Let's hear it for The Rouge Wave

My screenwriter friend Jeff Lyons very supportively listens to a great deal of my angst every day via email and helps keep me on track and gently yells at me if I whine too much, which I'm hopeful is not as often as I think it is. So when he told me about The Rouge Wave and Julie Gray, I not only listened, I moseyed right over there to check it out.

That's a smashing photo of Julie above, and her site is smart, cool, and wonderful-and so is she. Screenwriter, YA novelist and fiction writer, she's also a founder of The Script Department which is an uber cool site which has this incredible feature I wish they had for novelists. You sign up and tell them your deadlines and then they NAG you to finish on time. The Script Department is made up of writers and script readers, who also give very reasonable script coverage at all different levels--smart, to the point, and very, very helpful. Because I have been struggling with a script based on a notorious essay of mine (lotsa film interest in the essay but there seems to be a disconnect with my script) I'm seriously considering this.

Anyway, in today's Rouge Wave, there were incredible tips about hooks and loglines, and it actually solved one of my script problems. The writing is fresh and funky, plus I dare anyone to resist a blog with photographs of cupcakes. I was deeply comforted that she said scripts can be rejected for reasons that are sound and for reasons that are baloney. I also love her advice: Stop whining and write.

The truth is, I would like Julie to move in next door, but the next best thing is her blog. Go check it out. As for me, I'm starting Chapter two tomorrow and hammering out a new logline. And yes, I am stopping whining and writing until I see blood on the page.

See you later, alligators.