the slack daily

JUMP!

It looks like the owners of the house we rent are probably selling, which means that Will and I are moving.

We're on a month-to-month, so there's nothing gained by digging our heels in and staying. The weird thing is that in the last few weeks, I've been thinking about moving. Like, a lot. I love this house but when I'm not working, I freak out about paying for this house. Not to get into our finances (nobody's business) but every time I get a gig we start planning for me NOT to have a gig, so we could stay as long as they'd have us. We've always been good at living below our means (I know, how UnAmerican) and now that we live at our means, well, I miss it.

But in the last few months, there's been a shift. Between work and school, Will is beat from the commute, which takes him an hour each way. And for me, well, I don't care about STUFF. I want fewer clothes. Less crap. I've stopped buying boots and heels and I find myself purchasing sneakers and looking and trips I want us to take and thinking about a new Oly Lifting class I want to take at Cave Crossfit. (You guys I love Crossfit and specifically Cave Crossfit and I don't care where we move I am staying at Cave and yes I've become one of THOSE CROSSFIT PEOPLE but you take a class with Zee or Nikki or Brian and then you tell how I CAN'T be one of those people.)

So while we're looking at the places we normally look (WeHo, Hollywood) we're also looking at...Santa Monica. Mar Vista. Culver City. THE SOUTH BAY. Places I have never lived in my ::mumble mumble:: years of living in Los Angeles. It's time to pare down. It's time to try something different. It's time for Will to have a commute that doesn't take years off of his life.

One of the things that I love most about working as a writer is that you are constantly teetering at the edge. Your entire life is spent working without a net. There are many days it's terrifying, like yesterday when I got the email from the property manager. But once Will and I got over the shock, we had that moment of oh yeah we can do whatever we want to do.

We may end up in a familiar neighborhood. Or we may not. But I'm so looking forward to getting rid of STUFF and having a little more breathing room. After Daisy, Will and a pink Mini Cooper, what else do I need?

It's time to jump.

Note: I will also be going through my dress closet, which I know has scores of size medium (6-8, but they stretch) Stop Staring! dresses that have been either worn once or are NWOT. I'm thinking eBay or maybe if I like you you can just come over and take them off my hands.

Things Will & I Discussed Longer Than The Decision To Get Married

Many of you know that Will and I were engaged five weeks after we started dating in 2006, and got married five months later.

We didn't discuss china patterns or life plans or goals or living situations or finances. The only thing I remember warning Will about was that I didn't want kids or puppies. If we were going to be together, he needed to steel himself for a lifetime of adopting old dogs.

That took about thirty seconds.

(Then I imagine we went back to watching MST3K and eating cake.)

Also:

Tonight @slackmistress and I had THE talk. (Do we watch all of the new Arrested Development episodes at once or spread them out.)

— Will Stegemann (@BeTheBoy) May 23, 2013

@taradublinrocks @slackmistress We've debated this longer than the decision to get married.

— Will Stegemann (@BeTheBoy) May 23, 2013

 

BadRap has a new video out about why adopting an old dog can be hard, but ultimately worth it. This sounds vaguely like an argument for another big life decision, but I can't imagine what that might be...

 

On the topic of animals, I'd like to figure out a way to raise some funds for this. BetheMarriage stream-a-thon? Thoughts?

Job Creator

I think I might be a job creator, because I'm manufacturing a lot of assholes.

See this cat? This cat is an asshole. This is the stray/feral cat who likes to sleep in my yard. This cat is awesome, but this cat also knows that my dog wants to feast on ths cat's bones. This fact doesn't stop this cat. This cat finds a shady area under a thorny bush that backs up against the wooden fence so when I go outside and check to see if the yard to see if it's safe to let Daisy J. Dog outside, I can't see it right away. And this cat won't run away if I make noise from the porch. I have to go up to the bush and yell to get the cat to move. The cat is choosing to stay at a hotel where a giant monster may possibly eat it and the wake-up call is a unshowered sweaty woman yelling at her. This cat is an asshole.

See this dog? This is Daisy J Dog. This dog is an asshole. This dog is like a rogue cop: she plays by her own rules. This dog's Match.com ad would read "likes to crap in the house, wake up 14 times a night when you have to get up early, requires expensive medication to keep me healthy and fart under the covers." But this dog will never be on Match.com because she is our dog and we love her. Even though she's as asshole.

See this chick? This is me. I'm an asshole. There are many examples of me being an asshole, but this might be the most recent. This is a selfie I took of me drinking wine in bed in a fancy hotel room after running a 30 hour relay race, after I bombarded my social media stream for over 24 hours with 39849234 photos of my sweaty face. But I just had to take one more. Because I am an asshole.

 

 

6!6!6!

We've been married SIX YEARS MOFOS.

 

Will finally tells the entire story of the night before our wedding. (With my coda, here.)

Our entire marriage can be summed up in this exchange:

@betheboy LEAVE MY DESIRE TO HAVE SEX IN PUBLIC BATHROOMS OUT OF THIS.

— Nina Bargiel (@slackmistress) May 10, 2013

I Should Be Writing But I'm Not Writing But I Am Writing.

I'm working on a pilot.

I should clarify: I'm working on a spec pilot.

Working on a spec pilot means you have an idea for a TV show and you write a script of that idea and while you have an idea of where it could "fit" (you should ideally always have an idea of where it fits, even if it's sort of a well-it's-a-high-school-girls-MTV-but-could-be-ABCFamily-ized-or-oldified-to-Lifetime-but-maybe-it-could-also-live-online) but you don't have a buyer. You have an idea and a possible home but the chance of you actually ending up in that home is that sliver of light between slim and none.

Speccing a pilot is the most freeing (total! creative! control!) and a waste of time (no! one! will! buy! this!) but it gives executives and producers and idea of your "voice" and it gives you the opportunity to flex those writing muscles that easily atrophy when you're writing for other people's characters week after week. (Note: I love writing for other people's characters. Hire me!)

I'm not a Chuck Wendig. (Imagine Warren Ellis, but cuddly.) The dude is a fucking machine. (A writing machine, not actually, you know, a fucking machine--Jesus, this is what happens when I sit down to write something longer than a Tweet. Chuck, I blame you.)

Yes, that's mostly an excuse to not write. But the writing for me is the easy part. I hate it, but writing for me is simply turning off my brain and getting out of the way. No, the thing that takes the time is the jigsaw puzzle. How do these characters fit together? How does this story fit together? And how will this story continue, week after week?

Because even though the chance of your pilot being purchased/optioned by anyone is less likely than a unicorn crapping sparkles in your front yard, you still need to write something that lends itself to continuing. To characters that you want to spend week after week with. To situations that aren't contrived but still are familiar enough to circle of comfort zone of the everyday viewer.  If a Producer or Executive - who reads thousands of scripts in their lifetime wants to not only continue reading your script, but wants to know what happens next? That's what gets you the meeting, the job, the script option. (Which- having personally experienced - is awesome.)

For me, a pilot starts when I have two people having a conversation in my head. It's always two people. In the writing, it may branch out to more, but it's always two people taking about something dumb. I take those dumb conversations and make notes of them on my iPhone. In TextEdit. Snippets of dialogue grows like mold and out poops a situation.

There, buried under the poop, is are the nuggets of the story. Sometimes it's right on top so you don't have to dig too far and the pieces fit together perfectly. But sometimes you gotta dive in and get your hands dirty, and you try so hard to make all of those little shitnuggets fit that they disintegrate in your hands. Which means you were looking in the wrong pile of shit, so exhausted and filthy, you start over.

Now you get to take your characters, those assholes you started with, the ones who are taking up space in your brain where you're supposed to remember birthdays (thank you, Facebook) and Raising Arizona quotes ("This here's the TV. Two hours a day maximum, either educational or football, so as you don't ruin your appreciation of the finer things.") and you drop them in your story like a couple of Sea Monkeys, and it's up to you to make sure they survive.

Right now I'm digging through the shit. Hopefully there'll be something good in there.

We'll see.