Fire When Ready, Gridley!

This week's news … I finished A Perfect Tenant, my new screenplay and now I'm ready to peddle it. The other news … I decided to quit EditRED.com. As I've mentioned before, editing others' work was taking too big a bite out of my writing time. I found that my production schedule was faltering as a result Now with the completion of my screenplay, I don't have time for much non-writing work. Marketing my script is going to be a large part of my efforts.

American Chronicle

I wrote two articles for AmChron this week. The first one, entitled "In The Aftermath of May 1st," is a piece about one of my strong beliefs, the problems caused by illegal immigration. The other article I wrote, called "Homing In On The Homeless Crisis" discusses my suggestions for addressing a major societal issue. These two pieces show my significant differing views on issues of our day and that one does not have to follow the party line one way or the other. I believe what I believe and don't apologize for it. No one else should, either.

I joined the Yahoo group for AmChron writers. Hopefully I'll be able to make good contacts there, too.

In Verse

No poems this week, though I have an idea about poems that I'm planning to launch on my website http://www.michaelcordellauthor.com in the very near future. As I mentioned, I left EditRED, so I don't know if any of my poetry submittals would've made their anthology, but I didn't want to pay for another quarter to find out.

Short Fiction

I'm still working on "Macdougal Street," but haven't made a lot of progress since last week. That's near the top of my list this week.

I did hear from Glimmertrain about the three short stories I submitted earlier this year - "Baylor," "Shad Fishing in Northern Connecticut" and "Street Life." Unfortunately, none of them made the cut, so I need to accelerate my submissions and spread them around to other magazines. I've been rather lax doing that, I'm afraid.

Screenplay

I completed all four drafts of A Perfect Tenant and like I wrote in the preamble, I'm getting it ready to sell. I'll have it registered with the WMA in the next day or so, then it will be off to the US Copyright Office for registration. Meanwhile, before I put it on Inktip.com, I'm going to see if the producer I worked with last year on The Rebound Guy (now called Ricochet Man) is interested. I've already written several loglines and a tight synopsis to see if I can gain any interest.

Meanwhile, I pulled out the long treatment for my next screenplay, Original Idea. More on that whole process in the coming weeks and months.

Reading

Still reading Chris Vogel's book, The Writer's Journey, though admittedly I'm taking my time with it.

Other

I decided to increase my MySpace friends and I'm near 700 as of this writing. I want to make it to 1000 by August. It doesn't hurt to network!

I created a great submissions tracker using Microsoft Excel. It's better than what I used on EditRed and eventually, I hope to include an income tracker with it, too. First, I need to sell something.

That's all for this installment. Have a wonderful week!

Michael C. Cordell