Two Reboot Finalists

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

I've said before that there are a handful of reasons why I'm rebooting and refocusing this blog:

Increase Exposure
Creative Challenge
Showcase My Writing
More Fun for Me, More Entertaining for You

I freely admit that this is all about furthering my career as a professional writer. I would very much like for there to be dollars at the end of this rainbow. It feels important for me to say this up front, as I don't want to be the guy who pretends he's doing something strictly for the art. The art is very important, but I've come to learn that money is also very important too.

Hopefully, art and commerce can co-exist in some meaningful way for me. I know that is a lot to ask of myself, but if you don't ask a lot of yourself then odds are you won't receive a lot from yourself.

Don't you think?

So, with no further ado...

OPTION ONE

A hybrid of the Fiction Writer and the Confessional angles. Here I would fictionalize the present and future of my life in journal form. The journal would begin on March 1, 2009 using my actual, or true past as the backstory.

In other words, I would use the actual raw material of my life to date as the jumping-off point for the adventures of Fictional David Rielly. The changes would be subtle at first; I wouldn't win the lottery on the first day or anything like that. But, over the course of the next year, I would add fictional wrinkles to my real life as a way to... see what I would do.

This option would be a study in wish fulfillment and worst-case scenarios. I would make my relatively uneventful life... eventful. Here I could experiment in meta creative visualization, as the purpose of fictionalizing my life would primarily be to make changes in my real life.

There's something here, methinks, but it might take some digging to find it.

I've always loved this tagline

OPTION TWO

This one falls under the Stunt category. What I propose is to pitch you an original movie idea every day for a year. Each post will include three parts: 1) a title, 2) a logline, and 3) a publicity tagline. Here's an example using an existing film:

1) ALIEN

2) When Ellen Ripley and the crew of the deep space mining ship Nostromo answer a distress call on a distant world, they must do battle with the murderous alien life-form they unwittingly bring back to their ship.

3) "In space, no one can hear you scream."

This option revolves around several areas where I have a great deal of history and interest. I've written thousands of loglines for scripts I covered as a reader. I've brainstormed plenty of movie premises (though nowhere near 365). Perhaps most importantly, I know that there are copywriters out there who are paid to write taglines for the theatrical release of feature films and I'd love nothing more to join their ranks.

What better portfolio piece could there be for that job than this?

I'm going to think about this for a week or so, do some preparatory work and then relaunch The Word Player on March 1, 2009 with the first installment of the new concept.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and responses. I'll see you on the 1st.

Reboot Angle #5 > The Stunt

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

For the final possible route to the reboot, I want to consider the perennial PR favorite The Stunt. This is about getting attention, right, so why not do something sublimely ridiculous?

The first stunt that comes to mind is Charla Muller's 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy.* Perhaps you've heard of this one- for her husband's 40th birthday present, Charla gave him sex every day for a year. And then, naturally, wrote a bestselling book about it.

SUPER SIZE ME was another great stunt- only McDonald's for a month and he lived to tell about it. Budget: $300,000. Domestic gross: $11.5 million.

So, what revolting or endurance testing thing could I do in real life and then report on it here to ever-escalating heights of excitement and suspense?

I hope to avoid bodily things like not clipping my fingernails or eating only chickens.

How about a non-sexual abstinence-related stunt? "Meet the man who didn't read a book for a whole year!" Oh wait, millions of people pull that stunt.

What about... No movies or TV for a year. I think I could do it, but would it be interesting to read about?

This reboot process calls for a Twilight Zone marathon! Who's up for it?

I just thought of that great Twilight Zone episode ("The Silence") where one guy bets £50,000 that the other, a notorious chatterbox, can't abstain from speaking a single word for a year. I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it yet, but there are a couple great twists down the stretch...

What about no internet for a year? I could write my entries by hand and ask Mrs. Word Player to type them in here for me. Again, boring to read about (although the degree of difficulty on a personal and professional level would be extremely high).

This is only half the equation, but I suppose a good stunt would require at least one post every day for a year. Knowing how much work it required to make 90-odd posts in just under two years, I know that kind of commitment would at least communicate a high level of dedication and, if the conceit is solid, give the stunt a chance to build up an audience of readers who are assured of getting something new every day.

OK. This marks the end of the preliminary reboot process. Blogging for most people is an ongoing conversation with themselves, and I can say truthfully that these past two weeks have been good for me from a creativity-jarring standpoint. By focusing my attention on this matter here, I've begun a dialogue between my conscious and unconscious selves... and I think I have at least two ideas worth pursuing.

On Friday the 20th, I will make my next post and reveal what the finalists are. Then, I will enlist your help in selecting the winner. Thank you, as always, for your consideration.

*Bloggers note: I stayed in Charla's apartment in NYC way back in the fall of '89 when her brother and I visited the Big Apple on Fall Break from UNC. Thanks again Charla! If I come up with a good blog stunt, will you have sex with it for a year? Just kidding....

Reboot Angle #4 > The Confessional

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

Back in May of 2008, I read a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine about a twentysomething blogger named Emily Blount. In a nutshell, Emily fell victim to (or used to her advantage, or both) "oversharing," whereby personal details of her life and of the lives around her were fodder for readers of her personal blog and her work at Gawker.

This vivid and provocative interplay between voyeurism and exhibitionism is at the heart of my fourth possible blog angle, The Confessional.

Forgive me Father, for I have blogged my sins.

To be honest, I've flirted with this angle in posts here several times over the past couple years. I've attempted to transcribe some of my rawer and/or uglier feelings and experiences with the vague hope that a) there would be some sort of catharsis and b) others who had gone through or felt something similar would experience a twinge of knowing camaraderie.

a) often resulted
b) based on the very, very few comments made here, I can only assume that this was rarely if ever experienced.

Sad panda.

There are some obvious drawbacks to this angle, the biggest one that I am a monogamous, happily married man in his latish 30s who stays in far more often than he goes out. What good is a confessional if there's not that much to confess to?

Of course, I could always dig into the dirt I played in during my teens and my 20s, but that's more of a memoir angle. To really engage with an audience, methinks this style requires current events that have not yet played all the way out (and therefore some cliffhangers and surprises).

This angle does tie rather neatly into the inherent narcissism of blogging, but I question whether the kind of confessions that I have to offer would be of interest to anyone outside a small circle of intimates. I could confess my thought processes (impure thought processes?), what I really think on this or that topic or this or that person, but that doesn't have much viscera to it does it?

Of course, I could always turn over an old leaf and get into some trouble for art's sake.

Hmmm.

While the Confessional style has appeal to me as a reader, I'm not quite sure how I would approach it in a meaningful/entertaining way as a writer at this particular juncture.

Reboot Angle #3 > The Fiction Writer

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

As luck would have it, I read an article in this week's Newsweek written by blogger Daniel Lyons who has, until recently, been writing the fictional mock diary blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. I didn't have any illusions about making money directly from blogging, but if I had this article would have dispelled them for good:

For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I'd kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I'd ever had—and through Google's AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81.

1.5 million hits = $1,039.81. That pretty much blows.

Anyway...

The blogging angle I'm considering today is The Fiction Writer. At first glance, this one may be a better fit than some of the others I'm considering, if only because I have written quite a bit of fiction before in the form of screenplays. Also, and this may be so obvious that it doesn't need restating, I've read an enormous amount of fiction too. Writing fiction wouldn't require acquiring a new skillset, and that alone appeals to me.

But what format would best serve the blog post? Individual short stories? Serial fiction that asks the reader to "tune in tomorrow" (or whenever) for the next installment?

Blogging from the perspective of a fictional character that I've created? And if so, what world would I be exploring that could only be seen through that persona's eyes?

Here's a blog devoted to fictional blogs (or "flogs") that should make for interesting clicking should I pursue this route. Here's another.

My thoughts keep returning to my fifth and final screenplay Blood is Thicker. I never finished writing it, although I gave it nearly a year. Maybe I could repurpose it for the blog, stretch it out and finally complete it. How readable would screenplay-style formatting even be on a blog?

Hmm.

Maybe I should post the opening pages as a "first installment" and see?

FADE IN:

INT. SUNDAY SCHOOL - DAY

Below one-piece wooden desk-chairs, the scabbed knees and
hand-me-down patent leather shoes of YOUNG CHILDREN fidget as
they endure a scorching hot morning of Sunday School.

SCHOOLMARM (V.O.)
The evil Pharaoh had decreed that
all male children born to his
Hebrew slaves should be taken to
the Nile river and drowned.
The children paying attention grimace at the thought. The
rest do their best to fight off sleep.

A wide-eyed young SCHOOLMARM paces at the front of the room, reading from an enormous Bible she somehow balances in the palm of one hand.

SCHOOLMARM
Jochebed kept the birth of her baby
son secret for three months. She
couldn’t keep him hidden forever
but refused to let him be killed by
the Pharoah, so she set him adrift
on the Nile in a small basket made
of reeds.

Every kid wears the threadbare black or brown Sunday best befitting the salt-of-the-earth country town residents. Every kid except for the TOW-HEADED BLOND BOY who sticks out
like a sore thumb in his brand-new seersucker suit.

CLOSE ON
A color illustration from one of the childrens' Bible of Moses being plucked from the basket by Pharaoh’s daughter.

SCHOOLMARM
The daughter of Pharaoh discovered
the baby and adopted him as her
son, and named him "Moses". Moses'
sister Miriam saw where Moses had
ended up and convinced the
Pharaoh's daughter to hire a Hebrew
woman to nurse the baby.
Children, do any of you know who
she hired to be Moses’ nurse?

Vacant looks answer her. The tow-head steals a glance out the window.

SCHOOLMARM
By the grace of God it was
Jochebed, Moses’ own mother!
Praise God! To save her son’s
life, Jochebed allowed the
Pharaoh’s daughter to treat Moses
as her own son and believe that the
orphan who appeared from nowhere
was a royal gift to her from her
own pagan gods.

Tow-head squirms uncomfortably in his seat as one by one the scrawny kids in the room shoot him a variety of DIRTY LOOKS.

SCHOOLMARM
Children, it’s not very Christian
of you to make the newest member of
our church feel different because
he’s an adopted orphan. His new
parents the Weisses are well-off,
yes, but they ain’t no Pharaohs,
and your new friend here ain’t
gonna part the Red Sea.

The CHURCHBELL rings, signaling the end of the service. As the kids scramble towards the exit, the tow-head looks wistfully out the window at the people streaming out the church’s
doors.

He perks up when MR. and MRS. WEISS, dressed nattily in white suit and sundress, emerge and walk towards the schoolhouse. They both wave at him when they get close enough to see him through the window.

UNCLE TODD (V.O.)
The boy nearly jumps out of his
seat when he hears a loud series of
pops that he thinks are
firecrackers. Then he sees his
brand new mom and dad sink to their
knees as red splotches soak through
their Sunday best.

The tow-head is frozen in his chair, MOANING as he watches Mr. and Mrs. Weiss turn towards each other for one final look before toppling over into the grass.

The tow-head jumps up from his seat. Through the chaos of screaming churchgoers dragging their kids to safety, the boy watches as two men in black suits calmly throw their machine guns into the back seat of a brown Cadillac and drive out of the parking lot.

UNCLE TODD (V.O.)
Sometimes the gunmen are driving a
Caddy, sometimes a Mercedes, and
one time they were on goddamn
horses.

NURSE (V.O.)
And you’ve been having this dream
for how long Mr. Redd?

CUT TO:

Reboot Angle #2 > The Expert

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

"Suddenly, everybody's an expert."

Even though I heard this sarcastic comeback plenty growing up (often preceded by a long sigh), it appears to be truer than ever in the blogosphere.

Wouldn't you like to be an expert too?

Many blogs provide hard, demonstrable expertise in gadgetry, computers, cars, knitting etc. Many more are written by people who have positioned themselves as gurus of, how shall I put it, less verifiable topics such as fashion or love.

Then there are blogs that put a satirical twist on expertise, like the juggernaut Stuff White People Like.

What, if anything, would I be qualified to write about from the perspective of an Expert? I think there is a wide gap between an "expert" and an "enthusiast", in much the same way there is between a "genius" and the merely brilliant (which I touched on in this old post.) If I had to call myself an expert in anything, it would probably be screenplay structure.

it was fun to Google-image search "Screenplay Structure"

I was instructed in covering scripts the studio way at Sony/Tri-Star, studied screenwriting at UNC-Chapel Hill, UCLA Extension and Writers Boot Camp, and tinkered with the script for B. MONKEY with Oscar-nominated director Michael Radford as his Development Assistant. On top of that, I've read and written coverage on at least 2000 scripts for numerous Film and TV production companies and written five of my own, one of which I developed intensely with Emmy-nominated screenwriter (and my then-manager) Jim Thompson.

Despite all that, I'm still uncomfortable calling myself an "expert." Besides, the last thing in the world I want to blog about for any stretch of time is screenplay structure. After almost a dozen years as a development guy, it's a miracle I don't need glasses and/or a lobotomy.

I could probably stretch my thoughts on just this record to two posts.

What else? Well, this is even further down the ladder from "expert" to "enthusiast," but I'm passionate about music, particularly funk, soundtracks and house. I'm an avid music collector, music mag reader and have some experience as a deejay... but aren't there enough record reviewers out there?

I've been married for almost nine years- does that make me an expert on marriage (wait, don't answer that).

What topics could I write about expertly from a satirical viewpoint?

Jerks?
Facebook?
Bloggers?

If this was easy, I guess everyone would be doing it. Wait a minute, everyone IS doing it! There are almost 27 million bloggers in the U.S. alone, and I'd be willing to bet that at least 10% of them pass themselves off as experts. Could we have almost 3 million experts living in this fair land of ours? Who knows, you may even be friends with one and not even know it (although most experts like to announce their expert status pretty early on...).

My expert opinion is that I need to mull this angle over for a while and see if I have the chutzpah to call myself an expert even once more.

Reboot Angle #1 > The Curator

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

What to do?

This is one of the major questions in anyone's life, but I believe I've found an answer and I've been working on it for quite some time now.

Write.

This leads inevitably to another big question:

How to do it?

In blog terms, one possible way to write and reach an audience is to be a Curator. The way I see it, a Curator devises an ingenious concept, begins contributions of his own, and then often asks his audience to contribute to whatever the theme is that's been selected. The blog then serves as a growing themed museum filled with the creator's contributions and/or editorial choices of what's been sent in to him.

An example of this theme is PostSecret. In the words of it's creator Frank Warren, it's "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard." I was first turned on to PostSecret in book form, and it's compulsive reading- you really get the sense that these are actual weighty secrets that people have unburdened themselves of (in strikingly artistic-yet-simple ways) because of the anonymity provided.

Not a bad thing to have your blog published in book form either, I imagine. Some other examples of this format are 1000 Journals and Lost (no not that LOST, the book of lost and found pet flyers from around the world).

So, what are some possible angles in the Curator vein that would match up well with my skill- and interest-set? I first thought about this direction a few weeks ago when I was filling out one of those "25 Random Things" deals on Facebook. I wasn't that interested in listing a bunch of random stuff about me a la "I've been a loyal Crest user my whole life because I used to really believe that Cavity Creeps lived on my teeth" so I decided to create a "25 Random Things: Starf*ker Edition" and list some of my Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind.

Would they remember meeting me? Maybe not.

Here's the list:

1. I’ve talked on the phone with Jack Nicholson and Sean Connery.
2. I helped Liam Neeson prepare his “Best Picture” introduction for IL POSTINO in the weeks before the 1996 Oscars.
3. I’ve driven Alfonso Cuaron in a golf cart.
4. I’ve seen Harry Dean Stanton’s band play live.
5. Robert De Niro smiled and nodded his head at me when I walked past him wearing my “What’s up cuz?” baseball cap on the set of THE FAN.
6. I’ve taken a whiz next to Richard Farnsworth.
7. I’ve ridden an elevator with Maureen McCormick.
8. I’ve stood in line for drinks behind Brian Grazer- his hair looks even more ridiculous in person and he was unnecessarily rude to the bartender.
9. I’ve been on a conference call with George Romero.
10. I’ve introduced myself to Chevy Chase.
11. I’ve had James Marshall autograph my TWIN PEAKS memorabilia.
12. Christopher Walken drunkenly tried to pick up my then-girlfriend while at the same table I talked FIRE WALK WITH ME with... Harry Dean Stanton (different night from #4).
13. I’ve had lunch with George Lazenby.
14. Jennifer Beals stopped my friend and I on the street and asked us what time it was.
15. I saw Andre Agassi puke.
16. I’ve taken a meeting with Dave Thomas and discussed the possibility of STRANGE BREW 2.
17. I’ve been screamed at by Wendy Finerman.
18. Richard D. James has ridden right by me on a bicycle.
19. I’ve had lunch one table over from William Shatner. (can you feel me straining to reach 25?!?)
20. I talked about Lee Marvin with Donald E. Westlake.
21. I helped arrange a date between Michael Radford and Winona Ryder.
22. I’ve shaken hands with Tony Curtis.
23. I drank beers with Mark Borchardt and talked music with Mike Schank.
24. I’ve had my picture taken with Mike Brito.
25. I’ve gone to a nightclub with Mike Tyson.

Soon after I posted my list, a couple other friends wrote up their 25 starf*ker moments and I thought, "Hey, what if I created a site where people around the country could submit their lists of celebrity encounters?" For an hour or so, I was really excited about this idea. Then two distinct feelings set in and I abandoned ship. The first was "Imagine the lies people will submit and the lawsuits that will follow." The second was "Do I really want to contribute my time and effort to the already sickening* celebrity culture?"

* yes, I know I am complicit!

Still, it got me thinking. I've already way overshot my allotted hour here, but I want to do some actual productive brainstorming to see if there something lurking in the Curator vein for me.

Something about mixtapes and mixtape covers? I have a sneaking suspicion that's already been covered, but I would love to scan all the mixtapes I've made (and that have been made for me) and post them, and ask others to do the same. I don't know about you, but I used to spend quite a bit of time with scissors and glossy magazines to create something fun for the cover.

I've also toyed with collecting cliches, a la "All limo drivers smoke cigarettes."

How about a list of experiences that people have of that weird sensation of learning a new word and then suddenly seeing it everywhere? No wait, this is supposed to GROW the site, not shrink it....

How about short-form experiences of truisms that have proven not to be true, a la "The family that prays together stays together" or "Defense wins championships"?

Hmm, this is hard.

How about a list of the greatest excuses ever uttered and the fallout from uttering them?

Help me out- what could/should a fellow like me curate here at The Word Player?

word player 2.0 > Research

Snapped this John Baldessari at LACMA, where there is still virtually no blog-related art

Yesterday I decided to take a week and attempt to conjure a "reboot" concept for this blog that, when executed, would fulfill me creatively AND reach a wide enough audience to serve as a marketing tool for my services as a professional writer. Now that I've laid out what my goal is, I think it makes sense for me to tackle this assignment as I would any other gig. I've heard from many other creative professionals that just as doctors are often terrible patients, they are their own worst clients. I will try to be levelheaded as I give and receive direction to and from myself, but I am Hollywood-adjacent so there may be obscenity-filled tirades and pandering illogic.

I know that this is a pipe dream, but what the hell: what could really make this process interesting is if you chimed in with thoughts and direction for me to consider along the way. As a work-from-home freelancer since 2001, the thing I miss most about office life is the ease of collaboration, the bouncing back and forth of ideas. The end goal is to create a blog concept that's entertaining and/or thought-provoking enough that you would want to read it regularly, so why not help me sculpt it out of clay?

So, now that I have my creative brief in front of me and I've had some time for contemplation, the next step is a little research. To be honest (I say that a lot , don't I?) I don't read many blogs nor do I read about blogs other than the occasional article in the newspaper. Let's look at the current state of blog affairs and see if we can spot a burgeoning trend or identify an underserved niche that could be helpful.

Technorati, one of the primary search engines designed specifically for combing through blogs, has a "State of the Blogosphere: 2008" post that is as good a place as any to start. Here are some interesting stats:

• comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
  • Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
  • Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
  • Total internet audience 188.9 million
• eMarketer (May 2008)
  • 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
  • 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
• Universal McCann (March 2008)
• 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
• 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
• 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Wow. So I am one of approx. 26.4 million bloggers in the U.S. That's a lot of competition. I'm glad I gave myself a whole week to figure this out. It's good to see that 77% of internet users read blogs. That's encouraging.

My background is in the entertainment industry, and according to MediaMetrix 4 of the top 10 entertainment sites (OMG, TMZ, Asylum and Perez Hilton) are blogs. Good to know.

Other than Jessica Alba (who is currently tagged in an amazing 15,499 blog posts), who and what are people blogging about? Barack Obama is tagged in 223,934 posts, while the iPhone has a whopping 184,991 tags. I could check these numbers all day- it's fascinating to see what people are spending their days talking and writing about.

Here's what people are looking for in blogs, based on the top Technorati searches:

Top searches

1. taskbar
2. news
3. environment
4. jennifer garner
5. men
6. cheat-codes
7. google
8. paris hilton
9. jennifer aniston
10. vanessa minnillo
11. arab
12. olympics
13. "kerry howley"
14. noelia
15. ibm

I've never seen an episode of ALIAS- apparently I'm in the minority there. Several of these searches mean little or nothing to me, hmmm.

Here are the top 10 blogs by "authority" (or, how many other blogs have linked to the site in the past six months.)

1. Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
   
   • http://huffingtonpost.com
   • Authority: 29,710
2. Engadget
   
   • http://www.engadget.com
   • Authority: 16,920
3. TechCrunch
   
   • http://www.techcrunch.com
   • Authority: 16,503
4. Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide
   
   • http://gizmodo.com
   • Authority: 14,516
5. Boing Boing
   
   • http://www.boingboing.net
   • Authority: 12,627
6. Official Google Blog
   
   • http://googleblog.blogspot.com
   • Authority: 11,273
7. Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done
   
   • http://lifehacker.com
   • Authority: 11,201
8. Daily Kos: State of the Nation
   
   • http://dailykos.com
   • Authority: 10,609
9. Ars Technica
   
   • http://arstechnica.com
   • Authority: 10,501
10. Smashing Magazine
    
    • http://www.smashingmagazine.com
    • Authority: 9,584

OK. Two politics/news sites, and eight technology sites. No fear of me going there.

this will still be my command post, so please don't suggest a travel journal
of my experiences at the world's best water parks.

I've chosen not to have advertisements on my blog because I think they look cheesy and I've never approached the kind of traffic numbers that would produce any meaningful income. This, though, is pretty startling:

The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

Looks like 100,000 unique visitors per month is a magic number.

Another interesting place to take the current temperature is Blogger's "Blogs of Note," a daily pick by the Blogger staff. Here are the conceits of the last ten Blogs of Note:

Fashion
Expat Journal
Photography
Expat Journal
Art
Travel
Travel/Photography
Knitting
Photography
Tablescaping (the art of, it seems, setting a good looking table.)

OK, a little more room to play with here. Interesting.

I'm now going to return to my paying clients (I'm working for myself on spec), but I feel I've done some good foundation work for the days to come. Plenty of food for thought. Next I will select five different general areas in which to brainstorm a specific angle for the reboot. Then, at the end of the process, I'll give it all some more consideration and announce the "winning" direction.

Tomorrow's blog angle will be "The Curator." See you then.

the word player 2.0

This past weekend, a friend said "So, I see you don't post very often on the blog anymore."

This is true. I feel like I'm lacking enough subject matter to post with any regularity, and waiting for inspiration to strike only provides me with sporadic bits and pieces to chew on.

"Inspiration is for amateurs," someone once said about writing. I agree to the extent that you can't rely on it on a day-to-day basis. It is, however, invaluable in creating a keystone around which other pieces of the puzzle can coalesce.

I can't bring myself to write movie or record or book reviews due to the sheer glut of material already out there on the subject. Besides, I want to continue progressing as a professional writer, and the paid critic is a dying breed.

When I started this blog, more than anything it was a new channel for me to funnel and explore my creative impulses after hanging up my screenwriting boots. For over five years straight I'd been constantly working on one script or another, often taking more than a year to "complete" one. I really, really enjoyed the immediacy of completing something short and sweet in one sitting. Blogging not only flexed new writing muscles, but I quickly discovered that it kept me limber in other valuable areas as well.

After a year or so, however, I got the feeling that I was writing only for myself and a small handful of friends. If you'll permit me to speak frankly, I'm at a stage in my writing development where I need to either be writing for an audience or writing for money. Writing for neither is simply unsatisfying (sorry amigos), and gives me the unshakable sensation that my time would be better spent elsewhere.



So here's the crossroads where I find myself today, the fifth Wednesday of 2009. In the four years I've been seriously pursuing copywriting, it has become the first career path in my life where I can genuinely see an intersection of ability, confidence, earning potential and job satisfaction. I love doing the work, I just can't seem to find enough of it on a consistent basis. In the last 10 days, I've had three jobs that I thought were in the bag fall through. Two of them were because the client decided to call in favors with friends of theirs who are writers and try to get the work done for free.

I can't compete with free.

I am promoting myself as a copywriter as best I can using other more traditional channels, but as of this morning (hell, as of this hour) I am determined to exploit this forum more vigorously and inventively. I need to draw more attention to myself in order to reach the pivotal demographic of people who have money to pay writers to write. This is not an easy pill for a mellow introvert to swallow, but them's the breaks.

Now, I realize that blogging about the internal workings of my mind (what I've essentially been doing since the end of the "Bend Me, Shape Me" series) is never going to draw a crowd (and is probably boring as shit to most of you). I also know that I have now reached the end of this post without inspiration striking me with a swell solution to my dilemma (damn).

So, over the next week or two I will brainstorm here "live" for an hour every day I can. I'll see if I can come up with a new central conceit for this blog that will not only engage me creatively, but also have a realistic chance to draw a much larger audience to the site than the one I currently enjoy (an average of 45 page visits/64 page views per day).

I encourage you to chime in. If you've never been here before, a quick glance at the Labels running down the right-hand side should give you an idea of what sort of subject matter I respond to historically.

I market myself as a concept-driven copywriter, so I should damn well be able to come up with a marketable concept for myself.

Right?

We'll see what the process creates. Lacking inspiration (so far), it's time to turn to perspiration.

Previously on LOST

Yesterday Facebook was buzzing with Inauguration Day chatter and commentary. These days, even the most exciting news gets old quickly, so I thought I'd make light of the big day with this post on a thread at a new friend's page.

ME

"now we can focus on the real issue- where did the island go on LOST?"

PERSON I DON'T KNOW
"huh? Ohhhhhhhh....I don't watch T.V. it'll rott your brain"

Don't you just love getting lectured by someone you've never met? I wanted to say something about how LOST, unlike most shows, actually stimulates lively conversation, encourages reading of the classics and exploration of history, etc. but I also didn't want to get into it with a stranger from San Francisco on someone else's page.

Later on down the thread, I did get a kick out of a follow-up post by the same person.

PERSON I DON'T KNOW

I do enjoy the forensic shows though:}

So which is it? "Kill Your television" people who still watch multiple cop shows are kinda like vegans who smoke cigarettes. Which one is it gonna be, because you can't be both and still ride the high horse!

Anyway.

I forgot about that brief exchange until this morning when I was thinking about LOST in the shower. Sorry if that's TMI, but the Season 5 Premiere is tonight.

Maybe my brain is showing signs of "rott" after all...

I was thinking about why the show still holds so much interest to me, and I think it goes beyond the usual razzle-dazzle of the much-discussed mysteries of the Island, the Numbers, the Dharma Initiative, the Hanso family, the Smoke Monster, the Donkey Wheel, etc.

It's about people.

Yes, I know how cheesy that sounds, but bear me out here. I have become a big believer in the importance of reaching a point in one's life where you can no longer point your finger at anyone else for your failings, and you only have to look in the mirror to see the source of your successes. That may be an idealistic state of mind, but it seems to me that even striving for it is extremely beneficial because of the burgeoning awareness gained that you can no sooner change your parents or your genes than you can change your past.

The Dharmacakra, symbolizing the path to enlightenment, is featured prominently on LOST.

But what you can change is the future. That is, unless, you continue to let the unchangeable past dictate who you are today.

Someone close to me has let the phrase "I've had a hard life" enter the conversation a few times lately. Now, it's not up to me to determine the veracity of that statement, and even if I could, those kinds of statements are all relative. But what I feel I can determine is how much the belief that one's life has been "hard" up to now hinders one's ability to create a less "hard" life from this point forward.

What I want to say is "That may be true, but a lot of people's lives have been hard. Would you rather have an excuse ("You've had a hard life") for your present state of unhappiness, or would you rather achieve happiness and use that same statement to signal how it used to be BEFORE YOU TOOK CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE and did what you had to do to make your hard life easier and more enjoyable?"

People win despite being dealt bad hands all the time, and the same is true for people dealt fabulous hands finding a way to lose anyway.

***LOST SPOILERS FROM SEASONS 1-4 AHEAD****

Our characters on LOST all have "daddy issues" that they are being forced, one way or another, to overcome. And isn't that a good thing? I don't recommend literally killing the father figure, as Ben Linus and Kate and Locke and Sawyer have, but isn't some sort of ceremonial dumping of those issues necessary for one to really flower as an adult?

Virtually all of the characters have endured struggles directly related to their socioeconomic status as well. The poorer have either compromised themselves by turning to crime (Sawyer, Kate, Eko) or to status-seeking (Jin, Desmond). The richer have felt it constricting (Sun, Jack), divisive (Boone, Shannon) or downright dangerous (Hurley, Charlie).

On the island, all material things are stripped away so that everyone is playing the same game with the same tools. To borrow the marketing tagline for this season, destiny has called every single one of them, and we will see who answers the call.

This sensation is the primary correlation with my own life and, I think it's fair to say, all of our lives. Destiny is calling every one of us, and we all have the tools inside of us to hear the call and to embark on a life that we make our own.

To me, life is the best possible combination of fate AND free will.

A quick look at the name "Dharma Initiative", the organization that I believe tried to harness the island's power to force people to evolve into a higher state of consciousness, is revealing:

dharma
noun
1 Hinduism: the principle of cosmic order.
• virtue, righteousness, and duty, esp. social and caste duty in accord with the cosmic order.

initiative
noun
1 the ability to assess and initiate things independently :
2 [in sing. ] the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do :

LOST is so compelling because I believe one of its major underlying themes is that no matter where one is from, every individual must take charge of their own lives in a virtuous way if collectively we are ever going to overcome the suffering of this world.

Well, that and the time travel and cool monsters and stuff.

The Zen of the Bridesmaid

I don't know about you, but I read in bed almost every night before I go to sleep. So does Mrs. Word Player.

Several years ago, when the wife in a couple we were friends with discovered this about us, she could barely contain her jealousy. I had no idea... I thought every couple read in bed together. It was a strange exchange, in that from that point forward I looked at what I have as lucky rather than just the status quo. In life it's all about perspective, wouldn't you say?

So a few nights ago, MWP leans over and says "read this." I took the book she'd just started, Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein, M.D., and read the first sentence in the Forward, which was written by the Dalai Lama.

"The purpose of life is to be happy."

Whoa. The simplicity of that powerful statement packs an incredible wallop. It certainly goes against the Catholic upbringing I received, where suffering and deprivation are lionized and true happiness is deferred to the afterlife.

I bet the Lama is a big LOST fan. Maybe HE is this "Jacob" we keep hearing about...

Lately, my happiness has been yo-yoing quite a bit, but the biggest X factor has been my work life. When work is plentiful, I am practically exuberant. That sensation pervades the rest of my life quickly- I hadn't been happy with my "Development Guy" work in several years, so the 3+ years I've been relying on my copywriting work (which I genuinely enjoy) has been a boon to my overall mood.

I've also been on indefinite hiatus from my screenwriting projects since spring of '07, work that was often as torturous emotionally as it was fulfilling creatively. And I've been OK with that arrangement for a long while now... until recently.

First, work slowed down in December, and it's continued to be slow into January. My mood destabilized. Then, an odd confluence of events suddenly made me revisit my career path and the happiness factor attached to it. It started with LOST. We received Season 4 on DVD for Christmas, and since we already had Seasons 1 and 2, we went out and bought Season 3 to complete the collection. In watching it, for some reason, my eye kept catching on Jeffrey Lieber's name in the credits. He is a co-creator of the show, and someone I used to know. Even though he's had his own issues with LOST, for some reason seeing his name in the credits over and over had a different effect on me than it had in the past.

It wasn't schadenfreude, it was "why him and not me?" I came into (and then lost) contact with Jeffrey long before LOST. I was a newly hired development guy for Civilian (then known as Spoke Film) and I cast my net wide looking for submissions. Naturally, I hated most of the stuff that agents sent me, but when I read Jeff's scripts (one was called "Conspiracy of Weeds" and I can't remember the name of the second) I called and set up a meeting. Nothing ever came of my interest in the scripts ("Conspiracy" was later made with the far less interesting title TANGLED), but I became friends with Jeff and his wife Holly and for a while he even rented office space from Civilian.

Jeff was talented and a very nice guy, and remembering the clever twists and turns in his scripts that I read it's not hard to see how his contributions to LOST earned him a co-creator credit. "But aren't I ALSO a nice and talented guy who has clever twists of my own to share with the world?" that stubborn part of my brain kept saying every time I saw his name on the screen during our LOST-athon.

Try as I might, I couldn't silence that little voice. In fact, a rapid succession of similar events only made it more insufferable. I saw TWILIGHT and, lo and behold, one of the producers is I guy I used to work with at Wendy Finerman Productions. He was a junior development exec then (hey, kinda like I once was!) and LOOK AT HIM NOW. At the grocery store, I saw a girl I went to UNC with and was once friends with who is now producing Adam Sandler movies. We're the same age, and moved out to LA around the same time, but LOOK AT HER NOW. I watch an episode of GOSSIP GIRL and hey, I used to take meetings with the co-creator and occasionally go for drinks with our mutual friend. Damn, what did she have that I don't have?

Yeah, but would dealing with Chuck Bass' problems be any easier?

I know, of course, that it's an enormous oversimplification of the way lives and careers play out to compare myself to them, and I also know that the choices I've made have taken me out of the running for some of the successes that they are now enjoying.

BUT STILL!

Anyway, having all those things happen within a span of a few days really bummed me out for a while. But the more I thought of it, the more my mood improved. I've achieved a pretty damn high level of happiness without the industry success that I'd pursued for over a decade. I've indulged and explored my creative side and expanded and tested my business acumen while developing a personal life that I'm proud of.

And who knows, the best may be yet to come? But the biggest thing that came out of all this for me is the sensation that no matter what happens from this point forward, I was in the game. I played alongside some of the game's top players, even though I never won the big game myself. I've taken the sum of my experiences and spun them into a state of mind that, I feel, is at the very least prepared for any number of challenging paths the future may hold.

Should I happen to find my way back onto the industry path, I'll be ready. And if it doesn't ever "happen" the way I longed for it to? Well, I'll be ready for that too.

The Joy of Talking Nonsense

I thought I was completely over my dogearing phase, but when I read p. 242 of the David McDuff translation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment two nights ago I just couldn't resist. I started reading the book a few weeks ago, prompted largely by the many worshipful references it got in James Wood's excellent How Fiction Works. That, and the fact that I'd never read any Dostoyevsky and felt I was overdue.


Anyway, the book had been kinda slow going the first couple hundred pages, with the notable exception of the visceral description of the titular "crime" (which I will not spoil for those of you who haven't read the book yet). It has really been picking up of late, and it suddenly exploded incandescently (for me) during this monologue by Razumikhin. To set the stage a bit, Razumikhin (a friend of the protag Raskolnikov) had been drinking "a terrible quantity of vodka" until he was called into service to escort the recently arrived mother and sister of Raskolnikov to their lodgings. In his foggy state, he becomes instantly smitten with the beautiful women and starts passionately running off at the mouth...

'What do you suppose?' Razumikhin shouted, raising his voice even louder. 'Do you suppose I'm going on like this because they talk nonsense? Rubbish! I like it when they talk nonsense! Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that's an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can't even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one's own way is almost better than to talk a truth that's someone else's; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot! The truth won't go away, but life can be knocked on the head and done in. I can think of some examples. Well, and what's our position now? We're all of us, every one of us without exception, when it comes to the fields of learning, development, thought, invention, ideals, ambition, liberalism, reason, experience, and every, every, every other field you can think of, in the very lowest preparatory form of the gymnasium! We've got accustomed to making do with other people's intelligence – we're soaked in it! It's true, isn't it? Isn't what I'm saying true?' cried Razumikhin, trembling all over and squeezing the hands of both ladies. 'Isn't it?'

Methinks it is.

A Shift in the Dream Landscape

In the last couple of weeks, something unusual has been happening in my dreams. I've been in control, and they've been remarkably anxiety free. Two of the major dream paradigms of my lifetime have been, essentially, turned on their heads.

The first is the horror movie dream. Since I was in junior high (and maybe even earlier), I've been haunted by the dream where a killer (usually Michael Myers from HALLOWEEN) stands silently in my room while I lie motionless in my bed. I know that if I make even the slightest motion, the killer will know I'm there and stab me to death. These static dreams go on for what feels like hours in my sleep, and I often wake up feeling exhausted by the strain of balancing absolute stillness with petrifying fear.

I haven't had this one as often in my 30s, but I felt a strong connection to it the other night when I dreamt I was producing a horror movie out of a cavernous office space with my old colleagues from Civilian Pictures. I felt absolutely in control and excited about finally producing my own feature. The film, which we were shooting in black and white, was a modern interpretation of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and we'd assembled the creepiest looking army of blonde children. They were milling about the set, smiling when off camera and the embodiment of evil when the cameras were rolling (incidentally, feel free to analyze what making this particular movie in my dream has to say about my childless status- I have).

When I woke up I felt empowered and refreshed- now I was calling the shots on the horror in my life.

Who's in control now?

The second major recurring dream theme has been plaguing me steadily through my 20s and 30s. The details of this one change more often that the killer dream, but the essentials are that I've been skipping a college class all semester long, and now I have to return for a big test and face the music. A common wrinkle is that I haven't been to the class in so long that I've forgotten where it's held and/or I've forgotten where the building it's in is located on campus. I ransack my room looking for the list of classes I'm enrolled in that was issued at the beginning of the semester, but I can never find it. I basically wander around the UNC campus (which always looks pristinely beautiful) gnashing my teeth, beating myself up about waiting so long to address the issue and thinking "How did I think I would get away with not going to class all semester!" (Incidentally, I was a big believer in the "if you go to every class, you don't have to study nearly as hard" school of thought, so this dream pattern isn't even really related to any real-life experience that I'm conscious of.)

I wake up feeling exhausted and depressed by these dreams too, and always deeply disappointed in myself (which as you know is one of the least pleasant emotional states).

Last week I had a dream that turned this one upside-down too. I don't recall the details that well, but the gist of it was that I was now on the faculty at UNC. I sat up at the front of the class, serene and confident, and watched the young clueless students file into my class and then hang on my every word.

This one had an even more profound effect on me when I woke up- I could physically feel that a weight had been lifted, that a chain had been broken. Of course, it's too early to say that I won't be having either of the predecessor dreams any more, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the catalyst for this internal transition was joining Facebook about three weeks ago. I'd fought the notion of Facebook, thinking that it would a big time-waster and filled with uncomfortable small-talky reunions with people you no longer cared about and/or actively wanted to steer clear of. I joined primarily because it's constantly referred to as an outlet or destination for marketing strategies by the people I work with, and I felt like I could no longer pretend to nod my head knowingly about it.

By connecting to dozens and dozens of people who used to occupy a lot of my headspace but have since drifted away for one reason or another, and doing it all at once, I think my unconscious was forced to assess where my own life is now. More than that, I was forced to see something that I already knew but I suppose isn't all that apparent in one's own day-to-day continuum- I've grown up. I really am 37. I really have friends who have teenage children. I really am looking down the barrel at my 20th high school reunion. And so are a lot of other people... it's happening to everybody.

Thankfully, it seems, the producers of my dream life appear to be growing up too.

State of the Nation

Yesterday Mrs. Word Player and I took a walk in the park behind our house. It was about dusk, and there was a thick haze in the air that had been hanging around since I'd referred to it as fog in the morning. The setting sun looked beautiful, the hills mysterious. The horse running circles around its trainer in the Equestrian Center next door kicked up dust of its own, adding to the sense of early evening obfuscation.

I haven't been feeling myself lately. I missed a haircut appointment before going to SF two weekends ago, one that was already overdue, and my hair is too big and curly. I feel fat. I hurt my Achilles tendon playing tennis a month ago, slipping just so on the court after a match delay caused by scattered showers. I've been walking with a limpy hitch in my step ever since, and even though I haven't been on the court since and have stopped my morning walks, it hasn't healed properly. I miss the exercise, especially during the Halloween-Thanksgiving eating season. You make so many forward strides physically by playing tennis two or three times a week for a couple years, and then it feels like you lose it all with a month away.

Work has really slowed down after a pretty terrific year. Whenever this happens, my mood invariably turns darker. I've all but shelved the book, which is what I thought I would work on during the slow "paying work" times. It's not that I lost faith in the idea, it's that I lost faith in the possibility of it ever doing anything other than sitting on my shelf next to my screenplays. At my age, I feel like I need at least a fighting chance of remuneration if I'm going to invest thousands more solitary hours into a passion project.

And so, with all this in mind, we went for a walk.

Walking the labyrinth in St. George, UT

Solvitur Ambulando. "It is solved by walking." We've found this to be as true as any saying is, and yesterday was no exception. MWP is no dummy, and could see that I had little cartoon storm clouds roiling above my head. And off we went.

Just as the election was for the previous twelve months, the economy has now become the jumping off point for practically every conversation. We talked about what the dry period meant for us in the short term, and then the long term. Was it time for me to pursue full-time, on-site employment? I've been a stay-at-home freelancer since the end of 2000, and I've dodged plenty of bullets during that stretch. Maybe now, when I'm sitting relatively pretty and have amassed a decent-sized portfolio, is a good time to jump back into the office job fray? If there were any jobs available in my field these days this may have taken longer to discuss.

But then, we asked ourselves, where will we be in ten years? Let's say that we both have continued, sustained success as freelancers until 2018: will we still be hirable when we're not quite as cute or hip and our rates are exponentially higher than our less experienced but ever more cute and young and hip competition?

Will we ever be able to buy a house when the money we've invested to save for it is shrinking rather than growing?

How could anyone in their right mind start a family right now without a sizable safety net? And what kind of world will they grow up in where only the wealthy can afford to pay for college and masked gunmen roam freely?

F†®ƒ©¨ˆ∆˙©ç%$%#&^***CK!

And then we smiled. My foot was hurting a little, but we'd walked the circumference of the park and were on the road back home. There's never been any way to know what the future holds, and there's little wisdom in making long term plans with any expectations of seeing them play out as diagrammed. Hey, we've made it this far, haven't we? Our operating history; as individuals, as a couple, as wage-earners, as creatives; projects that we will continue to at least be competitive in our field, if not somewhat successful. Right?

Even though the majority of what came out of our mouths could be labeled as pessimistic, or at least moany-groany, the simple act of walking while we were talking took a great deal of the negative power of the words away.

When life gives you lemons, take a walk. Odds are you won't feel nearly as sour afterwards.