So, I mentioned this review of Writers of the Future XXV in the WotF vol XXVI newsgroup to which I was graciously invited. In the section entitled “A Tale of Two Tales”, the reviewer says, delicately, that he’s heard that I’m “guilty of pride”.

When, I asked how this particular reviewer, whom I’d never met, had been able to glean that. One of the WotFers suggested that the name of this blog might have had something to do with it.

Apparently, “Without Really Trying” can imply that I believe that will become famous without really trying. So, to clear the air, the name of this blog is supposed to be “ironic”. Anyone who reads it can see what a long and torturous road it’s been so far, and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Without Really Trying is simply catchier than “Working My Knuckles to the Bone to Hopefully Get Somewhere”.

Tags: Rants, writing

Well, I have arrived back at the Roosevelt Hotel exactly one year after I left it as a 1st place winner of the L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. This time, I’m free of all the anxiety I felt last year, and I feel like I can just kick back and have some fun!

I was picked up at the airport by Mitch and Peter (Peter you might know as the admin of the WotF Forums) and had a great time chatting with them about fiction. Turns out they’ve both put the pen to paper themselves a few times, and Peter even admitted to completing an outline of his own SF story. Go Peter!

I was met at the Roosevelt Hotel by Joni LeBacqui, the contest administrator. Joni is the heart and soul of his contest (I thanked her specifically in my acceptance speech last year), and, as usual, she was run off her feet. On observing Joni’s hectic schedule last year, my wife Alicia asked, “When does she eat?”, so upon arrival I made sure to take her to lunch, where she caught me up on the state of the contest, the schedule, and how the winners were managing.

Everyone was in the middle of their 24 hour story, but I met Steve Saville and Eric James Stone in the lounge of the hotel where we shot the shit. Also present was Jason Fischer, who was both furiously trying to finish his story, and also doing his best to Be Australian (which is to say, friendly, funny, and generally good-natured).

Jason also gave me a copy of his novella, which I can’t wait to read!

Jason Fischer's Novella

The welcome party–where the winners get to mingle with the judges–is tonight, so I’m going to try and get a few hours of shut eye before then. I’ve been up since 3:30am this morning, and I want to be my best tonight to at least keep to a minimum how many times I put my foot in my mouth.

Tags: Writers of the Future

Writing this on Windows Live Writer. I’m pretty sceptical of Microsoft blogging software, but what the hell, I’m adventuresome.

Can’t say that I’m impressed so far… the formatting is brutal, and my cursor never quite goes where I want it to. Most likely I’ll just stick with the wordpress admin panel.

In other news, I’m also writing this on my new Dell 9100 XPS, a computer powerful enough to finally edit video. I shot a short film a while ago, and post production was incredibly frustrating. The most powerful PC I had at home was the laptop, and it wasn’t nearly powerful enough for video editing. My work PC, on the other hand, has enough horsepower (barely), but didn’t have the harddrive space (90 Gigs). Efforts to get them to work together were dismal failures.

This PC has an Intel i7 quad core with a 1 Terabyte harddrive. I think it’ll do nicely!

How can you not admire these guys and the movies they produce?

I’m a fan of excellence, and The Asylum is excellent at cleaving to their mission statement.

Tags: movies

One of the reasons this blog has been so dead recently is that I’ve been spending all of my available time working on the second draft of my third screenplay.

A fantasy/horror, I’m really excited about this one. It’s written so that I can shoot it with an incredibly small budget if I can’t find funding for it.

My normal process in writing a screenplay (and normal is a weird word, because this is just my third so I’m still feeling things out here) is to first write a one paragraph idea, then a 1 page synopsis, a detailed treatment (outline), and finally a “muscle draft”. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a muscle draft, I’ve referred to it as a SFD (Shitty First Draft) on this blog before, but in order to refer to the concept in polite company, I’ve borrowed Darren Aronofsky’s term for it.

In the muscle draft, you’re going for quantity over quality… things will chance as you go along, and you’ll long to go back and revise, but you can’t. Neither can you edit your prose, or do anything besides plowing through. It’s painful for perfectionists like me, but the idea is that, at the end of the process you have a complete screenplay to work with.

I’m at that point right now. I think the concept will blow people’s minds, but the second draft is definitely going to focus on character development, and plot holes–and also going over the prose until it sings.

It is certainly a relief to finally allow myself to write well. It’s like going from a factory to a studio. I’ve been the button pusher, and the chance to finally be an artist again is music for the soul.