funk.

So I haven't posted much about writing recently, because I haven't been doing much writing.

Call it the post-Nicholl crash.

A few months ago, I was riding high. I had a script that made the semifinals in the Nicholl Fellowship, for which I got about a dozen requests from managers. I didn't even send it to them all -- I was being picky.

I had also given the script to some connections in the business (mostly development people that I work for) who had expressed interest in reading it, so that they could pass it on to people (agents/managers) they know. One got me a meeting with a manager, which went really well; the manager said he was a big fan, he said his boss would read it within a week, he said there'd be a followup meeting with him and the boss.

They seemed like the perfect company for me -- they are growing, they are more interested in developing writers than glomming onto projects as producers, they seemed to want to work with me.

I thought I had it made. I thought I was on my way to representation. I had two pretty good scripts, a supernatural thriller I was finishing, and someone's else's script that I'd done a low budget rewrite on that actually wound up with my name on it too, and which is also out there.

While I waited, I did another pass on my supernatural thriller, got notes, polished it up, got more notes, polished it up again.

And waited.

Nothing.

Oh, not entirely nothing. The manager I met with vaguely touches base from time to time; I sent him the supernatural thriller. His boss hasn't read my Nicholl script yet.

The development people I work for keep promising to read my script someday.

The other managers? Black hole.

Plus it's winter, so the business is in its yearly lull. Everyone is getting ready for Christmas, and then Sundance. Things aren't going to really pick up for about 9 weeks.

In Hollywood, two months of nothing happening is nothing. But then again, two months is everything.

Lessons I have learned:

-- If you are an unproduced writer, don't assume anything. Or get too picky.

-- Just because people ask for your script, doesn't mean they will actually read it. Which, you know, sucks. I'd rather have someone tell me up front that they don't have time, rather than request it and ignore it (and apologies to anyone whose script I've ever requested and then ignored).

-- I suck at marketing myself. Really. The idea of cold-calling a million agencies and trying to get one to agree to read my script makes my skin crawl. Especially since now I fear that the scripts will just disappear into the same black hole they did at the management companies that wanted to read it.

-- If you are an unproduced writer, you need a script that is either jaw-droppingly amazing or which is so commercial that it will probably sell. Otherwise it will be met with an apathetic yawn.

Plus, the funk has soured me on both my scripts. If I thought the supernatural thriller was a home run, I'd be out there pushing it, but now I'm just tired of it, and can't conceive of anyone actually paying me for it. Which is also feeding my enormous reluctance to jump onto the whole call-a-million-agencies treadmill.

I just want to write. Dealing with people is not my skillset. So you, I know, I'm screwed. Unless it's a skillset I develop.

Right now I'm in too much of a funk to do any skillset developing.

So things percolate along. There are a dozen or so copies of Nicholl script floating around out there somewhere. A half-dozen copies of my supernatural thriller are in the hands of people in which something could happen with it.

Unfortunately, they are all Christmas shopping, or preparing to ski in Aspen.

Meanwhile? Aside from making a living, I'm trying to dive back into writing. I'm currently choosing between finishing the comedy I started 2 months ago (I plotted it out, wrote the first 16 pages, then got sucked back into my supernatural thriller rewrite), or pounding out a draft of an old idea that I've been re-brainstorming over the last few days. It's sort of a (vague, I know) cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a Charlie Kaufman movie. If I can figure out the right tone, I might write it, because I think it'll be fun to write.

And hopefully it'll help me escape the funk. Because in the end, it's all about the writing.