Monday, January 3, 2011
Here we go again!
Well 2011 is upon us! The Christmas holidays have flow past as quickly as ever and we now embark on a new year. I personally gave up on resolutions many years ago, the combination of my lacking willpower and selective memory made them lost causes scant moments after they were uttered. Saying that, however, I have decided (over the course of the last couple of months) that if I am going to proceed with my writing endeavour, I must put a good deal of focus on goals I wish to achieve. To that point, I am going to try and hermit myself somewhat more than normal in order to spend more time hunched over my keyboard. This will hopefully see more works produced in the coming year. I have no intention of ever producing the eight or so pages a day someone like Stephen King reports to put out, but one page would be a great start for the first couple of years. I am also going to submit some of my pieces for publication in the coming year, this also has been a plan for the last couple of months so again does not qualify as a New Year's resolution! I will keep you all posted with the abundance of weary rejection letters I am sure to be flooded with! lol! P.S. many of my stories will be posted on Wattpad.com (under MichaelJohnCalvert) all one word. If you become a fan, you will recieve updates when I put new stories up. I hope the coming year is great to you all, my friends!
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Happy New Year! If a bit belated. It can be tough to find time to write when the demands of life and family weigh heavily on your free time. A good solution is to carve out a set time to write. I tend to write in the mornings and in the evenings for a few hours. More of course if I'm on deadline. One page a day os a good goal, two of course is better. As a screenwriter, my standard goal is five but the top end is between eight and ten. You can complete a rough draft in ten days and under if you give up on seeing your family or the Sun but I don't recommend it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as getting published goes. The formula I was given was, write a short story every week and submit it to publishers for two years. As the stories come back, read the notes (if there are any) and make the changes you think are a good idea and send the work back out to another publisher. You should by the end of two years have sold at least one story. I have friends that have done this and yes, they did get published. However, they're still waiting for that first book sale.
Film is a bit more hands on. You need to build relationships, which means attending lots of film festivals and pressing of flesh. It's a bit of a pain but it also works and before long, you'll find yourself with a short film in the can and that's something you can use to generate a lot more work.
good luck.