Writing Update: Going Pro

As stated yesterday, I really want to move up to the next level. 
 

Realistically, I have a pretty good life. I am worried about how the cost of living is going up, which happened even before my income went down, but I am getting by, occasionally getting to help people and to do fun things, and that’s good.

I can’t give up writing, regardless of whether it ever pays off. I am happier and saner when I am doing it, and that’s important. I am a writer for the long haul.

Knowing all of that, I still want to move to being a paid writer. Yes, it will almost certainly be more money, even working on small projects, because I don’t make that much now. Mainly, though, if I can support myself without being a document specialist or customer service agent or product knowledge expert, then it means I have more time to write. It means that instead of being lucky to get in an hour a day, I could have a few hours a day. It probably wouldn’t be eight, because a lot of thinking about writing while doing something else goes into writing, but I could get so much more done, and it feels so luxurious to think of that.

So this is what I want, and it is a reasonable desire, and I don’t really know how attainable it is, but I have to try, and these are the three things that I feel like I should be working on now or soon.

Update my LinkedIn profile: I know it could change, but right now I have a day job, and I am not looking for another day job. I don’t want to join any related organizations, and it’s nice that people are giving me all of these endorsements for things they know or believe I can do, but it does nothing for me. I want to update my profile to reflect the job I want: screenwriter.

Sadly, I am not sure how to do this. For the day jobs I have had, I know all sorts of platforms, programs, and applications. For screenwriting, I basically use Final Draft. I can use Screenwriter. What else do you put? I have written X screenplays. I collaborated once on a book adaptation. Do I mention the freenlance web content, or is that too off-track? I believe I would be a good script doctor, but I have no proof. I mean, the odds of the profile paying off seem low.

However, one thing I have started doing is making sure that I am connected to the creative types I know, and I can try and find other writer profiles and see what they put. Perhaps viewing the profiles of working people will show me that I have other skills. Maybe they have organizations and events. I feel like I should look.

Revise Coulrophobia and submit it to Amazon Studios: That was the last traditional script I completed, and while it does need some work, I believe it has a fair amount of appeal. Amazon does buy scripts to make movies, and people can vote and weigh in on them.

A big part of the difficulty of breaking into screenwriting is that no one wants to take unsolicited scripts. There are too many legal pitfalls. So, if you know people, they can get you an in, or if you have an agent, they can use their connections to promote your script. I do not really know anyone, and I do not have an agent. Finding an agent to take me seriously without having sold anything or having any track record is also difficult. Therefore, Amazon is a nice path around that.

Let’s be clear on this. Looking at the scripts they have up there now, the first page has 30, and there are 281 pages. That’s not even being a needle in a haystack; that’s being a straw in a haystack, with no one looking specifically for you. It’s still a better chance than a lot of other things.

So, I want to submit fairly quickly there, but I do want to do some revising, and also get more familiar with the site before I send my child up there. When it happens, rest assured that I will be trying to contact everyone I know to read it and vote for it. I only want sincere votes, but I expect people to like it. It’s marvelous.

Start making agent inquiries again: This was a remarkably discouraging business the last time I tried it, but it was also a worse economic environment, and there were union negotiations that were not going well, so this is probably a better time for it. Don’t get me wrong. The odds of success are probably only up from ridiculously unlikely to pretty dang unlikely, but still, an agent would make a huge difference for me, and I at least need to try.

I do truly believe that the harder you work the luckier you are. After I had been unemployed for eleven months, and was pretty desperate, I came up for a temp job. It was not the one I had applied for, which had already been filled, but the person at the contracting company who saw my resume thought I would fit, and it just so happened that the person at the client company who was going to make the hiring decision knew me, and had worked with me before.

That was luck. It was luck that the person from the temp company saw me, and luck that my resume went to Lexi. However, it was not luck that I had put in hundreds of applications, searching every day, for anything that might work, leading my resume to that one spot, and it was not luck that people who have worked with me tend to respect my abilities and work ethic.

There are things you can control, and things you can’t. These are the things that I think I can reasonably do, so that’s what I’ll do, and see where it leads.

Okay, two days of music while I cover the November 10^th concert coming up, and we pick up Monday with the last of the three goal areas. Plus, birthday karaoke is this weekend, so I expect at some point I will need to write about that.