Now, we weren’t aiming for quality.  Just the opposite, the goal was to create a script worthy of The Asylum and Syfy movies of the week.  We called the effort Trilobite Terror, and it is an exercise in dubious science, cliche dialogue, and thin plot.  However, it does have a plot, it is a complete plot with a three act structure, and it does all wrap up nicely at the end.  It was really just a fun exercise in seeing what we could do when we sat down and just churn out, putting ourselves in the roles of contract writers who were given a title, two already cast stars, and a weekend to spit out a first draft.

The schedule:

Saturday night we finally sat down and outlined the plot.  It took about half an hour and three sheets of paper to scribble down all the bullet points that we wanted to hit.  We were neither writing what we hoped would be a good movie, nor one that would ever actually get produced, else we might have spent a whole hour just to make sure there was a b-plot.  As it is, the movie is a little under length at just 64 pages of script when I’d really hoped for at least 75.

Sunday I started writing.  Act one was half finished by breakfast, and done by lunch.  Act two was written between lunch and dinner.  Act three was started but not completed as I burned out around 9pm.  Along the way I kept giving the script in half-act chunks to my wife for her approval, and kept getting green lights to go.

Monday I finished act three, and did just a little bit of editing.  No point really stressing over edits for something that’ll never see any light of day.  Maybe one day The Asylum will have a script writing contest and we’ll clean it up for that.

As a writing exercise, it was great mental acrobatics, just to practice working in screenplay format, proving that we could quickly turn out a plot, and showing that I can actually script write rather quickly when given the chance.  My characters tend to talk in paragraphs, so that’s something I’ll need to work on, but in terms of speed, I worked at a pace that I’d have to work at if I ever became a contract script writer.  Which is nice to know I can do.

We’re already considering out next project, potentially for the weekend of June 26-27.  Might do another Syfy quality script, though we’ve also been considering a Dodgeball-style comedy called Shuttlecocks.

Look out world, the Cat Vacuumers are coming.

Where’s this attitude coming from?  A recent trip that two of our members took to Balticon, where they saw the power of motivated groups, realized they actually had the ears of more than a few people there, and came to one conclusion: it was time to attend cons not as fans, but as writers.  So then who are we?  We are the Cat Vacuuming Society of Northern Virginia, a group of rather motivated writers who have been meeting for nearly a decade with most of the core group having been together for about 4-5 years now.  Most of us are ready to break out.  Several of us have short story sales, and we’ve all got longer projects that we’ve been working on.  I’ve got novels, and with my fiancee we’ve got the pilot.  She’s got another pilot and several novel concepts that she’s starting to take through to completion.  Our founder has a novel she’s been working on for years, and a new attitude on life towards getting writing done.

This is a powerful organization.

This is a group that can get things done.

We just didn’t really realize it until now.

So here it goes, refocusing.  Two projects.  Right now I only have two projects, everything else goes on the back burner.  Conqueror Worm needs to have a serious editing pass.  Arkham is getting closer and closer.  That’s it for me right now, through probably November.  Cause if we’re going to be serious, I need to have things to be serious about.

Today I’m poking around Rotten Tomatoes, and I see someone else is working on a project with the same title as I am.  Well great, I thought, guess I’ll have to change the title.  So then I click over, and it’s also the exact same concept I was working on, just as a movie instead of a sitcom.  Well damn it to hell.

I guess the only real consolation is at least someone seemed to think it was a good idea.  Several someones, actually, since it’s an adaptation of a comic book that I’ve never heard of.

Contests:  End of March I entered both Writers of the Future and the Rod Serling Screenwriting contests.  Writers got Belmeth, Serling got a teleplay adaptation of Doorman that I was much happier with than at any point when it was a short story.  Writers has been encouraging lately, as I got a hand-written “Keep Entering!” from the contest head on my last rejection, as well as an email that started “Welcome back!” when they said Belmeth had arrived.  So while I’m not doing well enough to be an honorable mention, I’m at least doing well enough to maintain a little name recognition.

Shame it’s blind judging.  Oh well.

Arkham:  Been working on the new pilot with Blythe, and we’re both liking it better than the original pilot.  Lots of monsters and blood and ooze and body parts and screaming.  Which I think will bring more people into the show than kidnapping and some stuff that, if I’m to be honest with myself, was largely ripped off from X-Files black oil.

Capsule:  Been world-building, and am going to present what I have of it tonight at CVS for comments and to see what kind of questions people have about it.

Hench:  New project, don’t know where it’ll go yet.

Conqueror Worm:  Just as soon as this draft of Arkham is done.  Probably mid-May.

…to prepare submit each of the seven stories from my previous entry for publication (at least one in the remains of 2008).

…to complete a full editing pass of Conqueror Worm and send out query letters within two months of this completion (not necessarily in 2009, but no later than the end of February 2010).

…to outline and draft an entire 42 minute script for an episode of Arkham on my own.

…to submit Arkham to a spec pilot contest, like People’s Pilot or Slamdance’s Teleplay Contest.  Glad to see you’re back, Slamdance!

And, if there’s time among all of that, there’s a few other projects I’d like to do, but won’t call Resoultions, as I suspect the above will take up plenty of my time but I hope…

…to finally update the look of this blog from template to my own little corner of the interwebs.

…to plot out an original feature-length screenplay for contest submission.

…to plot out a spec script for contest submissions.

…to finish worldbuilding of Capsule in hopes of approaching next Nanowrimo much more prepared to actually write it.

There we go.  Keeping myself honest yet again.

For now, a Nanowrimo post mortem.  I backed out.  Look, here’s the thing.  I was working on the thing-a-week project, which was keeping me busy, keeping me away from other projects.  And the very first thing I did was start a new project which would further keep me away from other project.  I like the plot, but it requires a lot of world building, and it deserves a lot more thought that Nanowrimo was going to let me put into it.

So here’s where I am.  I’ve got some short stories from either my aborted thing-a-week or earlier that I think can be worked into shape to submit to publications.  The list, to keep myself honest:

• Sleep (previous purchased, not published)
• Div0
• The Rustler of Drybone Gulch
• Carbon Offsets
• The Doorman
• The Queen of Belmeth
• Looking Over

Quite a list.  I’m hoping to go back into something like thing-a-week, but editing these stories over the next two months with an eye of sending them out.  Plan one is to submit something to the next Writers of the Future contest while I’m still eligible.   Then, it’ll probably be Queen of Belmeth sent off to Weird Tales.

In my novels, I need to give Conqueror Worm a big editing pass.  That’ll hopefully start no later than March, but if I can get started in February, that’ll rock.

The television pilot project, Arkham, still remains firmly on a front burner, gotta get back to work on that ASAP.

I’d like to write a spec script.

I’d like to do a massive rewrite of Halley’s Tail.

Dear lord that’s a lot of stuff.