter of "American Beauty," and creator of "True Blood" and great advice-giver extrordinaire. We also got to meet one of the execs at Bad Hat Harry and a writer from LOST, Melinda Hsu Taylor. I freaked out. Only a bit.

And by a bit, I mean A TON! I thought I was gonna pee my pants.

Anyway, it was wonderful, and it just made me really excited to get out to LA and work. All of my closest friends from film school are moving out there, and so is Mike, and it's just going to be a great time with incredible opportunities.

Today, I workshopped my last piece of writing for film school! And it's all just clicking that it's pretty much over! Now, the only work I have yet to do is reading other material and giving my classmates notes.

It's all insane and incredibly sad and crazy, because I feel like I've been in film school forever, but it also feels great. I've learned so much about screenwriting, and I really feel prepared and excited to go off on my own into Hollywood! But then again, I know I'll never be alone in the industry with all my friends.

Awww. Cheesy, I know. But true.

So, in one month, I'll be off on my new journey. I'm looking for internships and applying for part-time jobs and internships right now. So, wish me luck!

To be continued...

Just a Thought...

I'm working on the second draft of my fourth Film School script, and when I think back to a year ago, and everything I didn't know about screenwriting that I do now, I feel so lucky and humbled for everything I've learned from all my amazing professors and classmates. I truly, truly love it, and I truly, truly wouldn't be anywhere without them.

If anyone ever asked me if they should go to Film School, I wouldn't hesitate a second. And if they ever asked me where they should go, I'd tell them here. Because there's so much more to Film School than learning how to write a script. I've gotten a second family, full of writers and filmmakers, and I know that we'll work together (and do crazy, weird things together) forever.

So, if anyone reading this knows anyone who wants to go to Film School, or wants to go themselves, that's my pitch. I've never made a better decision.

More features, more pitching!

We're in the second week of our second intensive for the semester. Last week, we did more mock pitches, and we have another tomorrow, where we're pitching all new stuff-- new ideas we haven't written yet.

I've finished the first draft of my 10th feature, and I feel really happy with it. It's a comedy, and there isn't much that I have to change in it. It made people laugh, which makes me really happy. I'm really excited about how my friends felt about it, and I can't wait to finish it so when I move to LA, I can pitch it for real.

This semester is almost over, and it's absolutely insane! I'm almost done with Film School, and I feel like I just got here!

Hopefully I'll have some really exciting news about the summer semester coming soon. I can't wait to spend this summer making connections with all of the alums out in LA.

Anyway, I'm super busy with intensives and teaching, but it's all going wonderfully.

Pitching and Features!

This semester, I have a Professional Development class, which is preparing me for Hollywood. We do a lot of brainstorming and developing ideas that we can pitch in the future. Right now, we're doing practice pitches. They're really nervewracking, because we're in a room alone with a person, but we're being video recorded, and the rest of our class and our professor is watching a live stream in the Writer's Room downstairs.

I've gone yesterday and today, and although I've been super nervous beforehand, once I've gotten in the room, I didn't feel nervous anymore. Pitching is actually kind of fun, believe it or not.

What we do is go in and talk a bit about ourselves and ask what the person wants to hear and then we go into some of our movie ideas. Some of the pitches last ten minutes and some just a few minutes. We have 30 minutes total in the room, so we do whatever we need to do to fill up that time. The person will ask questions sometimes, and we have to work to just move it along and tell them as much as we can about our projects we're pitching.

So, we'll do these mock pitches for about a week or two, and then we'll be pitching to some industry professionals, just for practice. I'm excited.

We also have a feature class, and we have our intensive class next week for that, so I'll be writing a lot of pages. I have about 25 pages so far on my new script. I'm excited to keep working on it.

This weekend, we get to help with interviews for incoming students. I'm really excited, because I was on the other side of this twice, and I'm just happy to meet these people and see what it's like to be on this side of the room.

This semester is going by super fast, and it's crazy, because that means there's only one to go after this until graduation! Eek!

The Beginning of the End...

...of the semester, that is.

We only have two weeks left of class, and it's winding down quickly..

The other day I sat and thought about how much I've written this semester, and I realized it's been a lot.

My first draft of my feature was 140 pages, and I rewrote basically the entire thing. I cut it down to 122, though, and I know I can cut some more out of it, so I'm right on for page length. I simplified it a lot, and I'm very excited about it.

Then I did a rewrite of my script that was 120 pages, and I had to rewrite a lot of scenes in that, and I cut it down to 104 pages. I'll add a few more in this final rewrite before it's due on the 9th, but that's perfect length for me, too.

So maybe I've done more cutting than writing!

Well, not really, but it seems like it. It's a joint process I guess.

Anyway, I've done all that, plus D1 revisions (which are short, but still...) and I've written a novel on my own. I'm around 1300 words from my 50,000 word NANOWRIMO goal, and I'm very excited. I've never written this much in my life, and I love it. I'm really happy.

This semester's been great. I think I'm coming out of it with a lot of really good stuff.

I love my revision of Beyond the Bookshelf and I can't wait to send out query letters to producers and send the script to contests over Christmas break. I feel really strongly about it, and I feel like I should get the ball rolling soon. Because why not? So wish me luck that someone will at least want to read it.

Fingers crossed.

But yeah, we're really winding down. I'm trying to finish all of my drafts this week, because Mike is coming on Tuesday! So I'll have that whole week that he's here to just hang out.

And then after that, at the very end of the semester, is the D1 screening! I haven't watched any of the edited final products, so I'm really excited to see them. It's going to be super weird! But I'm really happy. It should be a lot of fun.

But anyway, my brain and eyes are fried a little from looking at the computer screen all day. But that's what I'm up to now.

In worse news, it's been nearly one year since I went to London. How did that happen?

Writing!

So, I haven't updated in a while, but I've been pretty busy. Mostly with writing, which totally makes sense, seeing as I'm a writer and all.

But we finished our second intensive week for our features. I've done a whole first draft of my feature, and now I'm working on editing it. I'm really simplifying and tightening up the story, making the characters stronger, and shortening it. I'm working in a science-fiction, dystopian world, so my first draft ended up really being about the world. Now I get to take a bunch of stuff out and have my second draft be what the movie is really about: the characters and the adventure they go on.

I'm really excited for the changes I'm going to make. So that's what I'm working on now.

I'm also working on revising my feature from last semester, Beyond the Bookshelf. I'm really, really stoked to be working with that story again, as I was from the beginning. I'm roughly half-way through the script, and I've edited it down so much and simplified so much and made the characters stronger, and I really, really love it. I'm super excited about finishing it.

My original goal for that script was for it to be around 110 pages, because it's a children/family movie, and it was originally 120 pages. Now, it's at around 108, which is perfect. I'm so excited. But see, that's how much I simplified it. And I'm not even done yet!

I'm also working on my novel for National Novel Writing Month. I'm at more than 18,000 words, and 34 single-spaced pages, which is really amazing to me. It's more prose than I've ever written in my entire life. I tried to write a novel in high school, but never got very far, so it's always been something I've wanted to do. And now I'm doing it.

It was really quite difficult to get into a certain writer's voice right away, because I've gotten so used to writing screenplays. It was also strange, because screenplays are so structured, and novels can really be any possible way, completely free-writing, with no particular structure.

But now I've really gotten the hang of it. I've gotten to an exciting part, and I feel like I'm just cruising along. All of the set-up is done, and now I just have the exciting stuff to deal with. And I've really reached a stride in my writing, and I feel like I've finally gotten my writer's voice back.

Hopefully, when I'm done with the novel, I can edit it and make it great and self-publish it on Amazon. That would be awesome.

But, yeah, a lot of writing. D1s are almost over, and that's been really cool. Teaching's still great. I only have two more lessons to teach. It's quite mad. This semester just blasted by. It's been really amazing and really helpful, though. I've learned loads.

I'm off to the set of my D1 that's filming this week at 1:30. It's a drama, and the house they're filming in is really pretty, and the director is super excited about making it, and I'm just really stoked to see how it turns out.

The Best Kind of Busy

This past week has been my busiest week since D1s. I swear. It still wasn't quite as busy as D1s, and definitely not as labor intensive, but I did so much writing this week!

I've been trying to finish my new feature, as well as outline my feature I'm revising and making my revision plan. It's been busy, but incredibly fun and helpful.

Today, I finished my newest feature! It's 149 pages, so I have to cut around 30, but it's great to have everything down on the page. Finally. I wrote 22 pages today to finish it up. It was marvelous.

I really don't think there's a better feeling than finishing the first draft of a screenplay. It's so great.

But anyway, my semester has finally kicked up and I'm busy nearly every day. It's really, really great because I finally feel like I'm in school again!

I have my first Director's Prep for D1s on Thursday, and then I'll do the final rewrite for that script with our professors' notes, and they'll be filming Sunday. I'm so excited!

We also had all of our students turn in their papers, so that grading party is coming up quick.

Anyway, I'm super busy, but I love every minute of it.