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By Tgreen, May 13, 2010 11:52 pm

Somehow I knew, even if I didn’t want to admit it, that everything was gonna go off the rails the minute I hit all my writing goals in April. And sure enough, I finished my 100 script pages, submitted my story to The First Line, picked up an iPad while traveling through New Jersey to get a sandwich, and my work ethic fell off the face of the earth. Partly this was because of the iPad, a crazy fun time sink that I’ll be writing about in more detail shortly, and partly because that final scramble to hit deadlines kind of kicked my ass. I still have about 30 or so script pages to write, of which I’ve finished maybe 4, and several stories to edit, but how can that compete with getting Apps and videos on my iPad?

The slow return of late work hours isn’t helping, of course. I have it on good authority that tomorrow will be one of those days where the only way to survive will be to do the work of 2 people as quickly and gracefully as possible. It’s been a few months since one of those days, so I don’t know for sure if I can still do it, but I’ll give it a shot.

Before work got bad again, I was trying to figure out how to format my NANOWRIMO novel to get my free proof copy. Back in December I dutifully bought a binder and printed out a copy so I could do a first pass edit on the thing before I had it made into a book just so the book would be better than first draft quality. I had all the time in the world, too, because the free proof copy offer is good until the end of June. And yet my editing never got past reading about 3/4ths of the book before petering out. Which is why I’m now trying to format that first draft to get my free proof. First draft proof is better than no proof at all.

The editing didn’t die out so much because the writing sucked or the story was a nightmare. Maybe it was only a little of that. A major issue was that after writing the thing in a mad rush in November, a story title lurked in the back of my head. I didn’t know why, or what it meant, but the name lingered and came to the forefront every now and then and eventually I had to fire up the Google and see what the deal was. What I learned wasn’t pretty.

You see, the title, which I will not be sharing here, was of a pretty famous short story that was turned into a big movie starring a huge Hollywood star. And this story shared a couple of not-minor concepts with the book I wrote last year. I never read the story, but I did see the movie. My book more resembled the story than the movie, because they changed a lot for the movie. But still, troubling and it made me wonder if it was worth doing anything more with this thing. I still wanted my free book, but I figured that might be it.

Then, this week, I was reading something on a message board and someone wrote how life would be so cool if only “idea X” existed. And guess what? “Idea X” was what my book is about. “Idea X” is nowhere to be found in this short story or movie, but it’s all over my book. So maybe the thing isn’t a lost cause. Who knows? I’ll have to figure it out after I get the proof book.

And what does this have to do with anything? Not much, but at this point I’ll do almost anything to avoid going to sleep right now, because to go to sleep means I’ll have to wake up and go to work Friday, and I sure as he’ll don’t want to do that.

But for now, all the writing has gone completely off the rails. Now it’s time to grab hold and get things working again, before I get sucked into that Netflix app. Stupid sexy iPad.

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By Tgreen, April 30, 2010 12:12 am

Need I say more?

Probably not, but I will anyway. Script stands at 101 pages right now. I probably need 30 more to wrap it up. Then I get to cut a lot of crap to get it back down to about 100, which is really all this story should need.

I know I’d promised a soundtrack list for this one, and I’ll get to that, but not until next week. There was just never enough time to figure out exactly what songs belong to this script. But the minute I figure it all out, I’ll post a list of some songs you’ve probably never heard of, but if you hunt them down and listen they might inspire you enough to demand I let you read a copy of the script. And you know what? I just might. Someone besides me has gotta see this thing at some point under some circumstances. Why not you?

And why, if I just managed to bang out 101 script pages in 30 days (or much less given my vacation) am I entitling my little celebratory blog post “Halfway Home”? Because I’ve still got a short story to finish before the end of April 30. That one still needs work, but I think I’ve got a handle on it and it should be no problem. And then? If there’s an iPad to be found in NYC, it just might end up coming home with me. If I can finish the story, that is.

More later. Sleep now. Thanks for reading.

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By Tgreen, April 28, 2010 11:16 pm

Script = 90 pages.

Short story = 1486 words.

Countdown = T-minus 2 days.

Chances of Friday turning into iPad Friday = 80-or-so %

Chances of any of the words written the last couple of days actually belonging within four miles of each other = 30-or-so %

Chances that I’m going to worry about that before the weekend = 0-or-so %

I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. And very, very tired.

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By Tgreen, April 26, 2010 11:45 pm

When I started this Script Frenzy business on April 1, I had a couple of assumptions. One of them was (though I guess technically this assumption came along a day or so later once I settled on my script) that I knew I wasn’t wrapping this script in 100 pages. I expected I’d need 120-130, and I’d edit down from there. The other assumption was that because of my vacation and the randomness of my work schedule, I wasn’t making it to 100 pages in 30 days anyway. So I packed up these assumptions, stuck them in the back of my brain, and wrote whenever I could.

I wrote on my laptop at night after work. I wrote on my iPhone on the express bus, on the couch, in my hotel room bed at Disney, while waiting around in at least 2 of the Disney parks, and, I’m not ashamed to admit it, on the can. And after 26 days, I find myself at 76 pages. Approximately 3 days behind schedule.

Is this good? I’m not sure. It’s probably better than I thought I’d be when I saw how little time or interest I had in writing while on vacation. But still, I’ve been writing from behind since the first week of this thing, and since I don’t know what the next 4 days will bring at work, 76 pages might be all I get to do. Who knows. But I think tentatively I have to say that 76 pages is probably pretty good for Day 26. It’s 76 more pages than most people will write in a month, for what that’s worth.

And there’s another obstacle, too. While April 30 is the Script Frenzy deadline, May 1 is the deadline for the latest issue of The First Line, and I’m trying real hard to submit something to them too. I’m just over 1000 words on that story, and need at least 1000 more, and possibly more than that. I’m writing this story exclusively on the iPhone, and that’s working out well so far.

So, 24 more pages of script and 1000-2000 more words of short story in 4 days? I don’t think I can pull it off. I’m gonna give it a try, though. It’s too early to give up. That’s what Thursday night is for.

Of course, I did make a deal with myself as kind of an incentive. If I get them both done on time, I might just head on out and reward myself with an iPad. Let’s see if that helps. For now, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!

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By Tgreen, April 4, 2010 12:21 am

Okay, so against my better judgement I did in fact start up my script for Script Frenzy. It was not a trouble-free process. If you recall back in November when I started up Nanowrimo, my main point, other than the fact that it was a bad idea, was that I went in with nothing. No idea as to what I was going to write. No characters, no setting, no plot, no nothing. And this did not worry me, because I’ve been writing fiction for years and feel that if nothing else, I know how to work my way into a story even when I’m starting on fumes.

Turns out script writing is different, at least for me. Probably because I’m not used to the format, when I sat down on the night of April 1st to write, it was awkward. Maybe not quite “oh crap, I think I’m accidentally writing an episode of According to Jim” awkward, but it was pretty awkward. I dutifully banged out my 4 pages of script, powered down the computer for the night, and went to sleep. The thing is, though, I wasn’t itching to start working on page 5, and one thing I’ve learned from my several attempts at Nanowrimo, once I get started I can usually at least keep myself interested for the first few days or longer. If my script was boring me on day 1, how was I going to get through something like day 20, when no doubt I’d be several pages behind with a half dozen work deadlines kicking my ass?

Now, if you’ll hang on for just a second — a side trip. I mentioned the other day that I knew going into this thing that there was no way I’d be able to write 100 script pages in April. This is because I’ll be headed down to Disney World for a week, and I don’t expect to get a whole lot of writing done while I’m down there. But since I wasn’t going to let 4 lame script pages sink my month before it had even started, I looked for a way to get some writing done while on vacation. Since I wrote some of my Nanowrimo story on my iPhone, I went looking for a script-writing app and sure enough, I found several. One of them offered a free trial version, so on Friday I downloaded it and gave it a try. I didn’t pick up on page 5 of the script I was working on. Instead, I just started a second script and wrote about a page or so. It was no better than the other 4 pages, with no big prospects to get better.

If you’re keeping score at home, by day 2 of Script Frenzy I had 2 different scripts that I didn’t like, with barely a plot between them. What could I do? Would I have to give up on the 2nd day? I thought about it, sure. But then while I was at work another idea came to me. I did have one particular story kicking around the back of my head the last 2 years or so. It’s heavily music-based and most of the climax involves a singing performance, and from back when I first thought of it I knew that if the story were ever going to survive outside the confines of my brain, it would only work if people could hear the song, watch it being sung, and experience what the characters experience as it happens. This meant screenplay, which explains why the story got exiled to the back of my brain, called forward only when I played a particular sequence of songs on my iPod.

But I was thinking, maybe I’m not good enough to try and crank out a script by starting from zero. Maybe if I’m writing a script, I need the comfort of some pre-considered ideas to get me over the unfamiliar terrain of script writing. So I went home the second day of Script Frenzy, planted ass in seat, and instead of picking up the script from the night before, or the script on my iPhone, I decided to start my 3rd script in less than 48 hours and I wrote this:

INT. HOLLY’S WORLD STORE #8, NIGHT
BRIAN JONES, late 20s and dressed in business casual attire gone wrinkled and sloppy after a 12+ hour day, walks the empty floor of the store one last time, scanning up and down aisles for any activity as he heads for the bank of light switches past the checkout counters near the front door. NEIL, mid-20s and dressed in shabby jeans and a Holly’s World smock, slouches by the front door waiting for Brian. Brian hits switches in sequence as he passes, and a click is audible as a bank of lights goes out each time. When no light remains but the emergency lights pooled near the front door, he shoos Neil out the door and follows him.

CUT TO:

EXT. HOLLY’S WORLD PARKING LOT, SECONDS LATER
Brian and Neil walk to opposite sides of the wide entrance area and wrestle down the metal security grating. Brian closes the padlock on his end, then walks to Neil’s end and closes the padlock there as well. He blows a small cloud of steam into the cool night air as he and Neil survey the parking lot, empty except for Brian’s car and a minivan that just finished pulling up several spots away from them.

NEIL:
Oh Jesus, this isn’t a customer, is it? It’s like 2 in the morning.

BRIAN:
This is what happens when you cut back from 24 hours. People forget but they still need stuff.

NEIL:
It’s not our problem this dumb bastard showed up after the store closed. C’mon, let’s go.

BRIAN:
Let’s at least wait until we find out what he wants. We can point him toward the 24-hour store by the Interstate.

NEIL:
If we don’t freeze to death first.

Nothing Oscar-worthy, to be sure. But all of a sudden, I was writing a script for a story I’d thought up maybe 2 years ago. I’m on page 14 or 15 right now, and while I’m not even up to the first scene I’d imagined for this story, I’ve already introduced a character I never imagined lived in this story and who turns out to be pretty cool. And I’m looking forward to sitting down and writing this one every day, to see if I can make it to that last scene with that last song. I’m going all in on this one, and I hope it pays off.

Expect to see more script excerpts throughout the month, and also soundtrack listings, since for once I’ll be completely justified in making a soundtrack for a story. Thanks to my vacation I doubt I’ll make it to page 100 before April 30. But if it all works out, I’ll find a way to get this whole story down. Thanks for stopping by and indulging a more-than-slightly-burned-out writer wannabe.

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By Tgreen, November 30, 2009 11:39 pm

When you’re participating in the NaNoWriMo event, there are two major milestones you always have in mind. One, of course, is 50,000 words. You have to get there or you don’t win. The other one is the end of your story. Ideally, the end and the 50,000 words will show up at around the same time, but it doesn’t always work that way. The first year I won, I needed around 82,000 words to wrap things up. The second time I won, I believe I blew past 60K without ever finding the ending. This year, given how much trouble I was having keeping to my writing schedule, I couldn’t afford to let the story go on for too long because there was no way I could keep up the pace once the 30-day deadline was though.

This is why I worked on a 2,000 words per day schedule. I’d get 60,000 words in November with that schedule, and if I couldn’t wrap the story in 60,000 words then maybe I wasn’t focused enough. When I fell 2 days behind and was never able to completely catch up, I was worried that I’d hit 50K but not “The End”, and this worrying caused me to focus in on plot more than I ever have before. And when I hit 50K on Day 27, I knew that at best I had 6,000 more words to work with, and possibly more like 4,000. The pressure was on.

Long story short (as if), I finished the story on Day 29 with a shade over 56,000 words. Hit the end with an entire day left to go, which is something I would’ve thought impossible way back on Day 1. Of course, on Day 1 the entire project felt mostly impossible because, as I’ve mentioned before, I had nothing back on Day 1. Not even a single idea. And yet here I sit on Day 30 with a 56,000 word story sitting on my hard drive waiting for a rewrite. On Days 1 through 29 I battled with my work schedule and my personal life to bang out approximately 2,000 words a day. On Day 30, I rested, except for rewriting 2 scenes right near the end that I had to fix because they bugged me all day.

Just for the hell of it, here’s how things started late the night of Day 1:

I grew up in an apartment building that I hated every minute I lived there.

I can almost guarantee that sentence will not appear in any future drafts of this story in whatever form it ultimately takes. And here’s how things wrapped on Day 29:

“Ah, well, no big deal. Memory’s a flaky thing anyway.”

I actually started to write one last paragraph after that, but that line seemed a good stopping point after all that had come before. I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t appear in any future drafts either, but you never know.

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, Happy Friday will be returning to this space, either this Friday or next, depending on how fast I can recover from the sleep-deprivation of the past month. Also coming back to this space will be updates on whatever creative project I take on next, because I had fun documenting this and you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. I’m not sure what that next creative project will be, but I’m hoping it won’t take too long to figure out.

After I do the initial read of this book, I might be looking for a couple of impartial readers to give it a look. If you’re interested in being one of them, shoot me an email or comment to this post and I’ll consider it. I may end up bypassing that step entirely, so please don’t be offended if you are interested and in the end I say no. I appreciate the interest, believe me. Hell, I appreciate the time any of you spent reading all these posts this month. I hope I didn’t cure too many cases of insomnia while documenting my crazy quest to write a 50,000 word book in 30 days. See you all in Happy Friday soon, and see you all back here next November for my next crack at NaNoWriMo (well, maybe).

T “step away from the keyboard, sir,” green

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By Tgreen, November 28, 2009 12:47 am

And somehow, 50K. After a brutal month where almost every day my job seemed to be conspiring to make sure I failed to write this novel in this month, it seems appropriate that the 50,000th word of the book turned out to be “working”. No lie, and it wasn’t planned. Sometimes these things just happen. Considering, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I had no idea whether I even had a story in me when I started typing on November 1, it doesn’t surprise me at all that the word that gets me past the finish line described the last 27 days so succinctly.

I’m not done yet. I’ve got 3 more days to wrap this thing up, and I think now that I can do it. I’ll be really unhappy if I’m still working on this story on December 1. Because my plan is to rest for at least part of December and then do the scariest thing I’ve done since writing this book. That would be reading it. And once that’s done, I’ll be able to decide if I pissed away a month and brought on more stress than I’ve seen in awhile for little reward, or if, as I suspect, I’ve got something here.

I’m tired now so I’m gonna wrap this entry up now. I’ll be checking in at least once more before the month is over to let you know if I finished, to maybe offer up one last excerpt, and to reveal when Happy Friday will return to this space, since I know if any of you are coming here at all, it’s for the Top Ten Lists.

Enjoy the weekend. I’ve gotta go rest my writing fingers now.

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By Tgreen, November 27, 2009 12:15 am

I shouldn’t even be complaining because even though I’m 2 days off my writing schedule, I’m over 48,000 words and will hit the big 50K some time on Day 27. And, more importantly, I’m still on track to wrap the entire story by the end of the month. I really don’t want to be writing in December to finish things off like I did the last two times I won this. But even though things look good now, I paid for this. And I don’t mean the 10 bucks I donated to the organization that runs the NaNoWriMo thing. No, I paid to get to this point this week, and I’m gonna need some time to recover.

As much as I love a good holiday, especially one like Thanksgiving that’s based mostly around food and football, short weeks a work are always dangerous. We might only have 3 official work days on a week like this, but we still have a full schedule. So in that 3 days, they managed to get more than 30 hours of work out of me. This, as you can imagine, made it very hard to make up the two days I seem to have been behind for the last 2 weeks, and in fact it made it hard to not slip 3 or even 4 days back. If that had happened, I would’ve known for sure I wasn’t hitting 50K this year. I was just too worn out and sleep deprived to pull off the kind of comeback a 4-day loss would’ve required. I mean, I was so wiped out that I stood in the middle of the sidewalk on Tuesday night trying to figure out what day it was and whether or not the recycling was supposed to go out. On Wednesday night I stumbled home like Rocky in the 14th round, out on my feet and wondering what was keeping me up.

So every night, even after my one 10.5 hour day, I made sure I wrote something. I wasn’t hitting my 2,000 words, but I was still moving forward. As long as you can keep moving forward you’re doing pretty good no matter what it is you’re trying to do. This is something I learned a long time ago and it almost always holds true. This time around, the motivation that kept me moving forward was something that hit me on Monday. Because that afternoon, in the middle of some deadline chaos I wouldn’t wish on anyone, I had my aha moment.

I probably shouldn’t call it that. I believe Oprah and Allstate just went to court over that phrase. But what the aha moment is in my context here is that point where your story clicks into place and you can see everything that needs to happen to get to the end like it’s a big glowing line on the road. And so while I was banging away on whatever mind-numbing task I was being paid to do on Monday, the little piece of my brain still tending to the story suddenly figured it all out. Or figured out enough of it to make me want to say ‘aha!”. So with that in my back pocket, I couldn’t give up. I had to do whatever it took to stay close to schedule. If all had gone as planned, I would’ve hit 50K yesterday. Instead I’ll hit it tomorrow. Given the month I’ve had, I’ll take it.

So given the time left in the month, unless I get totally inspired and go hog wild this weekend, I’ll end the month at about 56,000 words. Is that enough to end the story the way my aha moment told me to? I’m really not sure. But I’m gonna work every trick I’v ever learned to try and make it happen. Because Monday? Could be another 10-hour workday. Woo hoo!

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. The football didn’t do me any favors, but I wrote some cool stuff tonight so I suppose I’ll be thankful for that.

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By Tgreen, November 23, 2009 2:34 am

Somehow, and I know this is no coincidence, as soon as I realized I needed an ending for this book, the creative part of my brain cramped up and said it was done, and it headed off to take a steam and get a massage, which pretty much left me on my own to get through the rest of the month. Friday was pretty brutal, as I had no ideas and no time to write anyway, as my work schedule continued to grow in all kinds of new and interesting directions. I figured that I’d make it all up on the weekend. Who isn’t creative on the weekend?

Turns out, I’m not. Not this weekend, anyway. Too much to do around the house first. Then there was dinner out at the Cracker Barrel, where apparently Chinese Elvis works (don’t ask, because I was unable to get a picture, but if Elvis was Chinese and inclined to run a Cracker Barrel, this was him — though we all know Elvis is not Chinese and really works at the Waffle House, but sometimes it’s fun to speculate on such matters) , then a day of bills and emails and various other important online business, and before I knew it I was 3 1/2 days behind schedule, and still without a single creative idea to work with. Things were not looking good.

Eventually I forced my ass into my seat with the idea that I would write something, anything, and it would be good enough. So, distractions set aside, I opened my document, put fingers to keyboard, and wrote some crap. Big steaming piles of it for about 1,000 words. Bad enough to make me want to stop and spare the universe from such bad writing. It appeared that I had no interest in coming up with a way to wrap this thing up, leaving me the option of writing the word “gazpacho” 10,000 times and then ending the story with “A vampire did it.” Not exactly Hemingway, but still possibly enough to get me a movie deal at MGM.

Then somewhere during the next 2,000 words the creative part of my brain took pity on me and wandered back in, claiming it was just there to look for some old Spider-Man comic it had lost. It took one look at what I’d written, fell on the floor laughing, and when the laughs turned into heaving sobs, it took over and dragged me past the 40,000 word mark while also tossing in yet another mind-fuck for whoever ends up reading this story. Then as soon as it stopped typing it took off looking for the mystery bottle of Jack Daniels’ that may or may not be missing, leaving me to write this blog post myself.

Which probably explains a lot, come to think of it.

And now I find myself with a week left in this contest, a day and a half behind schedule, less than 10,000 words to go, and, at last, half a roadmap to the ending. I’ll take it.

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By Tgreen, November 21, 2009 2:40 am

By Tuesday night I’d managed to make up a full day of last week’s lost weekend, and I was feeling pretty good about my progress as i took the train home. Work was still kicking my ass up and down the length of Manhattan, but the story was working and until this month is over that’s gotta be a higher priority than anything going on in the office. Even as we lose yet another project manager (I can’t even count how many of those have come and gone since I started this job) and the schedule for next week looks like it might make me want to trade places with a Thanksgiving turkey, I have larger concerns. So I’m on the train, feeling good about the writing I’d done the first couple of days of the week while trying not to think about the office, when I had a huge realization. All of a sudden from out of nowhere came the thought that I was going to have to end this story, and soon.

Sure, if all you’ve ever done is read a book, you must think that the fact of a story ending would be a pretty basic element. Integral to the entire writing process, even. And yet once you’ve tried to write a book, you learn that the ending is the part you spend most of your time in denial about. You write your words and you make your progress but you try not to think about where you’re headed because it’s too scary to do that. But here I was, more than 30,000 words under my belt, and I’d passed the point where I had to know where it was all going. I’d laid down some hints throughout the story. Red herrings and false turns and honest-to-goodness foreshadowing. But still, no thought to what they were all supposed to add up to. I was thinking way more about the 50,000 word goal, and not nearly enough about the “The End” goal.

Besides all that hiding from the ending that I just mentioned, there’s probably another reason for this. The two other times that I started and “won” NaNoWriMo, I did so by working on stories that I’d been carrying around in the back of my head for awhile. I had a basic understanding of some characters and where I wanted to steer the plot, but most of all I was pretty sure where I wanted these stories to end up. And the first time through, I managed to get there in 36 day and something like 82,000 words. The second time, I botched the ending and never finished, even though I wrote well more than 50,000 words, but the point is I knew basically where I was headed, even if I didn’t quite get there.

But this year? This year I sat down with nothing late the night of November 1, so I grabbed a couple of books off my bookshelf and began flipping pages randomly, looking at sentences and hoping to swipe one a a starting point. I didn’t find one I liked, so eventually I wrote this:

I grew up in an apartment building that I hated every minute I lived there.

From that, approximately 2,000 words flowed, and when I stopped for the night I had 2 directions I could’ve chosen. One was a straight up basic story idea about some loser with a job he didn’t like. The other was a light science fiction story about memory. The next day, I chose the science fiction route and never looked back. This story that I’d never realized I had in my head was being born right in front of me, and all I had to do was type it. But because I never knew this story existed until it started to exist, I had no goal. No thought about what it meant or where it was going. And it wasn’t until Dy 17 that I figured out I needed to know this stuff.

This epiphany was followed by two brutal work days, one of which was more than 10 hours long. But somewhere in that time I considered where the story might have been pointing, and I made sure to keep that in mind while banging out my 2,000 or so words per day. And while I’m pretty sure I’ll have to stick to my original plan of 60,000 words in a month, I think I have a shot at wrapping this up when I get there. It goes to show that there’s no better epiphany than the kind of epiphany you have when you’re on the subway. Because not only are you having important ideas that will help you later, you’re also forgetting you’re stuck on a subway train, at least for a couple of seconds.

But enough of that. I promised n excerpt, so you get an excerpt. More half-baked (at best) first draft writing that I’ve barely read and haven’t edited. Enjoy. Or tolerate and don’t come looking for me to complain to. Currently the story is named Rememories Are Made of This, but that’s going to change many more times before I’m done…

“Douglas Sweeney?” the voice on the other end asked. It was a deep, familiar voice.

“That’s me.”

“Douglas, it’s Lew Decker.” I already knew this, but said hello just the same. “It appears you’re in the middle of an eventful evening. Are you aware of this?”

“I just turned on the TV right now.”

“Good, good. I don’t like being the bearer of bad news.”

As if getting a call at home from Lewis wasn’t bad enough, the fact that he mentioned “bad news” in the first 30 seconds just made it that much worse. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I kept my mouth shut.

“Not that we blame you for what happened,” Lewis continued. “I’ve already been in touch with the partners and after a close review of this video, we all agree that both you and your colleague handled a difficult situation with professionalism and empathy. This is what we like to see from every Rememory, Inc. employee, though we prefer not to see it broadcast to the world on every cable news outlet. But we can’t unring that bell, can we?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“We appreciate your efforts, Douglas. From going out of your way on short notice to even be at the clinic, to thinking on your feet and handling a potentially awkward situation with great aplomb.”

“Do we know why this happened?”

“Not for sure. Not yet. We’re investigating this closely, and we’ve enlisted the authorities as well. Obviously this was an attempt to discredit us. It appears someone wanted you to agree to help this boy even though all of our guidelines state clearly that you should not. I’m surprised they bothered to release it once you denied him his request. Have you had a chance to listen to the commentary about the video?”

“Just a little bit,” I said.

“It’s not worth watching, trust me. But if you do see any of it, you’ll notice that this time around our critics are grasping at the thinnest of straws. My theory is whoever made this video released it only because they’d already paid for it and were hoping that any publicity for us is bad publicity.”
“That’s usually the safe bet.”

“Sadly, yes,” Lewis said with a sigh. “It usually is. But this time someone overreached, and with any luck, we’ll make this person pay for the mistake.”

“I hope so.”

“We may need you to speak with one of our investigators in the next few days. It depends on what we find out in the short term. For now I’m going to ask you to lay low. Do not engage with any members of the media in any way. We expect you to be inundated with interview requests as soon as the media discovers your identity. Practice saying the words ‘no comment’ because those two words will become your best friends for at least the next week. Refer all interview requests to our media department but don’t worry, you won’t be doing any interviews. Can you handle that?”

“Yes, sir. Not talking to the media? I think I can do that.”

“Thank you, Douglas. I know you’re scheduled to be out in the field tomorrow, but instead you and Abe will be coming into the office. We’re going to assess the situation overnight and decide tomorrow if it does more harm than good to have you making house calls while this is still an issue in the media.”

He thanked me again and then ended the phone call. I channel-surfed until I found someone just starting the story again and this time I watched the entire video without commentary. Whoever was responsible had access to some good equipment, because the video and accompanying audio were very clear. It ended abruptly after I started speaking and Adam, or whatever his real name was, stormed out. I thought I looked bad, like a heartless jerk who didn’t care how badly this boy was hurting over the loss of his mother. Now that I knew it was all fake, I thought I should’ve felt better, but still, my reaction was to the reality of the situation as it happened, not what it turned into. And anyone watching would understand that and probably agree that I was a heartless jerk. Unless I found a woman looking for a heartless jerk, I’d probably remain date-free for the foreseeable future.

Why, yes, when you put it that way, there probably are better ways I could be spending my November. Like lobbying the Nielsen ratings people to allow me into the family. Let’s hear it for first drafts. Woo hoo!

More later. Gotta make a big push on this and try to get out ahead again before the holiday.