I cannot believe it has been 13 MONTHS since my last blog entry. To those of you who follow me, I apologize. It’s been a wild year, both professionally and personally. My health wavered a bit this year. I had another cancer scare. Also, my wife’s health is declining. It is affecting her quality of life, and it’s breaking my heart to watch it, knowing there is nothing I can do to fix it. Then there’s this whole horrorwriting thing I do. And this year I felt like i was a hamster running on one of those wheels.

But, hey! On a brighter note, it’s the Holidays, and it’s time for this horrorwriter to catch up on passion projects.

During the work year, I get interrupted to do a polish or a rewrite on something I’ve already submitted, usually in light of script notes that filter their way back to me from prospective producers through my manager. So I have to stop whatever I’m doing and evaluate the notes. Sometimes the notes have valid points, and changes are made. Sometimes the notes indicate the executive simply didn’t “get” the script, in which case I  will NOT make those changes.

In publishing as well as in live theater, the writer is KING. Nothing gets changed, not one word, without the writer’s approval. Not so in film or television. In this end of the pool, a writer is just “a schmuck with a laptop”.

Now I understand it’s just part of the business. I don’t take it personally, but I never forget I AM THE WRITER, not them. It’s MY story, and MY screenplay, MY creativity, not theirs. At least, not until they buy it or option it. THEN it becomes a horse of a different color altogether.

Back to the holidays. Soon after Thanksgiving, people in the business start leaving L.A. And when you consider the hours they work and the pressure they’re under, it’s understandable.

By the first week of December, many of the real movers and shakers (those nice folks with “greenlight authority”) are either in the process of leaving or are already gone. If they work at all, they work remotely. The lowly assistants, secretaries, script readers, etc., are all still there, going in to the offices and working their asses off trying to get caught up; trying to prepare for the coming year. But the bosses are on vacation until sometime in January at the earliest.

On a side note, a bunch of the assistants in town are coming together as a group to lobby for better wages (most of them make California minimum wage or close to it) and working conditions (They work 12+ hours a day six, sometimes seven days a week, for weeks on end without a break). I hope they achieve their goals.

So what do creative types like me do with this “downtime”?

I’m glad you asked. In addition to being a husband to to my wife, a father to my children and a grandfather to my grandchildren, I’m still working on my novel. I’ll have the rough draft done by January. I’m getting my computer repaired. Once I’m done on the novel, I’ll set it aside for a while to percolate. Then I’m going to start writing a cat-and-mouse psychological crime thriller screenplay.

 A guy has to stay busy, right?