What’s happening now

First and foremost, I have a job. It is a temporary contract at Intel. (I am to Intel as Michael Corleone is to the Mafia.)

I have several concerns. It is temporary, and although it is better paying than a lot of the jobs I have applied for, I am not sure it will be enough to pay all my bills. Still, there is a lot of elation. I do have something again. I will have money coming in. Also, it is at a place where not having a business wardrobe is just about as unimportant as can be. That helps a lot. For the work, it fits in well with my skills. I will need to learn some new things, but I can do that.

Some time ago I wrote about how I was not getting any good advice about jobs, because people meant well, but the rules were different in this economy. Having found something in this economy, do I now have any great advice? Not really. Ultimately, I think what helped was that I have worked with the hiring manager before. She knows me, and my work ethic, and my abilities, and that helped. We did know that connections were important, but if you don’t have any connections, I still have no advice for how to get them.

There is one thing I can say that may be helpful. I did not hear about the job from this person, because I have not been in touch with her. That part was largely luck, but the luck was at least partly based on my sending my resume out to every place I could find. Sending out a hundred resumes and hearing nothing is pretty discouraging, but it may be necessary.

I start on Monday, August 10th, so it will be after the Willamette Writers Conference, which I am attending Friday, August 7th. I bought four pitching sessions, and have already had three of the people that I picked cancel. The substitutions should be okay, but it’s easy to start getting paranoid. Anyway, I would gladly have started work this week, but it may be just as well that I can focus on getting ready for the pitches.

A pitch is basically a ten-minute session with a producer or agent where you can “pitch” your script and see if they are interested. I only picked producers. I do need an agent, but if I can sell a screenplay, getting an agent will be much easier anyway.

It’s scary because I feel like so much depends on this, but I do need to set expectations low. This is my first time pitching, and it takes a while to break in. Friday may be nothing more than a learning experience. Even if it goes exceptionally well, the most that would happen that day is that someone would request that I send the script. Then, if they liked it after reading it, they could make an offer. This is where having the job is great. It buys me some time for something to happen.

So my activities this week will focus on getting ready for that. I need to consider which project would be best to pitch to each person. (Ideally, I would like to pitch something different to each one, but ultimately I will go with the project that will have the strongest appeal for each, whether there are duplicates or not.) I need to have a one sheet write-up for each, and figure out what my key talking points are, studying the art of pitching. I have started this a little, but I need to really focus.

I also need really need to finish Coulrophobia, because I think that one is very strong, and it is not advisable to pitch an unfinished script. I wish I had more done, but I am still making good progress, even if I have a long way to go.

I will also try and spend some time with Karen, do some prep for the setup for a wedding reception (not mine, obviously), pick blackberries, and just get other little odds and ends done, expecting that I will not have as much time around the house.

Oh, and at some point I will need to take a drug test. At least there’s one thing over which I have no anxiety.