Goddard Sweet Goddard

Am heading back to Plainfield, Vermont next week for my second residency. Seems like just yesterday and yet a lifetime ago that I first stepped onto campus as a grad student. Looking forward to returning and reconnecting with old friends and to making new ones.

Over the past few weeks I have been compiling my teaching practicum folder and writing and rewriting my twenty page paper on my experience in the advanced feature scriptwriting classroom. I bought a half-inch binder to hold it all, and had to switch to a one inch binder. Amazing how much accumulates over the course of a semester, even though I only used excerpted materials.

Today I am finishing packing so that I can fly my kids out to California tomorrow to stay with my family while I'm at residency. I usually stay the two weeks with them, and had hoped to this year, too. I was asked to do a screenwriting workshop in LA, but will have to defer till my next trip. Hopefully that will come in July or August since I may be writing for a new drama TV series that one of the major studios picked up. Fingers crossed, but I'm not going to get too excited until contracts are offered...and signed.

Currently I'm backing up all my files to my brand new LaCie hard drive. I know I should have purchased the unit much sooner than now, but at least this trip I can travel without worrying over my laptop crashing. Though I imagine that would still be a pain. I won't ruminate on that....

Was up early writing my outline for my thriller. Am trying to keep it both real and yet taut at the same time. A big reveal is coming up in only a few scenes, and I can't wait to arrive in Act III for the even larger revelation. A cathartic exercise, this writing gig is.

Am two-thirds the way through my to-do list, and I am expecting a gaggle of giggling teen girls any moment: a half day to celebrate their final day of the school year. Oh, happy summer!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope I'll see some of you next week in Vermont. Cheers!

At least it's good writing weather...

...and it hasn't closed any roads in our town yet again. (Emphasis on "yet.")

So I am in transition once more. Between semesters, though I never really know how to answer the question: "Are you done with your semester?" The answer is yes...and no.

I am currently writing my 15 to 20 page paper on my teaching practicum, which is due when I attend residency at the end of the month. Along with that I will also include a number of samples including lesson plans, syllabus, proof that I actually taught Advanced Feature Length Scriptwriting this semester, a letter from an observer--a fly on the wall who was not only kind enough to visit my class for an hour early in the semester, but to also compliment my teaching abilities, oh, and there are the numerous samples of student work to include (wouldn't you students from my class like to know whose work I am featuring!).

And I am also supposedly rewriting my outline for my feature spec script. Those of you who know me well know that I do not believe in Writer's Block, and actually I haven't been suffering from that. More like Writer's Exhaustion. And yet the more days I go without writing creatively the more like the weather I become...dark and overcast. (My family physician says I am melodramatic; perhaps he has a point...but hey, I'm a writer!)

But those of you who also know the personal chaos that has been going on in my life know that I have been struggling to keep it all together. One chapter just ended this past Wednesday. The book won't conclude until the end of the year, but at least we successfully scaled the latest hurdle. (Those of you who are confused by my code speak...I'm not actually doing it to confuse or annoy you, it's just to protect all the parties involved.)

Anyway, that has led to a rejuvenation in my writing, which yesterday led me to complete all my notes for my paper and today helped me pen ten pages. Yahoo! Plus, I am excited to feel rejuvenated and ready to dive back into my creative work tomorrow morning. Onward and upward.

I still have a few other projects: a new client sent me a script that I will dive into this weekend; my nonfiction book proposal is almost complete and I will first send it to my summer intern for editing and then to my agent for submission; I am still in the running to be a writer for a new TV series that looks like it may be greenlit soon; my intern and I are copy editing the 13-episodes of the TV pilot that we wrote together as a class about a year ago and getting ready to pitch it to...well, that will be revealed if they pick it up; and, well, there are a few other hundred things I'm working on because that's just what I do, I guess. I've always done that--worked like crazy--only now it seems like I feel a stronger urgency. I hope that's not my age showing through, but I have a strong feeling that's what's driving me lately. Ah well, we can't all be 23 forever now can we? (Can we?!)

Okay, the pasta buzzer just sounded, meaning my mom dinner duties are kicking into high gear. I'll be back. Probably "reporting" from my next grad school residency.

Thanks for stopping by! Stay dry. Well, on the outside anyway.

Cheers,
Dana