Brand X

It's frustrating trying to maintain a blog about one's writing when the work one is doing is not something one can post about publicly.

Of course, that last sentence makes it sound like I'm scabbing. As all civilized people know, the WGA is presently on strike, and this year's TV season is already up shit creek. I couldn't support the strike more, of course. If I lived in L.A. like a sensible spec monkey, I'd be manning the picket lines in my favorite red shirt, never mind that I'm not a WGA member. Instead I try to stay abreast of where things stand and talk about it with my friends, shooting down the usual fallacies they've vaguely heard, like "Do they really need a union?" and "Don't screenwriters already make a ton of money?" Of course, shooting down the latter usually involves just pointing to my current financial situation. I'm working, all right, in the problematic writerly sense of the word, and it's even working for a real company, but that doesn't mean I've seen a nickel of actual currency yet.

Mind you, the work I'm doing is for overseas companies that are not part of the AMPTP, and are not covered by the strike. That's part of why I haven't seen that precious nickel yet, but that's another story.

Of course, I'm not a WGA member. I could, if the opportunity presented itself, write for NBC or Paramount or anyone. (Because, you know, they're just LINED up asking me to.) But there's two reasons I'm not even approaching struck companies with specs until the strike is over.

First, because violating a strike would forever preclude me from WGA membership. They keep track, you know.

Second, because I agree with the reasons for the strike. The studios are unquestionably trying to screw over the writers, and I have too much experience with being screwed over already. When I am a WGA member, I want some kind of residual deal that means I can eat and pay rent and see a doctor when I'm sick, and I refuse to consider that unreasonable.

Third, and the one that would matter if the first two reasons didn't exist, I'm nobody's fucking scab.

If you don't understand my third point, I would suggest that you study up on the history of labor relations in America. The libertarian-sounding bullshit we hear about the free market was trendy a hundred years ago, too, and it didn't work then either. Remember this: we've repeatedly field-tested whether large businesses will just plain kill people for money, and the answer is always yes.

So, yeah, I'm doing some work for some companies well outside the strike. Not anything you'd call big-time, but it's good, honest writing work, and I enjoy it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I can't discuss it. Leaving the blog alone for days at a time can convey the impression that I'm not writing, when I often am, just not for up-front money and not in a way that I can talk about. Meantime, I'm still poking around for a day job to make ends meet. The nature of the beast is feast or famine, and while that sounds romantic (and honestly, it kinda is) the famine parts are a real bitch.

Also, of course, I'm once again deep into NaNoWriMo, and once again lagging behind in wordcount. This time around, I'm engaged in a prose exploration of the hidden worlds that hide just outside the blinders we set up for ourselves. That's the problem with being a writer; ask me what it's about, and I'm too likely to say "Well, it's an exploration of genre and how it often just consists of one set of surface trappings or another" instead of "It's about this girl who's part of a secret organization and how she finds out what's really going on in the world." Nevertheless, I hack push on through the word count, reaching for 50,000 by midnight on the 30th. We'll see if I make it.

Not all of my readers will enjoy this post. Most people, presented with exceptionally bad and ill-conceived musical numbers from shows that were never produced, do not experience pleasure. There are, however, some out there who enjoy seeing the valiant attempts that reached for show-tune greatness, and wound up someplace else instead.

For those brave souls, courtesy of their gracious host, I present these three songs from the aborted Batman musical. They put me in mind of that Superman musical that exploded on contact with the stage back in the 60s, and which can still be found on video if you know where to look. They put me in mind of an exchange that I probably won't ever find a place to use:

"Is this the human emotion you call... joy?"

"No, that's the human emotion we call schadenfreude. But that was a good guess."

I intend to tackle NaNoWriMo again this year, because I enjoyed it so much last time. This time I don't intend to ignore this blog for a month, though.

Unfortunately, I never quite finished last year's novel. Sure, I beat the word-count deadline, but I did it without finishing the actual story. And then once the deadline was past, and with nobody clamoring for this bizarre, self-indulgent time-travel novel, I didn't feel any strong sense of urgency to drag myself the rest of the way to the end. Exacerbating the problem was the necessity of killing one of my characters in a manner that I personally found quite emotionally painful. We all have our personal squicks, and this death, however required by the narrative, just stomped all over mine. Thus, I found reasons to put it off.

This year's NaNoWriMo snuck up on me while I was busy with other things, and soon I found myself in the awkward position of being about to start a timed-writing project without finishing the previous one. Being a manly, honorable sort, I felt that this was simply not on.

I have, on this basis, just now finished the godawful first draft of a novel entitled THE IMPRESARIOS, begun just under a year ago. It's now 242 pages of prose that need a serious rewrite at some point, but it is in fact done, and I can now start on this year's novel with a clear conscience.

Ah, crap, I'm already three days behind. Wish me luck.