Oh, the Writer’s Life for Me… With Beer? Negative Self-Talk?

So here I am again, in the valley of a long series of peaks and valleys. Like most writers, I do not live a linear life. Linear — that mathematical “straight” line summed up by a series of experiences that happen at specific milestones. Grade school, high school, college. College sweetheart. Internship. Job. Marriage. 2.5 kids and a dog. First house. First divorce. Second job. And so on.

If you’re a writer or any other creative, chances are you do not live in a world made up of straight lines and right angles. We do things that don’t make sense to most people. We live in a world made up of daydreams and the occasional pot o’ gold because that is who we are and we’re usually fine with it — until something bad happens that reminds us that we still have to live in the so-called real world.

What is real? Is it living up to someone else’s expectations or your own? Do we have to put blinders on and move forward no matter what? Sure, there’s this little thing called “money” that we all have to deal with — I’ll never go back to eating mac ‘n’ cheese — but money is a flow. It’s a kind of a “chi” that we can get anywhere, but we have to block out the voices to focus on it, which can be hard when all you want to do is lock yourself in a room and hibernate through the winter with a tall glass of Guinness.

I remember the first time I talked to writer C.J. Henderson, who you may remember wrote Baby’s First Mythos. CJ is a personable fellow, but a very realistic writer who has lived several lifetimes like many of the rest of us.
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The Myths And Realities Of Writing For The Screen and Stage

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Joe Filippone–an experienced playwright and screenwriter. Joe has a unique perspective on writing for the screen and stage, and helps dispel some of the myths surrounding this lucrative form of writing. I’m happy to feature this fact-filled guest post about the forms of playwriting and screenwriting and what you can do to see your play or movie come to life.

Playwriting vs. Screenwriting

Everyone seems to think two of the easiest ways to break into the writing world are playwriting and screenwriting. After all, those are the two easiest realms of the writing world to break into. All you need to write is dialog and a few meager stage directions or camera angles that no one cares about anyway right? You don’t need to worry about character development, writing what the character is thinking or filling the page with vivid descriptions of the environment because the audience will see it right? And you don’t need to worry about making it novel length. A play is maybe eighty pages at the most. One can easily get it written over a weekend, mail it to some theatres and just rake in the royalties. Right? Wrong. Writing for actors is one of the hardest, difficult aspects to break into. Here’s why.
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Helping a Reporter Out has Never Been Easier through HARO

Do you ever find yourself in that situation where you’re working on an article and you need to get a hold of an authoritative resource? Have you searched endlessly in the search engines for what you need only to be sorely disappointed with the results? And what happens when you do find a resource? Now you have to take an extra step and contact them which–depending upon how quick their turnaround is you might miss your deadline.

Started through a Facebook group by PR guru Peter Shankman, HARO is a great solution to your “need for resources” woes. I’ve used HARO for this blog, an upcoming five day marathon of articles about the most common questions I hear from writers. Up until that point, I found it very difficult to get agents to respond to me, but through HARO I got so many responses I’m still sifting through them!

One of the reasons why I like the group so much, is because of the way that Peter manages this free service. He’s transparent, he’s real, and he advocates “being nice.” Just this morning, he mentioned to subscribers to do one nice thing every day in his introduction which is part blog, part “welcome to the community.”

This morning I thought of you, my readers, because there was a call for “Diet, Health and Cookbook Authors.” If you fit the bill, please contact me and I will be happy to send you the listing.
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Dr. Horrible by Joss Whedon: One Supervillian – One Musical – One Week

If you follow any of the places I go like Wizard World 2008 or GenCon, you probably also know I’m a huge supporter of other people in the industry–artists, writers, fans, etc.–who do exactly as I do. Many of us have a full time job and career, but are passionate about the hobby for fun times and the great people associated with it. Then there’s the unsung actors, stars of television shows and script writers, that aren’t as well known as the Angelinas, Lindsays, or Nicoles of the world, but they are out there pounding the pavement because they love what they do.

If you’ve enjoyed Buffy: the Vampire Slayer or Firefly, you probably know the name of Joss Whedon.

His new venture is two parts-comedy, one dash of “evil” in the style that he knows best. Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog capitalizes on Whedon’s rabid fan-base by offering three acts of an online musical starring Neil Patrick Harris as the villain, Doctor Horrible, Felicia Day as his love interest, Penny, and the unforgettable Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer.

While most people are flocking to the blog (rumor has it fans crashed the site on the first day because there was so much traffic) there is a “master plan” attached to this dastardly selection of musical bad-er-goodness. (Yes, the cast can sing. And good, too!)

It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, “It’s Show Business – not Show Friends”? Well now it’s Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

It is definitely well within the Whedonverse which, if you’ve watched any of Joss’ creative works, will probably mean that there won’t be a happy ending to this sordid tale of supervillainy woe. While it may not be for you, I’m spreading the word anyway because even if you don’t like the content of this musical extravaganza–you gotta love the idea and wonder why you didn’t think of it first.

Need Free Art? Here’s my Review of 5 Copyright-Free Clipart and Photo Sites

You may have noticed that from time to time I drop in a few pieces of clipart or photos in between my posts. I’ve taken some of the photos myself, other times I’ve relied on images tagged with Creative Commons because I don’t have time to focus on my graphic design skills but am very conscientious of the fact that like writing–art takes time, money and materials to make. Creative Commons has give me the ability to know what my rights are to an artist’s work, for some of the same reasons I described for writers in my post entitled, “When do you need a copyright?.

Finding these resources isn’t as easy at it might look because sometimes the word “free” simply means “you don’t have to pay.” That doesn’t always mean that there isn’t some other catch associated with getting the artwork or that there aren’t any copyright restrictions. From subscriptions to spam, there’s often other headaches that come with searching for open source clipart and photos.

Here’s five resources that I rely on from time to time. For your convenience I’ve reviewed a few of them in a more structured format to provide you with the highlights and a little bit more detail than I typically go into. The ratings are from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest rating.

Openclipart.org

From the home page, Open Clipart is extremely straightforward about the goal of their site.

This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons.

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