Through The Looking Glass

For several years I’ve been meaning to make a list of 30 things to do before I turn 30. I never finished the list, so now that there’s only three months to go I think it’s high time I get on with it.

I need your help! I’ve started the list with a few items I’ve already accomplished, because they were on the original list and happened since. I threw in a few more, but my mind is basically a complete blank here. I know there’s tons of things I’d love to do, most of which are even possible. Please put your suggestions in the comments! Anything I think I can and/or would like to do I will add to the master list. And if you can help me accomplish something on the list, please speak up!

1. Have a baby.
2. Get paid to write.
3. Have an original piece of writing published.
4. Go to the Griffith Observatory.
5. Learn to ride a Vespa.
6. Fire a gun.
7. See Citizen Kane.
8. Make butter.
9. Give blood (if I qualify).
10. Grow my own tomatoes.
11. Visit Watts Towers.
12. Donate knitted items to a NICU.
13. Run. Like, on purpose. For exercise.
14. Make socks for K.
15. Send out my book proposal.
16. Get 95% (or higher!) on “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” on Guitar Hero II.
17. Play Dungeons & Dragons.
18. Release my soaker pattern.
19. Join a knit-along.
20. Take a family portrait. (This one’s inspired by Mighty Girl.)
21. Get another tattoo.
22. Sell or give away my pile of unwanted clothing.
23. Bake a loaf of bread.
24. Write about my Grammy for the Family Trunk Project.
25. Start a costume closet (actual closet optional).
26. Write about Sam’s birth.
27. Put my YA/chick lit idea down on paper and show it to…someone.
28. Embroider something.

In chronological order:

1. Age two(ish): Will. Kitchen table, falling onto.
2. Age fifteen: His sister Sarah. Punch to the nose during a fight.
3. Age nineteen: His best friend Shelby. Headbutt while sparring.
4. Age thirty-three: His son Sam. Bedtime horseplay.

You may notice that this list covers most of the important people in Will’s life. You might also notice my absence from the list. You might be thinking, “Well, at least she is not physically abusive.” But really, you should be feeling sorry for me. I AM NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BREAK WILL’S NOSE. Poor me.

…or maybe the problem is that my name doesn’t start with the letter S. That works if we exclude the self-inflicted break. (Ah-HA! Self!)

When we had a manager, he sent our spec to half a dozen production companies and got us ONE meeting. He also took three months to give us notes on our second script, and they weren’t even his notes. (We fired him.) He also told us that he hadn’t heard back from the other “two dozen” companies, and that not calling means a pass. Will was an executive at a production company for six years (well, he was an executive for a little more than half that time), and that is a LIE. Not calling means you haven’t read it yet. (Did I mention we fired him?) Oh, and he also failed to follow up on any of the (actual) two dozen positive reactions we had to a pitch–most assuredly not set up by him–that went nowhere. (Fired.)

That pitch. Oh, that pitch. We were approached by a former co-worker of Will’s, now a development exec at a small company that owns several comic book properties. She sent us a stack of low-priority books to see if we had a “take” on any of them. One of them had a terrific hook, and we went in and pitched the hell out of our idea to make it into a movie. They loved it and we spent about four months developing an outline with them. Then we took it out to studios and production companies. That kind of blew for me, because I stayed home with Sam while Will pitched. It was a month before Andrea moved here and there was no one else I would leave Sam with. Sigh. So they went out and pitched the idea, and the executives all loved it, loved Will, loved us (based on our spec, which we used as a sample), but the marketing departments all said no. Every single place passed because of some vague idea of the movie being a genre they didn’t know how to sell. (Horror/comedy is the easiest sell of all time. I don’t have any idea what their problem was.) The whole thing depresses me so much, because if we’d just written the script I think it could have sold. And maybe someday we will write it, but we put in six months gratis and it was passed on by so many places that it just feels not worth it.

We had another manager offer us representation, and he was pretty cool except that he never remembered what we’d talked about previously and didn’t seem interested in our career so much as he seemed to want to hang out with us. Seriously, he wanted us to meet his girlfriend. And while we liked him, we have enough friends. Besides, he thought I had bad taste in movies. How would THAT make for a good relationship, professional or otherwise? (He objected to my appreciation of action movies starring The Rock. COME ON.) Also, he had the same first name as the first guy.

We’ve done two (unpaid) rewrites for friends. One of them we had to withdraw from for a number of reasons, and I am still depressed about it because we loved that project. There were just too many strikes against it for us to be able to make it a priority. I hope someday we can go back to it (if our friend will have us). The other is actually going quite well, and I am optimistic about it, but working on something for a year with no guarantees can be discouraging. The other day the producer asked me if we wanted an advance on the $0 he’s paying us. He was making fun of himself for pushing for us to finish the latest draft, and I think he’s awesome for it, but we are so broke that I can’t really laugh.

An agent liked our script and wanted to meet us. I was apprehensive. We met him, we liked him, I remained cautious but thought it seemed OK. He didn’t make any offer, instead asking to see our next script (this is good). He had his own first name. We sent him our second spec script as soon as we finished the first draft. Six weeks later I sent him a follow-up note, asking if he’d had a chance yet to read it. He immediately responded that it was a “great read” but he “didn’t 100% love it.” I don’t know what the heck that means, and I don’t really care because it isn’t at all helpful. If he’d said, “I can’t sell a western,” that would be useful information. If he said, “I think Character X should live,” that’s a fixable problem. We are very good at taking notes, and if he’d suggested changes we would have made them. But no, just “didn’t love it.” OK, fine. At least now I know that the first guy meant that no call means a pass if you are an agent or manager.

We’ve never queried an agent, because we first tried contacts of Will’s from his executive days (I suppose technically we queried them, but in the real Hollywood way: informally, as a favor) and then we had several referrals. And now it is time to query. We have the option of going back to those now two-year-old contacts of Will’s, most of whom did say they’d be happy to read anything else we have, and we probably will contact them, but we feel the need to query widely.

I’ve written a query letter and it’s reasonably good. I think. (Will thinks so too.) Now we have to finish polishing the script, but that has to wait till we get some notes because we think it is absolutely perfect exactly as is. Or at least, it is our best writing to date so we don’t really know how to improve it. (We asked three friends to read it. One has given us some good notes and the other two are presumably busy having lives and should in no way take this as me being pushy.)

I don’t mind hard work. In fact, if I am going to work at all I prefer it that way. And being a writer isn’t something I take lightly–it’s all I’ve wanted to be my entire life. (Well, maybe I also wanted to be a detective, a lounge singer, an actress, and a foot model. But mostly I’ve always wanted to be a writer.) But this business is one where a writer whose last produced project is action/adventure is still told she can’t write in said genre because years ago she wrote for a tween girls’ series. This is a business where the people who go farthest are the people who get out there and sell themselves, and at least half of those people have zero writing talent. I prefer to spend my work time actually writing, so I’m getting nowhere.

I know we’ve barely tried yet. But the results thusfar are discouraging.

I guess I am questioning whether I’m really willing to spend the time selling myself when there is such a slim chance of success. This is also known as minor depression. It’ll pass. In the meantime, practical advice welcome. Encouragement too.

I may never check my email again, because it’s already reached its pinnacle.

John to Beloved Annika 8:48 AM
Subject: home schooling

Here’s my biggest concern…

If Will is working during the day, and you’re a girl, who’s going to teach Sam math?

JR

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Movies. Musicals. Malaise.
foreignisnotagenre.blogspot.com
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My reply:

Annika Barranti to John 8:58 AM

Television, John. Television.

Awesome.

I sewed an apron and reviewed it for Sew, Mama, Sew’s blog.

40 years ago, they thought we’d live in bubbles but still have housewives.

Like Silligirl, I think it would be easier to list five things about me that are usual. But I’ll try!

1. I learned to cook meat, and cook it well, without ever tasting it. I call it my sixth sense, the Meat Sense. Or maybe it’s just a Cooking Sense, since I can cook pretty much anything.
2. I can cook and bake equally well. Most people can do one or the other. (Cooking, you see, is an art. Baking is science. I guess most brains don’t go both ways.)
3. I love the domestic arts. Cooking and baking, obviously, and also sewing, knitting, embroidery (I’m not very good at that one yet)… I even like to do laundry, though I don’t like the half-mile trek or remembering to get quarters. If I had a washer in my kitchen I’d be in heaven. I have a small amount of experience with weaving and spinning, and am thinking about making my own butter. For real.
4. I kill plants. Which I think is kind of weird considering the other items on my list.
5. I am a city girl through and through, born and raised in Manhattan and a happy resident of Los Angeles. But my dearest dream is to live in the desert with some chickens, goats, and a garden. Obviously I will have to work on my gardening skills.

I tag Unkempt Mommy and Nova. That is, of course, if you want to. (I get tagged all the time and hardly ever follow through. I suck at memes.)