John August

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Fatter RSS feed now available

Geek Alert

If you’re subscribing to this site via RSS, there’s now an RSS 2.0 feed that includes the full text of articles, along with any comments posted images and some formatting.

I’m in the process of revamping a lot of things on the site. Pretty soon you should be able to subscribe to a variety of new feeds, including just the comments on a particular entry. And if you’re not using RSS yet, try Googling it to find a good newsreader for your computer. It’s the closest thing yet to an IV drip for information.

UPDATE: The Feeds section is now working.

Bringing a ringer for a pitch

Pitches, QandA

Would a producer frown on a writer bringing in a ringer to a pitch meeting?  I am the absolute WORST pitcher on the planet.  Could I bring in a friend of mine who is excellent at pitching to do the dirty work for me?  Is this even acceptable?

–Gary

Nope. Not unless your friend is going to be writing it with you.

Believe me, I recognize the fallacy of expecting a writer — whose principal talent is sitting alone in a room for hours on end — to suddenly be talkative and entertaining when pitching a project. Most writers, self included, would much rather toil away in happy isolation. But producers and studio execs want to hear from the writers themselves. So we put on our least-wrinkled clothes, practice what we’re going to say, and try not to make asses of ourselves in pitch meetings.

My standard advice for any pitch: Pretend you just saw the best movie ever, and you want to convince your friend (the producer) why she should see it. Try it with a few real movies and you’ll see that you naturally hop from high point to high point, and don’t dwell a lot on the underlying logic or subplots. That’s a pitch.

My new keyboard setup

Geek Alert

I’ve had my share of troubles related to typing all day. It’s hard to say if I ever had classic carpal tunnel syndrome, but a few years ago, my hands started going numb if I typed too much. Worse, I would wake up in the middle of the night with both my arms dead asleep.

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot smarter about general office ergonomics. I try to remember to take breaks, and keep aware of not slouching over the desk. But being a geek, my hard-wired inclination is to address the problem with gadgets.

nuform
GEEK FACTOR: FOUR

My first life-saver was an ergonomic keyboard. For the last few years, I’ve been using the Adesso NuForm keyboard. Like most ergonomic keyboards, it breaks the traditional keyboard in half, placing the right hand and left hand sides at a slight angle, saving wear-and-tear on the wrists. Most ergonomic keyboards are raised in the center, but the NuForm is basically flat, which I prefer.

After a couple of years on this keyboard, I find it hard to type on a regular straight keyboard. When I’m traveling for work, I usually bring it along. In London this spring for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I broke a few keys, but managed to keep it going. Good thing, too: I haven’t been able to find a source for the NuForm anymore.

keyboard

GEEK FACTOR: NINE

Screenwriter Dana Fox, who happens to be my former assistant, has had more troubles with repetitive stress injuries than I have. She was the one that turned me on to what is quite possibly the Holy Grail of insane keyboards, manufactured by SafeType.

Like most ergonomic keyboards, SafeType breaks the keyboard in half. But it then goes berserk, mounting them vertically, with the number pad and arrow keys placed in between. You obviously need to be a touch-typist, since you can’t see keys. And since no one really knows where the function keys are, there are two “rear-view” mirrors mounted on the back like wings. The function keys are labeled backwards, so in the reflection, you can find F7 or whatever.

As you might expect, the first hour or two using this keyboard is terrifying. I got a headache. After two days, though, you stop thinking about it. Your fingers inherently know where to go, and once you get used to feeling for the home row (the J and F keys have indentations), you rarely screw up. In fact, I’m probably typing just as fast on the new keyboard as I did on the old one.

Ergonomically, the big advantage to a vertical keyboard is that you’re not twisting your forearms around to type. By keeping your wrists neutral, there’s a lot less strain. SafeType recommends a Quill Mouse to go with it, but I can’t imagine life without my mouse
wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, which makes web surfing oh-so-much more pleasant.

If it’s not obvious, I really like the new keyboard. However, I would offer a couple of caveats to anyone thinking of buying one:

  1. It ain’t cheap. New, it costs $295. They also sell factory-refurbished models for $149.
  2. It isn’t USB. You need to buy an adaptor cable for USB, or for Macs.
  3. On a Mac, the extra buttons (volume, etc.) don’t work. But I really doubt I would use them if they did.
  4. Command-Key combinations are more difficult. But that can be addressed…

One nice side benefit of my new keyboard is that it takes up less desk space. That lets me keep my mouse a little closer on the right-hand side. With the extra room on the left, I invested in the Nostromo Speedpad n52 controllern52, which I think may catapult me the extra few parsecs into Geek Factor 9.5.

The n52 is really designed for videogames, letting the player keep his right hand on the mouse while hitting all the keystrokes with his left. I don’t play Splinter Cell, but on a daily basis I do a lot of Cut, Copy, Paste, Save, Undo, Hide, Hide Others, etc. Using the Nostromo Array (!) software that comes with it, I have all these functions mapped to the fifteen keys on the n52.

This has made high-volume text editing extremely productive. Right hand selects; left hand clicks. Combined with a good clipboard utility, I can stack up a half-dozen chunks of text to paste at will. You can remap the keys for different applications. I still need to go through and set up macros for Final Draft formatting.

The fine line between talented and bonkers

Psych 101, QandA

questionmarkMy question is kind of a personal question for me to ask and possibly for you to answer. I’ve been a writer, well you could say my entire life, because it’s more than a profession it’s an identity, isn’t it? I find that I spend a lot of time “in my head” so to speak. That is to say, I spend probably 80% of my day day dreaming and fantasizing and exploring my imagination. Something that I know could be easily misinterpreted as a mental illness but nobody’s perfect.

Do you find yourself in similar shoes? And if so, do you find that your writing in a way sort of hinders your life? How do you cope? I sometimes talk myself, well quite often I can be found talking to myself. It’s like all the characters of the story I’m currently working on just start having dialogue and I’m able to just listen and try to decide if this dialogue has the right rhythm, whether this dialogue sounds like real people talking. I’m comfortable with all this and when it comes to writing I don’t think I’m all that bad. I was just curious to see if I have something in common with a successful writer.

–Josiah

answer iconWhen it comes to writers, there’s a fine line between talented and bonkers. Yes, I talk to myself. Yes, I zone out at times, and if you were to ask me where I was, the honest answer would be, “on a bridge in Mongolia.” But I think that’s fairly normal. I don’t worry about it much.

The closest I came to the far side of sane was during my tenure on “D.C.”, a television show I created for the WB in 2000. The wonder of TV, of course, was that I was writing for the same characters and the same sets week after week. But once exhaustion set in, any bit of external stimulation — a conversation with a friend, a song on the radio — went through this filter in my head to ask the Big Question: Could I use this on the show?

It’s like there were two worlds existing simultaneously, and the imaginary one was much more important. My job was to stoke its fires, and keep alive.

I got fired from the show before I could reach complete mental breakdown, but I’m sure it would have happened. The experience made me much more appreciative of normal life. Sometimes a conversation is just a conversation, and a song is just a song.

For those readers wondering if they might be Actually Crazy, rather than just artistic, I’d recommend taking an objective look at your daily life. Do you shower and go to work? Do you have meaningful conversations with friends and acquaintances? Is your living space reasonably tidy, and free of year-old newspapers? If so, keep on talking to yourself. If not, talk to a doctor or another mental health professional and get their considered opinion.

I don’t think you have to be nuts to be a good writer. Nor do I you should use writing as an excuse for not getting help when you need it.