Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Leisurely times

Slept late.  Did laundry.  Grocery shopping.  Not a lot else.  I tried to watch the 1982 version of "Witness For The Prosecution" on Netflix but the first 15 minutes were so awful, I stopped it before Diana Rigg came on.  She's playing the Marlene Dietrich role and is always watchable (she made an excellent Mrs. Danvers in that lousy remake of "Rebecca" done for Masterpiece Theatre about 10 years ago), but there was too damn much nonsense to go through -- lousy writing, lousy acting by really good actors, lousy directing, lousy production values.  I don't have the patience or willingness to waste my time on tripe, anymore

So I did something sneaky.  I sent a query to a publisher for LD, even though I haven't gotten much feedback on it, yet.  Another writer's doing a nice job of proofing it for me and sending me corrections by chapter (not great but not bad, so far), so I input the first three chapters and polished it up and sent it off via e-mail.  If they like that, they'll get back to me and ask for the rest of the book.  Hopefully not before it's done (they say they'll take 60 days).  If they say no, then I'll look into self-publishing it.

I've also been scouring the web for foundations that will support writers...and not finding many.  Most of the ones that do require you not to have published more than one book, if any.  I've found lots of writing competitions for short stories (and poetry collections and the like) but none of them really offer much promise.  Looks like the majority of other resources have dried up...but I've just really begunlooking so I can't say I give up, yet.

Of course, I tried the competition route when I was writing screenplays, thinking if I did well in them, people would take notice of my work.  Didn't happen, even though I actually WON some and did very VERY well, overall.  Nine of my scripts have either won, placed or shown high up in various competitions and that couldn't even get me an agent.

I've decided to start pushing my services as a book packer with other people besides this company in Buffalo.  We don't have an exclusive contract and I can get the word out that I'm available for various jobs.  I've decided to push for moving back to LA and making a living doing this.  I had a nice long chat with one of my German buddies who's living there and I felt such pangs of homesickness, it startled me.  Buffalo's nice enough, but it's not where I want to be.

Guess we'll see how things go. 

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