As I have some time to kill before a manditory work-study meeting, I figured I'd hammer out a blog for the next few minutes...

1) A couple of weeks ago I found out that I'm going to be a father. Big news, obviously, but not unexpected nor unwelcome. We've been trying for close to year - the "window" was closing pretty fast, due to my wife's age (35), and we wanted to have a child before much longer to avoid complications. Over the past couple weeks we've applied for Medicade, gotten onto WIC, and generally done the sort of fretting and consideration potential parents do in the weeks following the discovery. I personally don't care if it's a boy or girl - as long as it is healthy, that is all that matters.

Along with this, I've begun another semester. 24 credits this time around, which no longer seems daunting after the last 9 months of nose-to-the-grindstone. My real goal is to hammer out rough drafts of my current project -- to complete book 2, hammer out acceptable edits of my ongoing "completed" work, and basically write book 3 before baby comes along -- 500k of words, give or take. Pretty daunting task, but by severly curtailing my internet usage and personal reading time (the latter of which has been virtually non existent for the past year, in any case) I should be able to have enough raw hours to achieve this goal.

2) This goes into my next section - an experience I've been planning on describing for some time but never got around to it. Last semester I took a Screenwriting class to help fulfill my Writing minor. As I knew I was going to be balls to the wall later in the semester w/ 23 credits, I decided to tackle the main project of that class immediately: in essence, write 40 pages of a screenplay. I decided to script a sci-fi thriller novel I'd started back in 1999 but had never finished due to my realization of the callowness of my own skills in correlation to the quality of the idea. So I spent the first three weeks of the semester hammering out a rough draft, transcribing the first 1/3rd from the butchered draft, then composing the rest. It was certainly easier to write a screenplay than a novel, I found. The draft ended up 135 pages -- rather too long, but I figured there were certainly areas I could cut. I turned in the draft to the teacher, explaining my class situation & the reason why I'd completed the assignment early, and promising to try and finish a second screenplay over the course of the semester. Drafting a novel in screenplay format was fun and certainly useful - I could use the s.p. in completing that long dormant (if often internally irritating) novel, for example, and decided to draft my cult/religion satire Until the End of the World in a likewise manner. I explained to the teacher that these two screenplays would represent my attempts at a " hollywood blockbuster type" and an "art house type", the first containing lots of violence and sex and conforming to the general three act action-film template, with a few subversive elements here and there; the second would be more experimental, an unholy amalgamation of Faust, Waiting for Godot and Romeo and Juliet, with the majority of the first act being a conversation occuring in a town park between two characters before moving on to a more traditional conflict/resolution forbidden-romance style of film. She smiled when she accepted the first screenplay and warned me that it may take her some time to read through it, as " she had a lot of work (etc. etc.)" Naturally, I smiled and said she could take her time - the usual amatuer embaressment on my part, the usual programmed reaction to handing my work to anyone I didn't know (or knew, for that matter). I then got on with the semester and didn't think much more of it; I continued to attend class and write up the movie summaries and slowly wrote the first and part of the second act for the 'art house' film. I believe I reached 55 - 60 pages by the end of the semester.

At the end of class we had to give presentations on our screenplays. I decided to present my sci-fi film, as the art-house had some very critical/controversial aspects and I didn't wish to piss all over my innocent classmates's shoes, so to speak. I spent 2 hours outlining a presentation, arrived early to class and mapped out a character "tree" and progression of events - curtailing material from the assigned book as emphasis -- but when I started, the teacher interrupted me within 30 seconds.

"I'm sorry, you can't do this presentation."
"Why?"
"Well, I haven't read this screenplay. I thought you were going to present on the other one." (note- she did read the opening of the 'art house' s.p.)
"I...I gave it to you at the beginning of February."
"But you didn't write that in class, you wrote it before class."
"No, I started it the day after classes began."
(surprise)
"Uhm, but you didn't have time to read the book and utilize McKee's concepts..."
"Actually, I read the book over Christmas break."
----I was pretty steamed by this point and though I did my best not to show it, I know it came out in my tone.
"I'm sorry (or something like this) I've never had a student write a screenplay in two weeks!"
"Well, it technically took me three weeks..."

--now, I understand, to an extent. She's used to late teen/early 20's students, those who struggle to complete 40 pages in a semester (there were at least a half dozen in class). For me, that screenplay totalled 22,000 words - about three weeks labor, to my mode of work. (my best month in terms of sheer word count is 69,000). Still, I'd explicitly stated more than once that I was writing it early because I had 23 credits and didn't want to worry about it alongside other research projects, tests, etc. She didn't listen or didn't care, but damned if she bothered to even read the first screenplay at all. Even if it was in a genre she considered beneath her (sci-fi and action movies are for proles, dontchaknow), I am paying her salary, and a little feedback would have been appreciated!

I ended up presenting on the other screenplay and recieving an A. My joke about Phoenecians and their child-eating habits, told to Chick-distributing fundie kids, was not appreciated, but other aspects (including the almost slapstick hunt for the key to a chastity-belt) received some chuckles.
 
The best part came at the very end. She had her favorites who, though they didn't even complete their screenplays, recieved A's because she liked them and/or their scripts. Me? I ended up with an A-, making my GPA a 3.95 for that semester.

yeah, I guess I'm still a little steamed about it. Still, it was worth working in a new format and therein learning how to quickly outline events and test dialogue for the eventual novels. It also showed me clearly (once again!) that if I hand something over, I should be more aggresive than apologetic in energy and subsequent attitude. Live and learn.