…Cuz there’s no such thing as too much info for us newbies, right? Right?
(Unless you’re as sick of everybody claiming to know everything about writing you don’t as I am, that is. Let’s see if I can slip that in here.)
Vampire – and Jesus – popularizer Anne Rice gives us the advice that back in the day our mothers would’ve clipped from a magazine and mailed to us when we were struggling through college. Except Anne’s is kind of interesting cuz…vampires! And big, big $$$! And video to boot:
I have never watched the television show VERONICA MARS, but the premise of the film intrigued me.
After a very successful Kickstarter campaign, Rob Thomas, the creator and showrunner of the series, has brought us this feature-length sequel. In the film, Veronica, now living in New York and interviewing for prestigious jobs at law firms, is pulled back into the life of a private eye when her ex-boyfriend, Logan Echolls, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery involving old high school friend Carrie Bishop.
Kirsten Bell stars as the super private eye just as she did in the series. She’s good, but as a fan who loved her in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, I expected better. She she does have good chemistry with Jason Dohring, who reprises his role as Logan, and they play off each other well. But overall, the acting in the film is subpar. Every major cast member I’ve seen before has been better before than they were here.
The Motion Picture Academy’s Nicholl Fellowship may not be for TV writing per se, but it’s absolutely the most important contest aspiring screen and television writers can win in terms of future prospects. Which means that these finalists definitely are worth learning about:
by the Deadline TeamAbout half of the finalists for the 2014 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwritingare from the Los Angeles area, but the rest span four states and three continents. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today released its list of 10 screenplays whose writers are on the shortlist for as many as five $35,000 fellowships.
The winners, judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee, will be announced during a November 13 ceremony and live read at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The title says it all. (Like a good title should, right?)
Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They’re “creative types.” We’re not.
But creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.
Writers; we’re by necessity much more than that these days. The world of writing and everything associated with it has changed amazingly in the past few years and continues to change every day. Think about it. The internet with it’s amazing resources for writers; research at our fingertips, social media to get out there and meet our readers and promote, videos and so much more.
It’s all a bit of a whirlwind, but if you’re a writer you’re already all too aware that what it means to be a writer is changing on a daily basis. How we can be successful at it is changing even faster. You have to grab the brass ring of what our culture is throwing at us, move forward rapidly, build new skills with alacrity and stay on top of stuff you previously didn’t even know existed (well, actually you didn’t know it existed because a short time ago it didn’t!).
So here are three of those skills I mentioned above to consider: