September Update: A Job Finally and Chevy Chase in Person

If you follow my Facebook updates you already know, I got a job. Starting Monday I'll be working for SingerLewak Accountants and Consultants, proofreading financial statements for the auditing division. (Don't worry; that doesn't require me to do any actual numbers work.) Next week sometime they should be sending me down to Irvine for four days of training (that's about an hour south of here), and then, praise Jesus, I'll be a full-time employee, with health insurance and paid time off and everything. And it only took me seven months of looking.

The job itself promises to be tedious--in fact, high tolerance for monotony was one of their requirements--but it's a stable company that's past the lay-off stage, and it's a job I know how to do and do well. So, yay. Next item on the list is to find an apartment closer to work, maybe something in Santa Monica if I'm lucky. I'm settling in for the long haul.

In slightly more glamorous news, my friend April and I went to the Paley Center's NBC Fall Preview last night. We got to watch early sneak peeks of NBC's new shows Trauma, Mercy and Community, the first two so early they hadn't finished color correction or visual effects, and instead of opening titles we got a screen that read, "Opening Title, :07."

Community, on the other hand, not only offered a completed pilot but a panel with the producers and cast, including Joel McHale and Chevy Chase. At this point, McHale is still "Joel McHale from The Soup," but once this show airs he ought to graduate to just "Joel McHale." The show's very funny, and it's packed with ringers: besides McHale and Chase, there's John Oliver from The Daily Show, Ken Jeong from The Hangover, Yvette Nicole Brown from about a million shows, and Danny Pudi, who's probably played the Indian guy on some show you've seen recently. As for Chevy, he had a lot of fun on the panel playing around with his famous a-hole persona, but if he's really the dillhole diva he's sometimes rumored to be, his co-workers have an awful lot of fun mocking him in public. You may think because you're Chevy Chase you can get away with wearing army fatigue pants to a panel, but your producer will still call you Steve Irwin, and your twenty-something castmate will still laugh out loud when you don't know what Twitter is.

Oh, and if it needs to be said: I'm nowhere near the fires.

--SA

August Update

Hey, so I have a gig! It's a tiny gig--like, I've been working at it two weeks and I've just about earned enough to buy myself a nice cold coke--but it's work, and my name's on it. It's a column about Culver City food, and you can check it out here. It's slanted to local events and locales, but the recipes are, of course, useful anywhere. And the good news is, you lovely people can help me earn money just by clicking the link! I earn for every page view and subscriber, so every time you check my page it's a penny right in my pocket. Won't you help me buy a second coke? Pretty please? And don't forget to come back over and over and over. I post about three stories a week (and you'll get them all if you subscribe).

Let's see, what else? Still looking for an actual, rent-paying job. It's been six months now, and I'm pretty tired of looking. As of a week ago I'm hosting a Mad Men TV club; we were four last week, and we'll see how many turn out tonight. (Good show, btw; check it out if you're a fan of literary TV.) I'm doing a work exchange with a friend I made through another TV club. We're both working on one-hours (hers a spec of an existing show, mine an original pilot). Friday we exchanged outlines, Wednesday we'll give each other notes. I can't tell you how much more I'm getting done with somebody waiting to see my product.

Otherwise, let's see...there was something else I wanted to tell you. What was it. Think, think...Oh, yeah! I cut all my hair off.



Ha, ha, just kidding; this is me.



It started as a trim, then everything after that is a little fuzzy. I don't know, it's possible my scissors are possessed by the spirit of Young Meg Ryan; we're looking into it.

-SA

August Post: I Prefer My Irony Fictional, Thanks

Well, be careful what you wish for. I've been wishing for something sufficiently interesting to blog about for weeks, and now I have it. The very next day after getting my first paid writing gig (not the kind of swanky gig that would pay my rent or even buy my groceries, but a gig nonetheless), my computer's crashed. It's been breaking down pretty rapidly for the past several weeks--it doesn't hibernate properly anymore, which is a real problem since it overheats pretty easily, plus the CD drive's quit and the power cord's disintegrating--but yesterday it actually died and refused to revive for several hours. I'm rapidly approaching the point at which fixing it would cost more than replacing it, and since the writing gig I have and the others for which I'm applying require, as it turns out, the use of a computer, I don't have time for the so-called Geek Squad to ship it off to their mysterious factory for a few weeks. But of course--and you knew this was coming, right?--I can't afford a new one. If I could string together enough of these little freelance jobs, and ate nothing but beans and cornbread (and the occasional orange, to ward off scurvy) for the next few months, I might be able to save enough to buy a computer...but to get and complete those jobs, I need a computer. It's a frickin' O. Henry story around here, is what I'm saying.

You guys, I don't know what to do. Well, I know to go buy the cheapest thumb drive I can find and back up all my files, but past that, I don't know what to do. Help?

-SA

First Week of June: Spec/Pilot, TV Club, Kurtzman and Orci

Well, life's still pretty uneventful. I spend most of my time either working on the spec script I need to enter the studios' various entry-level TV writers' programs (deadlines end of June or mid-July) or putting off working on the spec. Now that I should be working on a spec of an existing show, of course, suddenly I'm totally motivated to work on my original pilot. I fully expect this situation to reverse once the deadlines pass and I ought to be working on something original.

I'm still dragging myself out of the house for networking events a couple times a month, but I find the bar scene frustrating. People tend to gather in tight little knots--not least because the music's so loud you can't hear the person next to you unless you put your ear to her mouth--and even when you do manage to break into a knot or corral a straggler it's mostly small talk. The whole experience is like speed dating without the structure. Or the satisfaction.

But, while it's easier to complain, it's ultimately more useful to puzzle and solve. So, starting last night I held my first TV club (like a book club, but with a TV show). I had half a dozen fellow aspiring writers over to my house to watch Burn Notice and talk about it afterward. It was kind of awesome, if I do say so myself. It was a small enough group everyone got to chime in, and I think after ten weeks of talking to these people I'll actually know them well enough to call them friends. Inspiring, challenging, uniting, potentially one day leading to employment: that's what I want from a networking mixer. By request, I'm starting up another club for True Blood; if these go well I'll keep organizing them for new shows in the fall and spring. Besides the physical meetups, we also have a Facebook group with a discussion board and we're exchanging emails. And since I'm administrating the whole thing, everyone knows who I am, so I'm not just networking with people, I'm making an impression. It's a totally self-created opportunity and I'm pretty proud of it. Thank you very much.

What else...Oh, the other day the roommate and I went to a WGA panel with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the writing team behind, let's see, The Legend of Zorro, Mission: Impossible III, Transformers and its upcoming sequel, the new Star Trek movie and the TV shows Alias and Fringe--and, apparently, the episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys where Hercules gets turned into a pig. You know, "Porkules." They were quite the comedy team up on stage; they actually made me wish I had a partner...until I remembered I don't actually like people. That's a hurdle. Oh, and for all those who read this blog solely for vicarious star-spotting (you know who you are): Masi Oka from Heroes was totally there. A trekker, perhaps?

Until next time,

SA

May Doldrums

I haven't been blogging for a while because I really haven't had anything to say besides "more of the same." It's not that nothing has happened: Mom and Aunt Sara came to visit, and I experienced my first (and second) earthquake, but otherwise...huh. Not much new. The earthquake was strange--at first I thought the neighbors were just being unusually rowdy--but it was a short-lived excitement, and then I was back to the day-in, day-out, sending resumes, doing laundry, eating turkey sandwiches, daydreaming about fictional people, waiting patiently for my break. I could pretend there was something worth writing about there, and if I were a good blogger I would, but alas, I am not and will not.

How about all of you?

Week Eight, As It Turns Out: Things to Do When You're Bored and Jobless

1. Take a personality test. According to the Jung test at similarminds.com, I'm a "mastermind" (INTJ), an "introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models."* Sounds pretty accurate (and impressive, actually. Mwahahaha). I also scored a 5 on the Enneagram test, which means I feel "ambivalent about the world and consequently [my] mind is [my] best friend. Gifted in analysis and making sense of things, perception and invention come naturally. [My] inner world can become a hideaway from the real one." The language sounds a little fortune cookie, but I've never had a fortune cookie that accurate** (except one that read, "You are a lover of words. You should write a book someday." Also, another one that recommended I go shoe shopping).

Seriously, if you haven't taken a personality test before, or haven't taken one in a while, I recommend it. It's fun even if you do have a job--and I want to know what all of you score (leave 'em in the comments!).

2. Perfect your biscuit recipe. I found a recipe for the fluffy, buttery drop biscuits like they serve at Red Lobster (but without the weird metallic taste Red Lobster biscuits seem to have). Delicious, but not nearly as good the next day, and there's no way you could make a sandwich out of them, never mind slathering them in sausage gravy. Back to the butter:shortening mix (1:2) and rolling, this time with a little more salt and a bit of sugar. Word to the wise: do not use kosher salt in biscuits. The biscuits are great, but the large flakes of salt go off like saline bombs on my tongue. It's disconcerting.

3. Explore Save the Words, a website dedicated to saving little-used words from disappearing from the English language altogether. Finally, a site full of words I've never heard before. It's like discovering a whole new room in your house you didn't even know you had.

4. Cut your own hair. Well, what's a girl to do when she's ready for a change and can't afford to pay someone else to make it? Tell herself that hair grows back and pull out the scissors, that's what.

While it's nothing a competent stylist couldn't improve, I'm pretty proud. And hey, if anyone else wants to try this one too, send me pics (no fair, guys who use clippers).

5. Apply for jobs. I got a rejection letter from a temp agency a couple days ago (a temp agency!), and when I wrote back to ask if there was anything I could do to make myself a better candidate, they explained they're getting hundreds of applications for a handful of positions. You know it's bad out there when temp agencies won't even put you on the books.

And that, sadly, is it for this week. Don't forget to take your own personality test (the link is here) and leave your scores (with explanations) in the comments!

Until next week,
SA


*The actual spread, I'm glad to say, is fairly balanced, nothing alarmingly high or low:
Introverted (I) 67.74% Extroverted (E) 32.26%
Intuitive (N) 51.35% Sensing (S) 48.65%
Thinking (T) 68.75% Feeling (F) 31.25%
Judging (J) 53.85% Perceiving (P) 46.15%

**Of course, that's exactly what an INTJ/5 would say. And this footnote is exactly the kind of thing an INTJ/5 would add to having said it (etc.).

Week I-Don't-Know-Which: Let the Frenzy Begin

Wow, it's been way too long since I blogged, hasn't it. Let's see, what have I been up to? Well, not working, sadly, though compared to a lot of people these days I haven't been unemployed that long. I read on Slate the other day that the average person who gets laid off in this recession will be out of work five months. Five months. So, good news, I'm not a huge loser. Bad news, I've got a lot more unemployment to look forward to. I may need to downgrade to eating meat every other day.

Otherwise, I'm doing pretty well. I'm still seeing lots of (free) movies with my roommate, going to writer's events, going to networking events. Last week I went to a WGA panel with the writers of Lost, and yep, I still really want to do what they do. They all said they were waiters before they were assistants, and assistants before they were paid writers. It's what I've been hearing everywhere: you have to be there, meeting people, making a good impression, and then when you find people willing to read you, you have to have something good for them to read.

To that end, I'm doing Script Frenzy now, an annual online event challenging aspiring writers to finish a 100-page script in the month of April. I'm writing a pilot (that's the first episode of a TV show, in this case a hypothetical one), and hopefully a spec as well. Spec is short for on speculation, as in the opposite of paid; it's an episode of an existing show to showcase your writing skills and your ability to mimic someone else's show. Several of the big TV studios run workshops or fellowship programs that can get you an agent or even a staff gig, and those applications require a spec. Agents and showrunners, though, apparently like to read pilots. So in the next month I'll be attempting a finished pilot (one hour equals 45-65 pages) and at least part of a spec to hit my 100-page mark. Wish me luck!

And that's me for now. Hope you're all doing well, and remember to keep praying for Angie. Till next time, love to you all and thanks for your comments,

SA

P. S. For those of you who just read these things for the star spotting adventures, I did pass the ER wrap party red carpet on the street across from one of my writer's meetings last weekend. I only managed to spot one star, but he was a pretty good one: Uncle Jesse himself, Mr. John Stamos. Enjoy.