Preparing to Embark

It’s looking like I’ll be working on two projects this week. The big one will be to write the screenplay for the screenwriting challenge I wrote about all last week. While this will eat up a good portion of my time and energy this week, it’ll likely not be something I’ll be mentioning too much here, aside from maybe a little progress update or something.

The other project I’ll be working on this week, though, is one I’ll be doing in the open. This week I’ll be working on coming up with a system to blog from the road.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a huge fan of MarsEdit. The one major drawback of it, though, is that there is no mobile version. It resides solely on my laptop, which I don’t plan on bringing with me on our family vacation at the end of the week.

This leaves me with a challenge. I need to find a comparable way to write, edit, and publish these posts while I’m traveling. I know this should be easy. But I tend to overcomplicate, especially when it comes to writing interfaces and software in general. I know that I don’t want to have to rely on multiple apps to get the job done. What I want is one place where I can type up some words, maybe even include a photo or two from the road, and post without leaving the app.

So that will be my other big goal this week. Come up with a solution that works for me to write and publish posts while mobile. Fingers crossed I find something that works!

Week 11: 11-17MAR2024

I love little life moments that feel small at the time, but have the potential to become momentous down the road. This week I took my son to get a new camera. He’s been more interested in photography lately, but his old kiddy camera is just not up to the task of giving him room to grow. He’s been using his iPad to take pictures, but it pains me every time I see it.

I’ve been wanting to get him something better for a while now. He’s not quite at the point where a DSLR would be worth the investment (though I do live for the moment when he wants to borrow/steal mine). So I’ve been looking for something middle of the road for a while now.

I think we finally found something that would do the trick for him. This week we picked up a Fujifilm instax mini Evo for him. And I’m so excited to see what he does with it. It’s a hybrid digital/instant camera, meaning that it works like a normal point-and-shoot digital, but can also print off pictures like an old Polaroid.

We’ve got a family vacation coming up, and I’m hoping that he reaches for his camera at least once during the trip. I’m excited to see what happens. And I look forward to the day when I have to ask him where my camera has gone to.

Weekly Goals:

The only big goal I had this week was to learn the basics of writing a screenplay to prepare myself for the NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge. I’m feeling like I’m in a better position now for this writing challenge than I was at the beginning of the week. So goal accomplished.

I also had to secure train tickets for our upcoming vacation this week. And I’m discovering that train tickets in Europe are a funny thing. They’re either very easy, or very hard. I got to experience both this time. But travel is secured, and we’re all very excited for a fun train ride.

Doing:

I finally got around to the household stuff I’ve been putting off. We moved recently, and there are still more boxes than I’d like that needed dealing with. Now there are fewer of those. I’ve always found that it takes a solid year to actually settle into a new place. No matter how many times I move, the timeline never seems to shrink. So I’m giving myself time, but also trying to make sure I stick to doing some settling in every week until it’s done.

This week I’ve been focusing on my office. It’s become more clear to me how much I need this space to be functioning, as I’ve been spending more time in it. I do most writing in my office, and being surrounded by piles of things that need sorting is too much of a temptation to turn away from the keyboard.

Posts Made This Week:

Listening to This Week:

  • Finished Young’s Infinite City. I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to another season of it if/when it comes out.

Currently Watching:

  • Constellation is getting really good.
  • Finished The Last Ship through the end of the fourth season. I can’t find season five available to stream anywhere, which is always annoying.
  • Watched Damsel on Netflix. Very awesome. If I had a daughter, I would watch this on loop with her.
  • Started The Regime on HBO and Mr. & Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime. These have both been very good so far. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, especially, has been a blast so far.

Currently Reading:

  • Reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow still. Loving it so far. Hoping to finish it in the next few days. I’m taking my time with it, though. Some books I’ll burn through, but others I’ll savor. This one has called for savoring.

And that’s the week done. Tune in tomorrow to see what I end up settling on to fill the next seven days. Hopefully I’ll have made my mind up by then.

Screenwriting Linkdump

This will be a short one. On Saturdays, I like to post links to all the resources I’ve used throughout the week to work on the current project. But there really weren’t too many I ended up relying on this week. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • IMSDb
    The Internet Movie Script Database. This was great for finding movie scripts. It’s a very low-key website, which I actually appreciated. No frills, just scripts. And they have plenty!

  • John August’s website
    If you want to learn about the work of screenwriting from a successful screenwriter, this is an excellent place to start. The site has plenty of nuggets of wisdom throughout, and August helpfully categorizes his posts, so it’s easy to search through for whatever you may be trying to find. He also has two great podcasts, Launch and Scriptnotes, worth listening to if you want to dive in further.

  • Weekend Read 2
    This is the script reading app that John August released through his company, Quote-Unquote Apps. I’ve been using it all week to read movie scripts on my phone, and it has been painless to use.

  • Also worth mentioning is John August’s writing app, Highland 2. It looks very sharp. I haven’t used it myself yet, but it’s definitely in my list of apps to try out. In the meantime, since I don’t want to add a new software learning curve to this screenwriting challenge, I’ll be sticking with iA Writer. I’ve used this before, and I’m familiar with the layout. But fear not, Highland 2, I’ll check you out soon!

  • NYC Midnight
    I’m including this for any writers out there looking for a fun challenge. They run multiple events throughout the year, so there’s likely something that will be of interest to any kind of writer. Whether you enjoy writing micro-fiction, flash fiction, short stories, screenplays, what have you, there’s something for you here. My favorite part about their challenges is that all submissions receive feedback from the judges. Whether you make it through to the next round or not, you’ll get to hear from the people who judged your entry. I’ve found this to be rare, and this alone makes these challenges worth entering, in my book.

And that’s basically it for this week. The screenwriting challenge has officially begun, and I’ve received my assigned genre, subject, and character to work with for my script entry. Fingers crossed, I’ll have submitted something decent by this time next week!