In the office bright and early, winter term begins. Late getting mentally ready for it -- but I am now! Time flies when things get going, which is good, before I know it, spring is here, my final term teaching is here, the days are warmer.
Speaking of weather: yesterday 85% of the country was below freezing! 23% below zero! Not here. I bitch about the weather here a lot but, man, I am thankful for it compared to the rest of the country. I'll take rain over snow and ice any day.
Want to finish Overdrive #11 this term, #12 next term, then call it quits. Make 3 more collections of 3 each ... and then let it go. Marketing works but it is too time consuming and the profit margin is too small with my short inexpensive books to make any financial sense. Not only that, I find the emphasis of packaging over content culturally obscene.
This afternoon, after I get home after class, I am ... baking bread! Two loaves, rye and rustic 4, and preparing a new batch of dough, wheat-barley, and getting ready to try my first cheese bread soon. I haven't made scrapple since I've been baking. Interesting.
2 more shots at teaching screenwriting "right." I do my best but I am also confounded by a few students who never do "get it" and I can't figure out why, or what I can do to turn them around. But the vast majority do get it. When I judged those 34 scripts recently, only a handful were really "screenwriting," the rest being re-formatted fiction writing, writers shooting themselves in the foot. The poor quality of screenwriting education -- or perhaps just the lack of it, because this is a hard craft to learn on your own because of the different kinds of scripts out there -- is astounding. My students, if nothing else, leave class knowing what a screenplay is and is not.
Well, welcome to winter term!
