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Ease yourself into your home theater chairs before reading this, but TV Guide.com is reporting there is a possibility - just a slim one at the moment - that the WGA Writer’s Strike could end this week. According to the site’s Ask Ausiello, at least two sources have said a deal is in place and could be announced as early as Thursday, while another source is pooh-poohing that idea.

Let’s hope two sources outweigh one; however, if a deal is reached soon and production resumes, networks may place only their top-rated shows back into full production, while allowing others (such as the much-loved-by-me-personally Pushing Daisies) to put off a return to air until next fall, giving the crew time to stockpile scripts and episodes well in advance.

Of course, the X-factor in all this is the Screen Actors Guild; their deal expires in June and SAG has been waiting for the WGA and DGA to settle first before beginning their own negotiations with AMPTP. If the writers settle, SAG could use the WGA and DGA contracts as a template to a quickly-resolved extension and no strike; however, there is still the possibility that actors could either join unsettled writers on the picket line, or create one of their own if they don’t like the DGA and WGA deals, which could potentially send Hollywood into another tailspin/work stoppage this summer.

Only time will tell the tale.

Sometimes you have to know a lot more than what ends up on paper.

Whether it’s a screenplay, stage play or a high school essay, it always comes across who knows their stuff and who’s flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to writing well on any topic. And you can be sure, when you’re in the writing biz, that eventually someone’s going to come along and go over your work with a set of exam gloves and a fine-toothed comb.

My best example actually comes from a high school essay I did on Nicholas and Alexandra, the last Czar and Czarina of pre-Soviet Russia. All I had to turn in was a 15-page paper and I had an entire high school semester in which to write it. I probably could have flipped through one basic primer on the Russian Revolution and obtained all I needed. Instead, I got caught up in the subject and read about four books on the topic, including one on Rasputin and one on the love letters written between Nicholas and Alexandra.

While the Rasputin stuff was nice and spooky, it will always be the love letters book that made the biggest impression on me, because it humanized authority figures for me. Here was Nicholas, Czar of Russia, one of the most powerful nations on earth at the time, and then there was Alexandra, member of the royal line of Europe. Both very important people, powerful and impressive.

Yet their love letters were little more than the sweet and foolish things that passed between boys and girls in my own senior class, full of sweet nothings, insecurities, uncertainty about whether the other person liked them. Just normal beginning of a relationship and falling in love stuff. It was an amazing book that helped me see, even at 18, that folks in the halls of power in our world are all just people, no different than anyone else.

That’s good writing. And after all that research and reading, I think mentioning the love letters of Nicholas and Alexandra made up for less than a page of my essay. Yet because I did that research, I knew my subject so much better as a result, and my problem was not reaching 15 pages; my problem was trying to stop when I reach page 25.

“Scary Movie”-style comedy “Meet the Spartans” beat out the return of Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo character, laughing up $18.7 million at the box office this weekend, the movie’s debut. Rambo, meanwhile, wasn’t far behind, coming up with over $18.1 million to take second place at the box office. That’s not a spectacular debut, but it’s not exactly billet grilles, either.

27 Dresses held up better than expected to nab third while Cloverfield fell sharply after its record-setting debut last weekend; business was off nearly 70 percent. Coming in fifth was Untraceable, the high-tech thriller, which made only $11.2 million in its opening nod.

Teen pregnancy comedy Juno was bumped from the top five, but took sixth place, having topped $100 million in the last eight weeks of release.

TV Guide.com is predicting, based on talks on strike lines with striking writers, that the WGA Strike could be over in time for the Oscars, which are scheduled to air on February 24. That’s about four weeks away.

While a bold prediction, there is evidence both in favor of, and against, such a resolution, so no one should start ordering the imprinted promotional products for the Oscars just yet. In favor of an impending resolution are many bits of evidence. Individual studios keep striking transitional agreements with writers, to get them back to work early, every day; last week, Marvel, Lionsgate and RKO became the latest to announce individual agreements.

Also, the WGA-AMPTP negotiations, which resumed last week, are still on with no new breakdowns to muddle up the works. Technically, the atmosphere is ripe for a settlement and a tentative labor agreement could be reached any day, though it would take about a week after such an announcement for the WGA to put any such agreement to a membership vote and collect the results.

So here’s the real schedule: the Oscars would need to see a green light from the WGA no later than a week in advance. That pushes the deadline out to February 17. But that would have to be the day the membership of the WGA votes in favor of an agreement, since announcing a tentative settlement wouldn’t end the strike. So that means the latest a tentative agreement can be reached for the strike to end and the Oscars to go forward would be February 10, just under two weeks from now.

At least one writer interviewed on the picket line by TV Guide has admitted that if the strike remains unsettled to the point that the Oscars must be sidelined in the way the Golden Globes were, it would almost guarantee that the strike could drag on well into summer, perhaps as long as another year.

Scary thought. Let’s hope they work out a tentative agreement soon!

An old friend has returned to television, still as tone-deaf as ever. That’s right, American Idol is back on the air and since it’s a reality show that doesn’t use writers, we can at least look forward to a full season of that!

Even in a fully programmed season, American Idol is a ratings winner. Everyone watches it. The music industry watches; Hollywood watches; I’m sure folks like Gene Simmons, Billy Joel and Elton John watches; I’ll bet event George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi watches; and you can bet Raymond Weil watches.

With so many favorite shows ending so soon, it’s nice to have a full season of a show like Idol to look forward to.

The WGA is trying to strike individual deals with studios since Hollywood producers aren’t willing to come to the table and negotiate; now studios are striking back by canceling contracts with a large number of writer-producers who are no longer producing any writing. The writer’s strike is getting ugly, especially in light of the fact that the Director’s Guild of America only needed five days at the negotiating table to strike a deal with producers.

Perhaps the problem is that writers and studios/producers need to rediscover why they loved each other in the first place. What we need is a revival of the old Love Boat series, allowing the WGA and Hollywood power brokers to rekindle that old spark. Failing the real Love Boat, perhaps a series of Carnival Cruises would do.

The paperless era of writing has at least one benefit: it has reduced the importance of owning dehumidifiers to keep manuscripts dry all year long, once they are in storage. Long gone should be movie scenes in which a strong wind robs a just-finished writer of his or her long labored-over work, destroying months of effort with a single bus-splash.

Sure, laptops can still be subjected to destruction for comic effect in a comedy, but any writer worth his or her salt knows there are many ways to back up saved files online, from buying storage space on a personal blog to something as simple as emailing the manuscript to oneself via Yahoo, GMail or one of the other popular, free online-only email services.

Any writer who doesn’t realize that by now deserves to lose at least a chapter or two to a leaky roof or a strong southern wind.

My last major point on how to get published our produced is based on the simple dictum that writers write. (Unless, of course, they live in Hollywood; then writers either write or strike.) But that’s the exception to the rule.

So forget about the well-paid Hollywood types who live in condo hotels. This is advice for people who haven’t made it that far just yet, but want to.

Jump at every chance to write!

Look for any chance to write for money; and sometimes, even be willing to write gratis if it means getting something produced or in print.

For example, I’ve done newspaper work (professionally, and have won awards), write blogs (for pay, modest though it may be), ghost-write for my rabbi (sometimes for pay, sometimes for free), write videogame and DVD reviews (for free product but no money), have written skits for a friend’s singles ministry at his church (for free), and have written a couple longer one-acts for another church that got produced and staged, for the exposure but no compensation.

And that’s certainly not a complete list.

In other words, while you’re working on your masterpiece, find every chance you can to get into print or produced and JUMP on it! The more writing credits you accumulate, the better a writer you’ll become and the more professional you’ll come off when you do approach a publisher with your book.

Be willing to write anything on the road to writing what you really want to write.

Some inexperienced writers are so eager to get out of their baby cribs that they often lose patience with the “submit, wait, get rejected” cycle that so often precedes an acceptance letter, that they turn instead to some of the most insidious forms of getting your work in print: self-publishing.

Well, all I can say is, it’s time to abandon the baby furniture concept, wait it out, and let oneself mature into a writer who’s ready to sit at the adult table. That’s right, my next bit of advice is simple.

Avoid self-publishing like the plague!

In some areas of nonfiction writing, like Jack the Ripper research, on a rare occasion you’ll hear about someone who survived an incident of self-publishing without going bankrupt. But not often, so avoid self-publishing like the plague.

Especially if it’s fiction. A publisher should be paying you, even if it’s a pittance or in author copies. A professional writer never pays for the privilege, and if you’re not at that level yet, wait it out and keep honing your craft.

Remember, for every writer who makes their money back, there are dozens who end up with nothing but a big printing bill and boxes of unsold books that won’t even move on eBay.

Some people can find help for improving as writers in college; others can’t handle that tuition wise and need to look more in the direction of local writers groups, many of which have free meetings to meet and critique each other’s work.

But eventually you need to grow beyond that and submit your work to an editor. That’s when it pays to be aware of this next bit of advice.

Electronic submissions and other submission guidelines

When it comes to what font to use, don’t get fancy. Some writers prefer Times New Roman as a default, but I tend to disagree. I know of many editors who, by far, prefer Courier, because it’s a monospaced font, rather than relative-spaced like Times New Roman. Courier looks like a typewriter and that’s what editors like to see, for the most part.

Many editors these days also prefer electronic submission over traditional paper mailings. Even those who don’t ask exclusively for electronic documents, at least prefer to get an electronic document along with the paper submission. Usually, burning the manuscript onto a CD takes very little time and money, and makes an editor’s life far easier.

Also, don’t get fancy with writing programs. Over 90 percent of editors looking at electronic submissions want the file sent to be in MS Word format, so even if you’re not using MS Word, make sure your program can OUTPUT an MS Word-formatted document.

Big clue: Editors HATE MS Works files! It may come free with your computer, but NO editor I know wants to deal with it. Same goes for WordPerfect.

If you can’t afford MS Word, at least use WordPad, which will create MS Word-compatible documents for you, is free with Windows, and although it may have a lot less features, it produces flawless MS Word-compatible .doc files.

Finallu, no matter what anyone says, do NOT output in .rtf, .txt. or anything else like that. The .doc format that is native to MS Word is the ONLY way to go.

The key, though, is to query for submissions guidelines so you can meet each publisher’s or editor’s expectations with no hassles.

Whether you’re writing the Great American Novel, or a DIY manual impishly titled Bonfire of the Bathroom Vanities, a lot of people wonder just how it is published writers get published and produced scriptwriters get produced. So I’ve decided to do a few posts with practical advice for beginners.

Here’s my first tip:

Make sure you know how to write well and make sure it’s your best work.

To accomplish this, seek out folks who don’t feel obligated to be kind because they are a friend, lover or family member. A local writer’s group ought to do the trick. Unless someone develops a crush on you, they’re likely to be tough but honest, which is what you want.

That said, there are a lot of posers in such groups, so make sure whoever you’re listening to has a brain.

The most idiotic comment I ever heard in a college writing class was in response to a break in the narrative. A scene ended with the main character getting into a car and then the next part of the story began with the main character across town in a museum.

Some lamebrain/pseudo-intellectual actually asked, “So, how’d he get to the museum? You never said.”

And the response of the writer? “He drove.”

Seemed fairly obvious to everyone except the pretentious writer who asked.

Ever heard of Car Angel?

Well, about 2.4 million kids know of their work. The nonprofit group looks for car donations that they can either fix up and sell, or sell as-is. It’s a tax write-off for the people who make the donation, and all proceeds get funneled into a video outreach to at-risk kids and teens.

The videos in question address issues at-risk kids and teens face, and offer advice on how to improve their situation. Without the car donations, the funds needed to make and distribute these videos simply wouldn’t be there.

Some outreaches may have questionable value in terms of helping the kids they reach, but Car Angel isn’t one of them; all proceeds go directly to video production and distribution costs and with 2.4 million kids reached so far, they must be doing something right. Worth a look, if you have an old heap sitting around gather rust.