The Perils of Mild Success...

UPDATE: For clarification, the first part of Pete's comments were directed at a now absent spam comment. He's also totally right about that Tammy J Troll, who did totally unspeakable things with an ogre at the Christmas party, I'm just saying.

As sometime friend of the blog, Pete K. Troll* has pointed out, I've been keeping my cards close to my chest. He said it with more vitriol, but you should see the stuff trolls eat, it's a wonder they don't belch vodka*.

This, faithful remaining readers of a moribund blog, is the peril of mild success. As I've said in my last post, I've had a pretty good year. I've had some minor successes, and it all feels like it's chugging along very nicely down exactly the route I want it to, with but a few leaves on the line.

But I can't really tell you about it.

Reason the first: writing, in the past year, has gone from being a hobby and career aspiration to something resembling a job. I have meetings. I, on occasion, get paid a bit. So I can't gossip about it, give dirt, diss on producers or whine about how nobody understands my brilliant vision for exactly the same reason I wouldn't do that for my day job: I would get fired, and other potential employers would read it and I would never work in this town again.

By the way, none of the above is meant to imply that terrible things happened that I am being tight lipped about. This is not the case. Everybody, producer, exec, and other writers that I have met has been very very nice. All the bad ones must currently be on leave. But even if I had, gossip would be out.

Reason the second: failure is not something you advertise. You wouldn't fill in an online dating form with a list of your failed romantic endevours. So when something goes wrong I'm not going to post it here. When a script gets turned down, I'm very probably just going to send it someone else, and I don't want the first thing in Producer B's mind to be "Didn't Producer A already turn down this piece of shit?". Yes, E.T. got turned down a lot, but I bet Spielberg didn't tell anyone that until the movie was in the can**.

Reason the third: Quentin Tarantino sounds like a dick a lot of the time. You remember how long he talked about Inglourious Basterds? Years before it was fucking made. And lets not forget about the Vega Brothers, and the Kill Bill sequels, or the badly dubbed Kung Fu movie he was planning. He yammers away, and it's annoying, because you know most of it will never happen. If I talked about every idea I had, I'd sound like a deluded cock; the reality is most of them will never get beyond pitch form.

I am not alone in this situation: Michelle Lipton and Paul Campbell's blogs have been put on hold, deleted, and reborn like a glorious Phoenix because they're doing well. And god bless 'em.

If I sell something, you'll hear about it. If they're filming something, you'll hear about it. And if you see me down the pub, we can gossip then.

* Trolls that burp vodka are worth an extra 200 xp.
** A phrase which uniquely can refer to both finishing a film, and going for a poo.