ScriptSuperhero.com

Some aspiring writers look at the lives of total wrecks like Ernest Hemingway and his ilk and think that the only way to be a good writer is to put yourself through hell, then go to drug treatment and then start writing.

I suppose if all you want to write about is addiction, drinking and getting sober, perhaps that’s a decent method to follow; but at what cost? Not all writers have to be tortured to produce good art. As the recent box office success of Horton Hears a Who proves, even a balanced guy like Dr. Seuss can produce work that inspires millions, without all the false drama.

Here’s a clue: all writers are different, and it is who they are as individuals that gives them their unique voice. Stop trying to be someone else, like Hemingway, and start writing like yourself and the life you know.

Hey, it’ll even help you live longer.

Some writers just don’t recognize or appreciate the opportunities to write that life lays before them. While they dream of writing the great American novel, they’re unwilling to put pen to paper for some ad copy at their local public television station or help a friend running for a local office craft a speech on sanitation policies.

While these are not glamorous writing positions, they are opportunities to get your work out there and gain experience. For example, a lot of my script writing experience has come from writing “opening sketches” for a college Christian group I was a part of in college, as well as for a Lutheran church singles group I never attended myself.

Has that work landed me a job filling Tina Fey’s shoes as Saturday Night Live’s head writer? Nope. But it’s made me a better script writer. So that’s my message of the moment; stop being part of the wine club and start appreciating the opportunities to write that life tosses into your path; they’re there for a reason, and it’s not to brush up on your pinochle game.

Sometimes I think a nice long vacation to a completely different area, say Branson resorts or a biblical tour of Israel, would be a great way to charge up the ol’ creative batteries. But then, time away is often time away from writing as well. And writing is what writers do, if they’re to be called writers at all.

Writing research-based papers and ministry messages isn’t always thought of as an art form, but many of my efforts have been spend in exactly those areas of late. I have a series of lessons I’ll be writing for the next year and a half that is aimed at the ministry needs of messianic pre-teens. It doesn’t pay in a way that helps meet rent, but is invaluable writing experience.

And my recent in-print publication credit only netted me a free copy of the print magazine, but it is credits like this which could lead to book deals down the road. Like I always say… keep writing and eventually it’ll take you where you want to be.

Considering so many movies that aren’t that entertaining get greenlit for sequels, it’d be nice to see something a bit more rare happen: that a movie with a loyal cult following gets a worthy sequel. Clerks II proved that the idea can be done, if not exactly proving that it always works. Here’s a couple sequel ideas that just might work.

Office Space Connecticut: Rather than try to reassemble the original cast, Mike Judge should simply revisit his style of office-life humor at an entirely new location, with an all-new cast. Done right, this could work, though a cameo from Jennifer Aniston wouldn’t be completely unwelcome.

Jumper II: While this was a more recent film and seemed to be built for a sequel, I still love the idea of the young jumper having to go up against his mother, played by Diane Lane, as a person who loves him but is sworn to kill him. Talk about action!

In a professional writing environment, this strike-shortened TV season has shown the importance of developing a succession plan in creative environments. One of my favorite freshmen shows from this season, Moonlight, is a great example of just why.

Moonlight, the sudsy CBS drama about a vampire private eye, started off life last spring with veteran Angel scribe David Greenwalt as the show runner. When health concerns took him out, a replacement was found; and when the strike ended, leaving Moonlight without a boss due to Greenwalt’s replacement moving on, the show was pushed forward without a creative head.

If the show is greenlighted for a second season, a replacement will be named, but if the producers had a plan in place to deal with such eventualities, they would not be scrambling now to produce three or four more episodes without anyone running the show to really creatively oversee the direction of those episodes. Too bad.

One of the trends in drama that I’m actually glad has gone out of vogue is the focus on people going through their alcohol rehabs. Sure, there have been some intense and emotional movies made on this topic, such as Michael Keaton’s Clean and Sober or Sandra Bullock’s 28 Days, but considering that alcoholism has touched my life personally, I just find them a bit too painful to sit through.

One movie, supposedly a comedy, that also ventured into this territory was Stewart Saves His Family, by Al Franken. While he’s not much of a politician, and I don’t care for his politics, Franken hit home in his observations and portrayals of dysfunctional families, without the film coming off like a Hazelden tract.

Perhaps I’m too close to the subject, since I grew up with a father who drank to excess until I was about 12. I’m more blessed than most in that, once he got himself clean and sober, he has stayed away from drinking ever since. But I still can’t imagine formulating a drama or comedy that would be really entertaining, per se. Painful? Sure. Touching? Perhaps. But entertaining? I haven’t seen a single example yet.

My wife’s father is someone I never had the chance to meet; he passed from this life years before my wife and I ever met. I’ve been told that his death was due, in large part, to mesothelioma. Another brush I’ve had with cancer is when both my mother and the mother of my next-door neighbors came down simultaneously with breast cancer; their mom died, but mine lived, back then.

As I grow older, thoughts of how cancer has robbed people, including me, of a chance to know certain people, or have them around as long as might otherwise have been possible, weighs more heavily on me. The power of writing is sometimes not purely creative, but therapuetic. I can’t meet Andy, or bring back LouAnn, but through writing about them, I can at least work out how I feel about missing those opportunities.

It’s a poor substitute for the real expereince of knowing someone; but in lieu of a better solution, it’s really all a person has, sometimes. The power of words, memory, imagination and the expressions of the heart.

If I can turn this into a nice little roll, it could soon be time for me to forget about truck tool boxes and other such concerns and focus a bit more on my writing. For several months now, I’ve been hinting that I had an article published by a Jack the Ripper-centric true crime magazine, and now that the issue I’m in has hit the stands, I feel free to finally share which magazine it is.

My essay, “Romanticizing Mary Jane Kelly” appears in the current issue of Ripper Notes #28. The issue I’m in is available on Amazon.com, and my article is even mentioned in the promo text, about halfway through.

Needless to say, I’m hard at work on my follow-up to this successful publication credit.

I’ve never used Cisco-based networking equipment, but after the experience my wife and I had using LinkSys for our first home wireless network, I’m beginning to think we’d have been better off. The LinkSys product just wasn’t reliable or speedy and since upgrading to a new brand, only now do we know the difference.

Sometimes folks are like my wife and me, buying low-end products due to price concerns. But there are times when spending a little more can save a lot, further down the line. Having equipment that performs well, lasts and holds up over time is certainly worth a bit more money invested, especially when your work and creative efforts depend on that equipment.

One would think that with the days of corsets long behind us, people would be only too eager to leave the past in the past; yet period dramas are as popular as ever, which at least keeps the corset business alive in the entertainment industry.

It would be perhaps interesting to focus a drama around some sort of mom and pop business that still makes the old-fashioned lingerie… and nothing else. Or perhaps it wouldn’t. Adding in a murder mystery element to the plot would certainly help, though, since I can’t imagine there’s be much interest in a couple hours of watching workers sew fabric together using the same designs that were used over 200 years ago.

Still, it’d make for a unique setting.

OK, I’ll admit I’m not the quickest on the draw on this subject, but when I was forced by circumstance to upgrade to a new computer, an Acer Aspire, I was given a chance to sample the new Microsoft Office 2007 for 60 days for free, before deciding whether to buy. As a writer, of course, it is MS Word 2007 that is the centerpiece of whether I’m going to make this purchase or not.

On first blush, MS Word 2007 is probably the biggest user-interface shift this word processor has ever seen. Rather than overload onscreen real estate with tons of toolbars as has been the norm in past outings since time immemorial, Word 2007 has instead pulled off a radical change of the application’s menu structure, so that things are laid out more visually, and each time you shift from one menu to another, an accompanying toolbar is displayed as part of that menu. It’s a slick design. The program also features much smoother and faster-performing tasks throughout.

The big change, though, that may cause some hiccups is found in the file format shift. All the way through Word 2003 (2005 on the Mac), MS Word documents have, by default, been given the “.doc” extension. All that changes in Word 2007, and it can cause some hiccups for folks working on older versions of MS Word. Although file compatibility patches can be downloaded, the default MS Word format is now: “.docx”

So far, I’m not sure why the shift is even necessary, but like it or not, the change has been made. It’s enough to make you want to kick over your foot of bed TV lifts in frustration, until you realize how much better the new format works when it comes to creating things like labor-saving document templates.

In the end, though, what matters is whether it’s a better tool for writing. In that measure, it most certainly is. One seemingly minor feature I’ve fallen in love with already is the automatic word count that’s displayed at the bottom of the app at all times; no more going to Tools > Word Count to find out whether that term paper has reached 2,600 words yet.

More importantly, it’s easier than ever to set up templates that auto-format your documents to desired specifications with a minimum of interaction once the template’s all set up. That may seem minor for someone who just uses Word to write letters, but for more advanced users, it’s a big improvement. The only down side is that thanks to the format change, any templates you had that worked in prior versions of Word will have to be recreated from scratch… goodbye, “screenplay.dot,” my old friend… hello, “screenplay.dotx,” my new friend!

Add a much needed breakaway from the black-grey-white design of previous MS Word outings, and the new yellow-based startup screen and Window Vista Aero-theme-inspired blue interface of the new MS Word is a more cheerful-looking experience as well, at least initially. Yup; when my free trial ends - perhaps even before - I’m definitely making the purchase and stepping up into MS Word (and MS Office) 2007.

One doesn’t always get Amazon coupons for writing an excellent blog entry, or an excellent script, or even an excellent joke. For real writers, though, writing isn’t just about compensation; it’s about communicating something through storytelling, or, if not exactly storytelling, then through effective written communication of the non-story kind.

I’ve recently taken on a couple huge writing tasks. One is about an 18-month or so commitment to write lessons for my bar and bat mitzvah kids at my messianic temple. That’s turning out to be a growing experience in ways beyond the creative realm. It’s turning me into more of a researcher.

The other is also equally research-related as much as it’s related to writing; I have my first published article coming out soon in the next issue of Ripper Notes. It’s a true crime piece, obviously, and focused on the “last” Ripper victim, Mary Jane Kelly. Now, I’m delving into deeper research and have committed to doing more articles related to Jack the Ripper for that periodical.

Do the two writing commitments seem at odds with each other? I suppose they are to at least some degree, but both are important in this way: they are chances to write, write often, and write well. What writer could resist either offer?