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By Tgreen, April 1, 2010 1:06 am

In theory, it should work like this — you want to write, so you write. Simple. Believable. Like the song says, it oughtta be easy, oughtta be simple enough. And yet, after banging my brain against the inside of my skull for at least 8 hours a day at work, most nights the best I can do is crank out an email or two, perhaps a Yelp review, and maybe a tweet. Certainly nothing more than that. It’s not to say I don’t have the best of intentions. But those intentions seem to melt away once ass hits couch after the long trip home on the D train.

So in the absence of the easy way, what’s left? Why, a stunt, of course. Last November I wrote a novel in a month, and if you scroll down a bit you can read all about it. This month? Well, this month I’m trying something different, if no less ridiculous. This month I’m writing a 100-page script while participating in Script Frenzy. I’ve never written much in the way of scripts, and don’t have a whole lot of interest in it, but for the month of April, Script Frenzy gives me a goal, a deadline, and hopefully the right amount of motivation to write something more substantial than a Waffle House review.

When I sit down this evening to start my script, I have a few options. I can write a movie script, or a TV show, or a play, or even a graphic novel (high-class-speak for comic book). As I write this, I’ve got no idea which one I’ll choose. I wrote a TV episode script once. It sucked. I wrote 3/4ths of a movie script once. It sucked. I wrote about half of a script that was either an animated movie or a hybrid of live action and animation. It sucked. And while I’ve never bothered to sit down and write a comic book script, I’ve sure created many comics in my day. Some of them didn’t suck.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that I haven’t exactly set the bar terribly high as far as script writing is concerned, so assuming I make it to 100 pages in a month, whatever I write is bound to be at least as bad as all the other crap I’ve done, and maybe it might be a little better. Of course, the dirty little secret in all this is I know going into it that it will be almost impossible for me to get to 100 pages in this particular month. But we’ll get to that later. For now, there’s nothing but good times ahead. Hey kids, let’s put on a show!

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By Tgreen, September 2, 2009 12:52 am

So I’ve got two new bits of writing news to share here.

First off, I’ve got a story, Black & Blue, coming out in the Fall 2009 issue of The First Line. The First Line is a literary journal that’s published a couple of my stories over the years, and I’m happy to have a new story in their current issue. The way The First Line works is they provide the first line of the story and the writer takes it from there for 3,000 or fewer words. If you’d like to purchase a copy, you can do so here. If you’d like to know what other publications available on that page have my work in them, drop me a line and I’ll clue you in.

Now, if you’re not interested in parting with $3.50 and would instead enjoy seeing an example of a story The First Line rejected, I’ve got you covered there too. Floating Home, a story I submitted for the Spring 2009 issue is now available on the website here. There’s a short explanation leading into the story to give you an idea of what might have been if I’d maybe worked a little harder at the end of 2008.

I’m hoping to avoid that pitfall at the end of 2009, and plan to have some more writing news coming up soon. Until then, happy reading!