This just in,
And kind of interesting:

EVALYN BATES, PIONEER IN ADULT EDUCATION, TURNS NINETY
CREATED FIRST LOW RESIDENCY, ADULT DEGREE PROGRAM IN THE NATION

Plainfield, VT…June 29, 2006...In 1963 at Goddard College, Evalyn Bates put her ideas and scholarship together and created the Adult Degree Program, the first program of its kind in the nation. Today, one can find similar programs offered at colleges throughout the world.

“The creation of the low residency model has had an enormous impact in higher education,” said Mark Schulman, president of Goddard, “Evalyn deserves credit for having pioneered this model, which is the only way most adults can return to college and experience the richness of a conference-like residency. The Board of Trustees and the entire college community would like to recognize her for her work and thank her on behalf of the thousands of adults who realized their dream of a college education because of her vision.”

In 1943, Evalyn became the first woman to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goddard College and she went on to the University of Chicago to complete a Master of Arts degree in 1957. She worked at Goddard for thirty-two years with President Tim Pitkin, as special assistant and director of adult education & community services. She continued to work with other colleges on special programs and traveled widely to promote adult education, including a year in Australia as a Fulbright Scholar.

###
Goddard College is a leader in low-residency education. Students from all over the United States come to the Goddard campus in Plainfield, Vermont to attend eight-day residencies and create plans for individualized learning experiences. When students return home, they remain in contact with their respective faculty advisor and work independently to complete a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts or Master of Fine Arts degree. More information can be found at [ http://www.goddard.edu ]www.goddard.edu or 1-800-906-8312.

I'm glad I chose Goddard. That's not just free publicity. I really am happy I'm studying there--with some of the best faculty in the country, and with an eclectic, uniquely gifted and talented student body. If you're considering this style program, I recommend you check out what Goddard has to offer.
{Photos of flowers from Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site taken by me and my hubby on our recent Independence Day visit.}

Many Happy Returns

Another week-plus of a sweet, crazy, action-packed, information-filled Goddard residency is behind me. I returned inspired. Wrote new scene cards this morning to Act I as I revise my detailed scene by scene outline in preparation to begin writing the script soon. Monday at the latest, I hope.

Also inspired to weave words in any way possible. Below is the result of what I thought would be a simple search. An indulgence perhaps, but no greater than that of my local news provider.



Happy Fourth of July Everyone!

(Photos of flowers in our yard by my hubby Jan.)



"Serious News"

I scan the website of my local news station
Looking for lists of firework shows by town.
After trying several categories
I stumble upon Entertainment
Where headlining the list of today’s news
Is the story proclaiming
“Hilary Duff Says She’s Still a Virgin.”

Is this news?
If so, have any reporters contacted her gynecologist?
Not that he or she can legally report on a client,
But for the right kind of dough
Perhaps the truth can be bought
From a records room clerk.

Glancing down the list
I learn Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s divorce has been finalized.
What a relief.

Further down I learn the box office takes
For Superman;
Someone’s getting rich.
It’s not me.

Did you know that Paul, Ringo AND Yoko
Attended the debut of the Beatles Cirque du Soleil Show?

In newscasts invariably replete with violence,
Blood letting, and torture,
It’s good to know
News like this,
Important to the American sub consciousness, I’m sure,
Is being reported.

I scan the rest of the list
Still hoping to find the schedule of local pyrotechnic extravaganzas
And learn that Movie Critic Roger Ebert is in serious condition.
I suppose it’s the screenwriter in me
But I find myself compelled
To click the link at once.

I hope it’s nothing too serious.

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

And that has made all the difference.

The wash-out is located a mile from our house, on the road that leads to ours. Quite something, huh?

As for us--we awoke to lake front property, complete with a pair of mallards. Very nice. Made for good, but simple, kayaking and canoeing.

My basement office: dry. Just as I like my work space and martinis.

The kiddos are back in school after enjoying a Monday "flood day." And Jan is back to work as of Noon Wednesday, when they finally permitted the anxious business tenants back into the old mill building that seemingly straddles the mighty Merrimack River in Manchester.

Crazy times, these are. Hmm, makes me want to thank some folks, now that I think of it.

[Clears her throat] I'd like to thank the oil companies, the politicians who have eschewed the numerous studies, including many thousands of years of evidence retrieved from the Vostok ice cores. I'd also like to thank the current administration for forging ahead as if their kids and grandkids are of no importance. And I'd like to personally thank our president for banishing the phrase "global warming" from EPA reports (or is that one just an ugly, nasty rumor?) and for gathering up and destroying as many (but not all, you dictator!) of the North American environmental reports that President Clinton supported. A modern day book burning of sorts. There's no place like Kyoto, there's no place like Kyoto, there's no place like....

But I digress. This was to be a happy blog. Sorry.


(For more information on what we CAN do to help correct the current shift in the global climate, take the kiddos to the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire to see BREATHING SPACE.)

Think sunny and dry thoughts!

Peace!

(Above photo from Henniker's town website; surf on over to view more flood water damage: www.henniker.org)

Happy End of the Semester!

No trumpets blaring, no big party, not even a high five...just one last trip to the post office to mail off my fifth and last packet of my first graduate semester at Goddard. Grin. [DRAGON picture above by my daughter, Abby, BTW]

And soon to sleep. I was up till midnight last night, writing only till about ten or so, but adrenaline kept me going far beyond my normal bedtime. This morning I was up by five and at only a few minutes after eleven I was at the post office and mailing off my forty pages.

Okay, so I'll confess that after cleaning the main living area in the house (you can't even imagine how dirty this place gets while I'm working, studying, writing, and taking care of my kids!) I did play hooky for the afternoon with my hubby. We drove to a nursery and day dreamed. It's too early to plant yet, so instead we spent about a half hour shooting the shit with the farmer who owns the small farm in Antrim. And then we drove a bit, walked the dog along the river, grilled out, and are now listening to the losing Sox. Oh well. Can't have everything perfect, can we?

So what was in my last packet? Three annotations, a process letter, and thirty pages of my latest outline.

The annotations:

1) Three pages on Cars as a Vehicle for Plot Movement in the novel "Mothers and Daughters" by Carolyn See.

2) Two pages on Taking a Break as an Answer to All Problems in the Film PRIMAL FEAR directed by Gregory Hoblit.

3) Two pages on Fences as the Visual Reminder of the Tenuous Barrier Between What's Remembered and Forgotten in the Film THE FORGOTTEN directed by Joseph Ruben.

The Process Letter was three pages long, and mostly addressed my changes to my outline, as well as the major beats.

The outline is my FOURTH this semester. I have written three forty-plus outlines and thrown every single one of them out. I even wrote 59 pages of script, confident my third outline was finally on track. Tossed those pages, too.

What began as a drama/fantasy has turned into a thriller. My new Protagonist, still "Cat Woods" in my outline, bears a few similarities to my original Cat Woods, but she lost eleven years in age, and gained a deep, dark, haunting, tragic secret that she MUST overcome to begin living her own life. Of course the Antagonist has completely changed, is a brand spanking new character who has EVERYTHING to lose if his secret is discovered. And there are two brand new Pivotal Characters that have not appeared in any of the first three outlines.

It was fun to write. And I can't wait to dive into the script. It was also extremely taxing. So I'm looking forward to reading the comments from my advisor.

I have to say that I have never worked so hard, nor grown so much as a writer. I am incredibly thankful for this opportunity, and will be forever grateful to my advisor for pushing me harder than anyone's ever done before. I have had to dig deeper than I knew I could. And what I found astounded me, and impressed my advisor in my last packet.

What's next? I have a week to complete an end of the semester review. I still have two weeks left in my teaching residency (and my adjunct teaching job) at UNH-Manchester where I am teaching Feature Scriptwriting as part of my Goddard teaching requirement (and introductory short scriptwriting because I teach it almost every semester there). I'll have to write up my notes from that, and have an intern for the summer who will edit my portfolio before I turn it in.

I also have a couple major writing deals heating up. Looks like one will be greenlit in the next few weeks. Dream come true kind of stuff. But I'm signed to a confidentiality agreement, so I'll have to wait till the Producers choose to disclose news of the project.

And since my intern is an established editor (at a local newspaper group) I will rely upon her to help me edit my book proposal--which goes by the name of my blog. It's long overdue, and almost complete. I had one editor interested, though it looks like her company may not be publishing another scriptwriting book for a while. So I'll seek the advice of my agent before I send it out.

I will use my Advisor's notes and the notes from students seeking extra credit and from one of my grad school friends as I start penning the screenplay to my thriller outline that I just completed. That will be a fun project, even though I made myself jump out of my skin as I wrote Act III. I have to move upstairs - the basement office is no place to pen a thriller. Or maybe it's the perfect place....

And of course I'll still be taking care of my kiddos. The three of us jet off to California at the end of June. I'm dropping them off with my family and two days later flying back to New England so I can drive up to Vermont to attend the next Goddard Residency.

Well, that's waaaaaayyyyyy too many details. But, hey, you're the one who's still reading. And a couple people have actually let me know that they WANT to know some of this stuff. (You know who you are: will I see you in Plainfield in June? I hope so! It's fun. You'll love it.)

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers!

Greetings.

No catchy wording or phrasing. Just a quick note to replace the extremely outdated Irish holiday greeting.

And to point you to the Rhode Island Film Festival Website for updates on this year's plans and competitions (see the link in the sidebar: RIIFF/ScriptBiz). In particular - check out all things ScriptBiz. That's my former "baby." While I'm on hiatus from it as I take two years out of my life to attend graduate school (and still teach at UNH and raise my kiddos) the show is still going on. It's very gratifying to see one's hard work continuing on. Hopefully a couple summers from now I can step back in and lend a hand....

For now, I need sleep.

'Night. Thanks for stopping by.