Last fall, I started writing for the entertainment website Cinema Blend. My job? Write up quick recaps of breaking news in the TV sector. I figured it would be a good "in" for later freelance jobs, and might just get me some contacts in the entertainment arena. I was hot and heavy in the process of churning out my first draft of - you'd better sit down - a horror script. I also needed (and still do) to practice my professional writing skills. Writing a coherent article is much different from writing dialogue.

A quick aside...

Why horror? It is the last genre of movies that accepts an absolute evil, and that evil has a personality that wants to hurt humans. Also, I was just a little tired of trite demon possession movies in which every single priest was a) a drunk, b) had lost his faith, or c) both. I thought I'd write a more... Catholic... horror movie, as it were. My movie doesn't contain a single blonde girl running in terror or cowering in her panties, either. I'm turning the movie world on its head!

I also have a children's one in the works, based on a series of stories I tell my kids in grocery store lines to make them be quiet. It is along the lines of Nanny McPhee. See, I haven't totally lost my mind!

I haven't worked on my scripts at all for several months - since Thanksgiving, actually. I just had a lot of other things going on, and I didn't feel that this was the right season in my life to be devoting a ton of time to it.

I've found that writing reviews and critiques of other people's scripts was much more satisfying and up my alley. I'm the annoying lady in the movie theater that finds the plot holes and wonders about them aloud.

(....I'm still wondering why Peter Petrelli didn't just take himself to the moon or wherever, instead of making his brother do it in a giant "This Is True Love Glurgefest". If you understood that sentence, you're a nerd like me...)

So anyway. When I wrote for this website, I had the duty to trawl various other entertainment sites for tips, leads, and their take on a story. The stories were meaningful, too. I just Googled myself and one of my gems is still up on the website. It's about David Bowie providing voice talents for SpongeBob Squarepants.

I also watched too many Bravo reality shows. Too many being more than one.

Reading over the coverage of Dawn Eden's recent awesome career move, and the coverage provided by Gawker, I remember why I stopped doing that. Calling them a "scatalogical gossip site" is just plain charitable. (I'm not even going to provide a link. If you feel a pressing need to read that site, use Google.) I had to read this site, and a few others like it, every day. Several times a day, in fact.

I generally stuck to the more benign stories - covering new shows, new trends, upcoming debuts, and skipping the DUI arrests - in an attempt to stay out of the confessional. After all, it is basically gossip, even if it is printed under a masthead - or web banner, in this case. I have to say, I don't miss any of these sites at all.

Okay, maybe Go Fug Yourself, just a little.

Labels: Mama Says