Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

For the 2 of you who've come back time and again to find absolutely nothing new posted, I apologize. I can only tell you that's it's not an attempt to drive you away but to keep from driving myself crazier with all the typing, typing, typing. Of course, I'm not sure I've accomplished that particular objective but a girl has to try... right? (I once told my Dad I was "trying", he gave me a woeful smile, a gentle shake of the head and said "Yes, I know.".. What do you supposed he was getting at?)

Ok, I know I promised to give y'all the 411 (are white, ok.... half white, girls allowed to say that?) upon my return from La-La land, so without further ado, let me bore you some more.

The expo
I enjoyed it, saw a couple of the guest speakers, was enthralled by William Goldman and tanked on the CS Open. I did OK until they announced that half the time had been used up, (it's 90 minutes for a few pages based upon their own scenarios) at which point my fevered little brain just stopped. I swear it sounded like those "jake brakes" tractor trailers use for slowing themselves on steep hills. Not good when it's coming from your brain. So, I handed it in, went back later and waited forever to get the comments back and discovered that out of a possible 100 points, I got 80. Damn. If only my brain hadn't seized up, it might have been my frozen wall-eyed grimace that staring out at you from the press releases! Oh well. My congrats to the winner... whoever you are.

Stop! I don't mean it like that! I meant that I don't know who you are because I was sitting, laptop on it's aptly named perch, on the floor outside the grand hall furiously polishing my Writer's Arc entry while they were doing the "Closing Ceremonies" so I have no idea who won. Alls I know... wasn't me.

The meetup
Great little bar.. nice to meet all of you and great to finally put real faces to those who's words I enjoy. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stick around because my dinner with the director was pushed from Monday night to Sunday night. He had a film (which he had produced) in the Santa Clarita Film Festival (it's called Harmony run) and they had asked him to make himself available for the awards banquet which was on Monday night. So, gracious writer that I am, I agreed to move our pitch meeting/dinner to Sunday night. Thereby cutting off the potential for drunken musings on writing with my fellow bloggers. Sigh. I hated to leave, I didn't have nearly as much interaction with people as I would have liked and I definitely didn't have enough beer! (Thanks Chris!) I did have an opportunity to talk a couple of the other Writer's Arc Round One survivors and was fascinated by the different directions everyone went in, given the limited story prompts provided by the Fellowship people. We're a creative bunch!

The pitch meeting
I suppose I should now feel like a "real" screenwriter since I had free fish (thank you Josh Friedman) with a director/prducer that I pitched a story too. He liked it, and we're supposed to talk more about it in the next day or two. Sorry to be so vague but I can't really get into the specifics, I'm not sure exactly where we go from here but I'll let you know what I can, when I can... which may end up being nothing for a long period of time... just a warning...

Writer's Arc
I FINALLY got it in the mail on the 18th. Just under the wire. I'm talking serious squeaking it close. Praise the lawd for the 24 hour post office is all I gotta say! I have 4 solid story ideas to pitch, (should I advance...keep your fingers crossed!) but I need to come up with another one. Hopefully, I will. I have one high concept one that I think they will like and a rom/com that might work. I also am going to use the Islam story and I have a story that would be a perfect fit for a Lifetime channel MOW (not that I think they are looking for that but I gotta pitch something!)

Ok, I think that's should bring folks up to date...

in other news
My ex showed up the other night asking to "talk" and then when I agreed, lost her nerve and never got around to what she was trying to say so we just basically chatted for a while about next to nothing. When I told my friend Lisa what she had done, Lisa said "What does she want?" to which I replied "Me." Duh. In case you're wondering, 'twas not I who screwed the pooch on this one, OK? The ex has some serious 'splaining to do and I ain't helping her do it. No prompting, no prying and no feeding of line/subject/material/whatever. SHE needs to do all the heavy lifting. If that sounds pretty heartless, it's just because you don't know the whole truth of the matter. Suffice it to say I did everything I could to make the relationship work. She took it all for granted, was horrid to me and now it's come back to bite her on the ass. I'm not prying those teeth apart, she has to do it herself. Do I love the woman? God help me, I do. Enough to put up with more bullshit? No. And God would need to help HER if I had to.

Ok, peeps, thanks for reading this looonnnggg post and patiently checking in on me. Best of luck to my fellow scribes on their Writer's Arc entries, I hope we all meet again in their offices come January 17th!