Category: Opinion

John Ostrander: Paving The Way

will-and-graceby John Ostrander

Friday was a landmark day for this country. The Supreme Court effectively said that same sex marriage was legal in all 50 states. In doing that, they reflected the views of American citizens: 63% of us have said they think same sex marriage should be legal. It’s been a majority opinion since 2010 when a CNN poll first reported it.

This would have been unthinkable just a few years before that. Part of the change is due to our own pop culture. Depictions of LGBT individuals have proliferated over the years. Think of the uproar when Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian back in 1997 with her character on her sit-com, Ellen, also coming out a short time later. The uproar that followed!

Contrast that with her talk show that started seven years later. She has also hosted the Academy Awards, the Grammys, and the Primetime Emmys. She’s been a hugely successful stand up comedienne. She was the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo. She’s beloved today. read article

Dreaming of glamour while living on the breadline

The subtitle of this article tells the tale: “…the life of a modern screenwriter.” Truth to tell, though, we think it would apply to just about any writer, anywhere and any time:

Spotted at Pinterest
Spotted at Pinterest

by Sally O’Reilly

Writing for the screen has always been insecure, competitive and emotionally demanding – and that’s on a good day. It’s not a calling for the maverick genius; collaboration is mandatory. While novelists, playwrights and poets are in sole command of their work, the screenwriter must be prepared for constant rewrites, and even if their script is deemed filmable, it’s often no more than the blueprint for a director to bring to life. Even so, the allure and the glamour remain: the flash of cameras at Cannes or Beverly Hills, the chance to create stories that are beamed around the planet.

Hard work and determination are prerequisites. Whether the aim is to write for the small or large screen, it’s often difficult to get a commission, and new writers usually work extremely hard for little financial reward. According to the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) the BBC pays budding writers on one of its so-called “shadow schemes” less than a third of the minimum wage. read article

Peggy Bechko on Fear of Flying – or Success

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by Peggy Bechko

Okay, writers, listen up. Pretty prevalent amongst us is shyness and even out and out fear of success.

How, you ask can this be possible? If we’re writing with the aim of having a script produced or a novel published how can it be that we actually fear that which we strive for?

This is a deep psychological subject on which many articles have been written. So we’ll skip the discussion on whether it exists, it does. Look inside yourself and I’ll bet you spot at least some degree of it as it seems that there’s something about the writing life that attracts just this kind of people. You know, like you and me. read article

What I learned about writing from a broken tooth

We here at TVWriter™ just fucking love epiphanies. Especially about writing. More especially when they’re somebody else’s and that somebody else just gives them out to the world, angst-free. (Well, that somebody else may have felt some angst, but for us chickenshit wise men and women, insights like the one coming up in the following post are relatively free!)

toothpullerby Nathan Bransford

I recently had quite a health ordeal, and for some reason it reminded me of writing and publishing. Probably because everything does. Bear with me on this one.

A month back, while in the early days of my new job, I bit into a piece of toast and felt a sharp pain in one of my molars. I didn’t think that much of it — I’ve had some jaw/tooth aches in the past that didn’t amount to much — and I went about my business, planning to check with my dentist if the pain didn’t go away. Then, a week later, I proceeded to get immensely sick, coming down with a 104.5 fever. (Spoiler: I survived!) read article

Herbie J Pilato: I owe my career to David Gerrold

A moment from David Gerrold's first home run
A moment from David Gerrold’s first home run

by Herbie J Pilato

Decades ago, when I was just a young lad growing up in Rochester, New York, I used to frequent with my parents the Wegmans supermarket in Gates Chili, New York, a suburb of Rochester.

Today, Wegmans is a mega-store that is known around the country (and in some parts of the world!) as one of the finest grocery establishments in existence.

It was then (circa 1970), too, if on a somewhat smaller scale read article