Longtime Kiwi scribe Dean Parker (Came a Hot Friday and Greenstone) has an entertaining and pragmatic look at writing for a living in New Zealand.
Can’t say I’ve seen any of his plays – but I certainly grok the road he’s travelled.
Contracts
The following has been kindly reprinted by the New Zealand Writers Guild. They didn’t commission it – it was a chest-clearing exercise.
If I learn nothing more from this year, it’s that contracts are a sign of how serious things are. (To those of you for whom this is, like, so obvious, what can I say? I am – or was – an idealist.)
So. The first thing the Writers Guild told me when I joined three years ago? Don’t work without a contract.
And what’ve I done in that time? I’ve worked in good faith. It’s gone like this: the terms of the contract are verbally agreed in the early days; writing commences whilst a draft contract is bounced around; the script is finished; a contract is agreed and signed; and throughout, money changes hands. In the end, someone has themselves a script, and I was paid to write it.
Sure, I’ve had a few projects explode in my face, some of which has provided fodder for my writing. But for the most part, I’m a trusting soul and I like to give the benefit of the doubt. This doesn’t mean I’ve provided all the work to date with the copyright already assigned. I try to be reasonable and flexible; sometimes this has been interpreted as being easy.
As I shift towards projects with ‘real’ money, what I’ve noticed is that the expectations and the contractual/political manoeuvring move up a level. Besides my writing having to be more than professional-looking, each gig is a potential career-maker or -breaker (or -extend-just-a-little-longer). The expectation as a writer I can deal with. But the contract shenanigans… oi vey.
All that stuff that was verbally agreed up front? Worth the paper it was written on. All the work that’s been done in good faith? Taken for granted and/or leverage to get you to continue to work in good faith and/or a very possible waste of your time.
The earlier that contract is signed, the sooner everyone knows how to behave.
Negotiate and sign that sucker now. Work long. And prosper.
Pots on the Boil
I was talking with a fellow South Seas grad the other day. He was telling me about how he was going to have to build up to having multiple projects on the go. It was the way he said it that made me bristle: like having various pots on the boil was some kind of insurance against the inevitability that most of them would fall over anyway.
It wasn’t until later that the reason for my bristling came to me. I didn’t want to admit the very real possibility that very few – if any – of the projects I pour myself into will reach fruition.
Then… why?
Maybe I have some kind of attention deficit so multiple projects keep my creative juices flowing and out of trouble. Maybe it’s a sense of contrived self-importance (“When I’m shuttling between my features in various stages of pre-, actual and post-production, I make time for my six pet television epics”). (Anyone who can put me onto a reliable amphetamine supply, call me.)
I don’t know.
At a pragmatic level, it makes complete sense. No, not all of my little babies are gonna make it. Yes, it’s good to have another project to fall back on when one stalls and/or dies. And yes, not only do I have a short attention-span, I like being a busy bee.
But at a creative level… how freakin’ depressing. Could I really be throwing ninety-five percent of my energy at the wall? How can I truly give my best to a project when I’m questioning its future?
Maybe it’s like the sometimes endless rewriting I have to do for any and all projects: the next draft will be better; look what I’ve learned and achieved on this pass; and it’s the final product that counts, no matter how I got there.
That’s what it is: the audience doesn’t care how many bodies you buried to get it up on the screen. Only the end product.
Housekeeping
My apologies for the delay in updates at dfmamea.com. No excuses other than Life.
I should warn you that things like keeping the site content up-to-date and blogging have been taken over by yours truly. (Upon transition, the WebMistresse sternly advised, “don’t break it“, so I’m forging ahead with cautious enthusiasm.) This doesn’t mean she’s ridden into the sunset, pistols smoking on her hips, her job well done – I’m hoping she’ll provide technical support, and there are some newfangled things she wants to try out.
Quick update then:
– the contents of the Scripts and Projects pages have been sorted out as logically as possible;
– obviously, this blog is up and away, complete with Rants and Housekeeping categories;
– and there’s been some tweaking, like a postal address for those who prefer snail mail.
You should be seeing less of these Housekeeping entries. They were fun while the site was being put together.
But now it’s time for more Rants.
Hollywood Endings
I wrote my first ‘Hollywood ending’ recently. As I finished typing it up, I felt no overwhelming guilt, no fear of exposure. No sense of selling out.
The story was based on actual events. The specifics of that story will out over the next few months but suffice it to say that the audience the story is intended for wouldn’t have been able to handle the truth. The story’s prefaced with ‘Inspired by a true story’ – having had to ditch ‘Based on a true story’ (too close to the bone) and ‘Inspired by true events’ (too specific) – and I wrote it My Way.
Yeah. I tacked a happy ending on to it.
And life is good.