Of Writing and Striking

My union has been on strike for nearly a month now.

My union is, of course, the Writers Guild of America. I'm an emeritus member, which means I haven't actually worked as a writer (for film or TV) in ages, but I'm still a member. And I'm proud to support my striking brothers and sisters in their cause, especially on the issue of DVD residuals. Even though nothing I've ever written has been released on DVD, I strongly believe that we deserve more than a measly four cents of the price of a DVD.

Being in Nashville during this time has been hard. I'm still very attached emotionally to the TV world; heck, at least twice in the last week I've attempted to give someone my old screenname (writetv) instead of my current one (ex-tvwriter). I want to support my fellow scribes, but at the same time I'm participating in NaNoWriMo again (or trying to) and still looking for a job (doing anything really, although getting paid to write again would be really nice). And even though writing my NaNo novel isn't for money, and I know that some writers will work on spec scripts during a strike, it's felt... odd working on it while all this has been going on.

I don't know, maybe that's just an excuse for procrastinating, for surfing the web when I should be writing, for why I won't make it to 50k this year (again). But it just feels weird. I want to be there with my friends (whoever might remember me, anyway), walking the picket lines, protesting and networking at the same time.

Heck, I think sometimes I just really want to be back in L.A.

So much nitwittery, so little time

Yes, I'm aware it's late July and I'm just now doing my first post of 2007.

I'm still unemployed, still looking for gainful employment. In the meantime, I've decided something.

I've been clipping articles from The Tennessean for months now, filing them away in an expandable folder labeled ISSUES. They're articles about a bunch of stuff that I'm interested in, from television to politics to dieting and so forth. Some are long pieces, like the two-parter they ran recently about fathers and DNA testing and child support. Others are small little single-paragraph things, like the one a few weeks back about the head of the VA resigning. Most of them are about things that, in one way or another, really piss me off.

I've decided that I'm going to start pulling out one of those articles every few days and I'm going to write about it. Whatever it was that made me want to clip it in the first place, that's what I'm going to write about. Then I'm going to post that essay (or whatever you want to call it) here. Then I'll pull out another article.

Call it practice for writing regularly again. Call it trying to become a better writer so maybe I can submit some of my work someplace. Call it... call it writing.

NaNo NaNo

On Monday I did something I'm not entirely sure was the smartest thing to do -- I signed up for NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. The object of which is to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, specifically the thirty days of November.

Oy.

I've never written a novel before. TV scripts, yes. Magazine articles where I got paid by the word, yes. Fanfiction stories, yes, although none of those have been very long. This will be the first thing I've attempted that's longer than the 60-ish pages of a TV script, or the roughly 40kb of my longest fanfic story.

Double oy.

Yes, I have an idea. And since my day job and I recently parted ways, I sort of have the time. See, I'm also embarking on Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love plan today, too.

Why yes, I am insane. Thanks for asking.