I just finished two Saturdays of presentations for the APEX writers group. This is a great group of mostly science fiction and fantasy writers who are trying to learn to be better at what we do. I’ve met a lot of new friends in SFF who are, like me, interested in getting better at their creative writing.
My presentations were on Writing for Film and TV. The first one was about the field in general, answering a lot of questions about ‘who’s who’ and what ‘pitching’ is. The second presentation was on how to turn a short story into a script.
For those interested in being part of APEX, you find them at https://www.apex-writers.com/. Originated by David Farland, an award-winning writer of fantasy and science fiction, the group continues on after his passing, providing encouragement, motivation and learning opportunities for members.
Starting another weekend of writing. Hope to get another 2500 or so words done. I’ve plotted out the end of the novel, however I know that sometimes the characters take off on me and new stuff happens!
I’ve really enjoyed the process of publishing on Draft2Digital.com and am gearing up to do it again!
This time my plan is to publish the various short stories and poems that I’ve had success with plus some new material. This would all be science fiction and fantasy, at least in this volume. It makes sense that I republish stories that saw the light of day in the 1990s or are published in an esoteric magazine.
I’ve been working on the imprint name and logo, so I’m going to upload a few here and see how I like them. I’ve had to discard “Space Cat Books” as there just are too many like it. The logo should be good for other SFF books, if I want to venture out into being a small publisher. Also, for other volumes of ‘collected works’ by moi.
I’m liking the clean design of the small rocket logo but with the name Space & Time Books. The design is from Canva.com a terrific application for designs.
So this week, I found two places that are accepting unpublished novels (slush basically) for a short period of time. Both of them want about 50 pages of a novel from any author who wants their novel read by a big-time publisher. I think these are great opportunities for those of us in SF/F. So here they are:
I’m not certain I will go for it, though. I don’t want to send my novel off until I’m ready. I don’t have the 80k finished level and it’s not polished as yet. But it is tempting!
Like my old friend the tomcat KittyCat or Quonsi as his owners call him, I have to assess our chances of getting good things from each hunting expedition. Not entirely certain that being in a veritable mountain of slush novel submissions is the best presentation for me…
I’m starting the preparation for the big day – Christmas Day when I cook like I’m expecting a whole army but get only a small platoon.
What’s the ‘writer’ career up to during holidays? Especially vaca time away from busy corporate writing job?
So far, I’ve worked on changing a short story into a movie idea. It’s for a contest looking for dark SF, fantasy or horror shows. I normally don’t / can’t enter contests as they’re for people who haven’t sold yet or aren’t members of the WGC or WGA. But this one is a good excuse to adapt a story I have.
Also, I cook and see friends. No one does any real business this time of year in tv. Or film.
I’m also reading. I love books on writing. My newest acquisitions are kobo versions of Save The Cat by Blake Snyder and Max Adams updated version of one of my favorites The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide.
Max Adams’ book is mostly for full-time movie writers but there are great tips for all of us.
I wish I’d re-read her chapters on agents before continuing with an agent who absolutely couldn’t sell me as a writer. Nice guy but not for me. I was too involved in trying to make a living and developing my day-job career as a tech writer to think about it.
To be fair, too I also didn’t generate the number of scripts needed per year to become a movie writer. The third time I turned down a gig from him, he dropped me which was expected, too. But the gigs weren’t totally ‘writing’ and not good enough to replace the day job.
Now I think I’ll be working on the prose and tv/film and only look for a new tv agent when I have a good portfolio built up.
