UNDEAD END.

A bit of a dispiriting week. The guys running the show on Unusual Project 1 have declared they don’t plan to pay the creators until they’ve got the money from the people who’re supposed to give them money. Which the Money People are in no rush to do, now that the film UP1 is based on isn’t on as fast a track as it was several months ago, when there was a huge rush to get as much done before the middle of July as possible.

Trying to salvage some good will from creators who’re feeling a little burned by not having gotten the money they were expecting a month or two ago, the Showrunners have offered to let the writers have their stories back. Stories that were created on a work-for-hire basis, at least sometimes to the Showrunners’ design, based on a specific premise (albeit a fairly flexible one).

In other words, stories that, at least in my case, it’s highly unlikely I would’ve written at all, if someone hadn’t solicited pitches. On the whole, I’d much rather have the money I was led to believe I’d be receiving for writing the stories, than the stories I wrote specifically so I could make some money.

This sort of thing seems to happen an awful lot in this business.

On a semi-related note, it sounds like I and my collaborator will be getting rights back to another story I co-wrote. And unlike the stuff written for UP1, I actually wouldn’t mind getting this one back. Here’s hoping.

PARTING WAYS and DONE TO DEATH were both rejected by the Big Publisher. It was a nice rejection, all things considered. Neither of them are really in the memoir/lit niche the publisher is currently carving for its graphic novel program, but on the upside, I’m welcome to pitch stuff that is in that vein. Maybe there is hope for AS REAL AS MONSTERS after all…

Supposed to be hearing back from media manager on both the specs this coming week. This can’t happen soon enough for me. Hopefully at least one of them will “go out” in the next ten days, probably the pilot, if I’m reading things right. In the meantime, I continue working on the romcom screenplay--or I will be continuing work on it shortly. Over the last couple days I got a bit distracted by a reworking of an older idea I had to give up on that I thought might have some potential in a different form.

I’m not convinced I’m wrong about that, but after a few hours trying to break the first storyline, I’m ready to go back to stuff that’s already in progress. New ideas are always welcome, but this isn’t the time to be trying to develop them. I’m not in a good writing mood, which is the exact time to be working on scripts for stories whose beginning, middle and end I already know. What I end up with will probably suck, but once it’s there, I can begin fixing it. On the other hand, trying to come up with story beats when I’m feeling like this…well, it’s not the way to go. I am not feeling particularly receptive to inspiration; perspiration’s what’s called for now.

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A fairly interesting thread on Maple Ink Comics this week started out as a discussion of various scripting/plotting methods for writers who aren’t also artists, moved into questions of theme and the purpose of stories, and then somehow morphed into talk of how to visually organize fight sequences. Who knows where it’ll end up next? (I’m planning to return to the “purpose of stories” thing with my next post, but I planned to do that with my last post, too, before getting caught up in the fighting talk.)

Meanwhile, Canadian Geek and Happy Harbor Comics Shepherd Jay Bardyla ponders the diminishing returns on his TALES FROM THE HARBOR anthology. Original post here, and some response here, in about the middle of the page and onto the next one.

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Got a chance to see some of the work Nick Johnson’s done for his latest comic piece. THE HOLIDAY MEN is gonna look gooooood…

Foley