Yes, I’ve been making the odd incursion but time’s been precious lately. Another week and a bit to go.
But because I am a caring pusher, this week I give you a recent Pitch Engine article.
Or How I Started Blogging and Lived to Tell the Tale
It began, like most of my life-lessons and -events, with the heedless question, How hard could it be?
In 2006, keen to market myself without actually, y’know, marketing myself, I decided to set up a website. Cribbing shamelessly off the websites of John August and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, I’d have areas for works in progress, works completed, contact details, and a blog. The first three were easy; it was the blog that had me stumped.
Initially called Rants, I was going to use the blog to tear new sphincters in everyone who’d crossed me, starting with Joseph the Tokelauan classmate at Sacred Heart Primary who dobbed me in to Sister Margerite for being a Methodist. With my keyboard and modem as scalpels of Truth and Justice, I was going to right past wrongs. I was also going to tell anyone and everyone why I was their man for their next project, how I was going to make them filthy rich, and how I could track them down by their IP-addresses if they visited without employing me.
Heady planning days, indeed.
When rational thought eventually returned, I realised that the blog was going to be my public face. As much as I wanted a pound of Joseph the Tokelauan’s flesh, a), it wasn’t relevant to screenwriting, and b), once I’d worked through my shit-list, my career would be over.
A new direction was needed. In a screenwriting blogosphere where professional screenwriters rubbed shoulders with up-and-comers, critics, academics and fans, how could I differentiate myself?
I wasn’t ballsy enough to tell people how to write. I didn’t want to bore people with the finer details – and anyway, who was I to talk? I just wanted… to share. That was it: I would write about what it was like to be a professional but unproduced screenwriter in New Zealand. I called it Indelible Freckles in an absurd reference to my Samoan roots.
How often would I post? A lot of my favourite blogs posted two to three times a week. Most of those people were single, childless, or could afford professional childcare; I was none of the above, so I decided that posting once a week would be a good start. Armed with an internet connection and good intentions, I began blogging.
Eighteen months on, the website ticks along with updates and tweaks as necessary. It’s a no-pressure zone for prospective collaborators and employers to check out my fledgling oeuvre.
As for the blog, the weekly deadline is much shorter than I first thought. Sometimes it has been easier to blog rather than write, justifying to myself that although I’m avoiding work, I’m still writing. And a few times it has been a place to run to and draft missives vowing vengeance aplenty – and, having let it all out, posting a painful but humorous anecdote of Life in the Biz.
The blog is fun. It requires work and commitment. And it’s rewarding, sometimes in ways I never expected.
Just like screenwriting.
