Say buddy, can you spare a Nicholl?

So, now it's time to explain to you guys my plans for my screenplay.

On Monday I'm submitting the newly-revised version to a competition where it will battle thousands of other entries for a chance at the most prestigious award a hitherto unpaid screenwriter can receive: The Nicholl Fellowship. My goal was to write KoD to such a standard that it would reach the quarterfinals (i.e. make the first cut) in this competition. Why not aim higher, you ask? And what's in it for me? I will attempt to answer both those questions.

Why not aim higher?

Let me try and convey the sheer improbability of making it even to the quarterfinals in this competition. There are people who live in L.A. and enter this year after year after year and never get anywhere. I've entered it before myself and never gotten anywhere. Here is why.

Somewhere around 5,000 scripts are entered in this competition each year. All 5,000 of them get read once. If that person likes it, he passes it along to a second random person. If that person likes it, she passes it along to a third random person. If the FIRST THREE RANDOM PEOPLE to read your script like it, then and only then is it ELIGIBLE for the quarterfinal round. If even one person dislikes the script, it's out. Usually less than 20% of the entries make it past three judges. So in our example, let's say 950 out of the 5,000.

What they do next is look at the numeric scores the judges gave the scripts. Yes, they were scoring them. They throw out the lowest of the three scores for each, average the two highest, and pick only the highest scores to be quarterfinalists. In our example, that would be around 250. That's about the top 25% of the ones who made it to three reads in the first place.

So, bottom line, to even make it to the quarterfinals, the judges have to pretty much agree unanimously that your script is in the top 5% of all of this year's entries. As my writing has never made the top 5% of anything in my 31 years of life, I would be insane to assume I could suddenly make it any FURTHER than that.

What's in it for me?

Do the quarterfinalists receive money or prizes? No. So what's in it for me? What's in it for me is that the list of names and phone numbers is distributed to agents, producers, etc. along with a brief synopsis of the story. Quarterfinalists have been known to receive up to a half dozen calls from interested parties regarding their screenplays. In a town where just getting read is 75% of the battle, I can't stress enough how valuable it would be for me to get this kind of industry exposure.

So! When will we know what happens with KoD? End of July. Until then, this particular project is officially "on hiatus."

Finished.

I finally finished the first draft of KoD and have been getting comments back, mostly positive. However, I still feel there's a bit of work to be done before it has a prayer of making the Nicholl quarterfinals.

Next on the agenda, writing-wise: I'd like to finish my Desperate Housewives spec. I need at least one really stellar, outstanding spec in my portfolio to "lead" with, and while my Without a Trace and my Veronica Mars are perfectly readable, neither is the type to generate any buzz. I need to figure out something to do with my Desperate Housewives to give it that "wow factor" the others are missing.

I am a writer.

I am a writer. You know how I know? Because I enjoy writing. The actual process of it. Not the achievement, the monetary reward, or the respect. The actual sitting down and imagining stories and people and figuring out what's going to happen next and making them say things to each other.

Dorothy Parker said, "I hate to write, but I love having written."

I'm sitting staring at page 80 of KoD, knowing there are over 20 pages left to go before I can call myself finished this evening... and loving every minute of it. Sure, it's frustrating when I realize I have no idea what I'm talking about and need to consult yet another reluctant expert. Sure, it's frustrating when I realize that I'm not in the "zone" and my words are coming out wooden and improbable.

But this is what I'd rather be doing than almost anything else I can think of. There's a high that comes from the "Eureka" of two plot points coming together with the soft "snick" of a jigsaw puzzle. There's a rush in coming up with the perfect one-liner. When I realize the perfect way for a character to die, the hair rises on the back of my neck. It's worth the writer's block, the spasms of self-loathing... it's even worth the criticism and the rejection. Because I know that "having written" isn't everything. If my last batch of spaghetti doesn't stick to the wall I can always get another pot boiling.

Because I am a writer.

Today.

Today I broke my tailbone.

Also I got fired.

They both happened in the same building but otherwise are not connected.