April 28, 2008

Well, how did I get here?

How do I work this?
Where is that large automobile?
This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful wife.

What is that beautiful house?
Where does that highway go to?
Am I right? Am I wrong?
My God… what have I done?

Back At It/The Challenge 2.008

2 things:

(1) I’m writing again, which is good - very good. After the move to the house took up all my time from September - November, the holidays came along. Between those and the endless puttering and fixing and buying new stuff for a 50-year-old house, I had really been out of commission for a while there. But this past weekend Michelle took both boys off my hands for a few hours for a birthday party, so I had 2 or 3 hours of good, quality time with Dead Guy.

Yes, Dead Guy. After being banished to the back burner since at least last summer, Dead Guy is forefront in my mind again. Which leads to the complications with

(2) The Challenge 2.008. As I suggested in an earlier post, I had really meant to come out guns blazing in early January with a New Year’s Resolution/Big Bold Statement about what the new challenge would look like. A schedule of milestones, deadlines to live up to, all that, to get both scripts completed in 2008. While the final goal - both scripts done and showable and uploaded to inktip.com by the end of 2008 - is still unshakeably in place, the interim deadlines and timetables keep changing. Why? Because I had assumed that I would resume work on Psycho Ex first, finish a draft of that by April or so, get that polished and uploaded by the summer, and then keep right on trucking into Dead Guy for fall and winter deadlines. But now it appears that the two scripts are more entangled in my mind than that. Instead of writing one script and then the next, they have become interconnected, alternately as 2 sides of the same coin (the premises are mirror images of each other) or as serving as release valves - when I get stuck on one, the other one is always there waiting, a breath of fresh air. Therefore, it’s looking like I’ll continue with both at the same time, as two big chunks moving forward in semi-parallel fashion. So who knows which one I’ll finish first, or when? How should I assign deadlines or progress requirements when working like this? I don’t know, but I’m working on it. The whole point of this is to force myself to get productive again, not to devise a system with giant loopholes that I can simply walk out of.

It seems like there should be big milestones met by the end of each quarter, whether through a total page count of both scripts combined or otherwise. I’ll keep thinking about it, and if anybody gets any bright ideas by all means send them this way.

As for Dead Guy - I’ve gotten my head back in the game, but no new flow of pages yet. Mostly working on my outline, more concentration on The Line, character arcs, things like that. But specific work has been done too - the nearly-complete Act One has been tweaked and refocused, the first present-day scene is getting mapped out and taking shape, more details about Pete’s life and business trip are getting nailed down. More forward progress than we’ve seen in a long time, so stay tuned.

Now if I could just figure out how to get the boys invited to birthday parties EVERY weekend…

Not Gonna Happen

This hurts me.

As recently as 2 weeks ago I was convinced that I still had a shot at meeting The Challenge before the end of 2007. Now I have come to realize that it is not gonna happen. Not this year. I was manageably behind until about September, but then the move happened. I knew this would cut severely into my writing time, but I remained ambitious and optimistic. A little too optimistic.

I will not cross the finish line but I won’t say I failed - Psycho Ex has 45 completed script pages in a 54-page document (script + outline). Dead Guy currently has 22/31. So while I would have liked to have written more, and in less time than 8 months or whatever, The Challenge was successful in getting me off my butt. Mental masturbation? Maybe. But those are 85 pages that would probably not have been written otherwise.

And I’m not done yet.

I’ve had a few ideas of possible ways to continue into 2008 with a bigger, better Challenge 2.0, possibly (1) finishing one of the scripts by a date in summer 2008, (2) completing a showable (not just a first draft) of BOTH scripts and getting both uploaded to industry readers on inktip.com by the end of 2008, or most ambitiously (3) getting both scripts uploaded to inktip.com by some summer 2008 date. But, in the spirit of The Challenge and of setting ambitious - even scary - goals for myself, I’ve had another idea: opening up The Challenge 2.0 to discussion by you guys. After all, one of the biggest goals of The Challenge - and of setting up a blog to put the process out there for everyone to see - was to (try to) get myself out of my comfort zone and take on new ideas/requirements/pressure from the outside. It may not have always looked like it, and I may have made decisions regarding what is “realistic” and whatever in a way that may have seemed arbitrary at times, but The Challenge was pretty successful at doing this. Hey, 85 pages. Good old external motivation.

So what do you think? One script by the summer? Both by December? Something completely different I haven’t even thought of? Let’s do this.

Challenge me.

Supervillain Update

I know everyone out there is hearing about the writers’ strike and thinking, “yeah, yeah, DVDs, residuals, internet - but how does it affect ROBB?!” I thought the same thing. So I emailed the producer who has optioned my script and asked her. Here’s what she said:

>>It’s hard to peg exactly how the strike will affect everything, but it could very well be helpful. We’re definitely still trying to find a home for Supervillain. We even have a potential investor for 85% of the budget if we can find the other 15%.

>>…the strike could end up being helpful, since there will be a lack of content in the market soon, but the tricky part is that November & December are the lightest buying months anyway, so a lot of places are just holing up and waiting to see if the strike is over by the new year.

So… 85% of the budget is there - anybody want to make an investment?

Hey, if we sell the house…

It’s Theirs!

Got the call - escrow has finally CLOSED on the condo! Only 8 days late. We (more importantly, our buyer) survived the credit crunch. YES!

Okay, back to unpacking…

It’s Ours

Just got the call. Escrow closed and the house is ours!

T Minus 10 Days And Counting

If everything continues to follow its current course, Michelle will have her house and back yard next Wednesday (10/24). The U-Haul truck has been reserved, the utilities switch-overs have been scheduled, and our stuff is slowly but surely getting boxed up. The house was (supposedly) evacuated this weekend and gets tented/fumigated for termites tomorrow. The rest of the documentation gets signed tomorrow, and the walk-through is being scheduled. So everything for the house close looks to be in great shape. 10 days until they hand over the keys.

Then there’s the condo.

We Sold the Condo!

It looked kind of iffy for a while there, so I didn’t want to jinx it by saying anything, but it has been nearly a week now so I guess it is official. We got an offer last week and a signed contract this past Sunday. Thanks to the continued craziness of the L.A. housing market, we did just fine. The physical inspection was held on Wednesday and we finalized the equity loan yesterday, so we are moving right along. There are still some minor variables to be ironed out, but we are allowing ourselves to relax and breathe a sigh of relief. In three weeks we will close on the house and move, and in four weeks we close on the condo. A nice wrap-up.

Now just keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t all fall apart!

House Mini-Tour

We had the physical inspection of the house last Thursday, so we brought the camera along and took some pictures. There were some areas we forgot to get coverage and measurements of (The Lodge), but we got enough for a fairly decent mini-tour on my web gallery. Check it out:

Everything is still moving ahead nicely, and we finally get the condo sale up to speed starting with the “caravan” this Tuesday. So it’s moving along.

We Bought A House!

Many of you may have heard: Michelle and I bought a house! Well, I guess technically we are still “buying” a house, but after some negotiations we have a signed contract and a closing date (October 30 or sooner, depending on when our condo sells), so it is pretty much official. Michelle has always wanted a house (and the required back yard), so given the insane cost of housing here this has been a goal we have been working toward since the day we arrived in Los Angeles. We have kept an eye on the market since we bought our condo over 7 years ago, and after months of seriously looking we found a place we couldn’t say no to. It met all of our admittedly picky demands: more than 2 bedrooms (it has 4!), a back yard, and, like our condo, is in Culver City (for the schools). We are feeling pretty great about it. It will need some work – anything we could remotely afford here is not going to be perfect – but nothing urgent or really major. Let the IKEAzation begin!

Harris is very excited about it – the big tree in the backyard already has a swing, and the idea of not having to share a room with his 2-year-old brother any longer is a huge hit. I’m just afraid it will break Parker’s heart…

I hoped to take a picture or two of the exterior this weekend but never got around to it. But I did grab these from the website ad: