It’s encouraging to receive news that my writing has somehow made an impression on another person and/or contest/organization.  In the latest update, my screenplay BREAK AWAY is a quarter-finalist in the Shore Scripts Feature Contest.   Over a 1000 screenplays were entered and BREAK AWAY was in the TOP 8% of scripts.  Of course I didn’t believe it until I scanned the list for my name/script title and low and behold, there it was staring back at me…

Screenwriting is a highly subjective art form.  What impresses one reader, may not impress another.  What one reader liked in your script, another may have an opposite opinion and leave the writer scratching their head.  In this past year, BREAK AWAY has advanced to the quarters as well as a semi placement…but it has yet to make the finalist round.  So it leads me to wonder what could be missing.  For now, I await November 10 to see if BREAK AWAY makes the semi’s in Shore Scripts.

I’m on page 72 in my new screenplay called A PROMISE I MADE TO MR. BAGELS.  This script is nothing like I’ve ever written before, although it has similar themes I’ve explored (reckoning with the past, forgiveness, grief, dysfunctional families, hope).  Hope is a constant in all my scripts and this screenplay is no different as each character is doing the best they can given the heartbreak around them.  MR. BAGELS focuses on a reclusive children’s author with OCD who hasn’t written in a year as the family around him falls apart.  And in the midst of the mayhem, one of his fictional characters – Mr. Bangles – comes to life and hounds the author to keep a promise he made to him and his readers.

There is also an element in this story of taking care of your elderly parents which my family knows all to well.  I’ve drawn on aspects of my life when I wrote the father character (who suffers with Alzheimer) and the mother character (who struggles with mental illness).  The parents of the children’s author play a critical role in the overall arc of A PROMISE I MADE TO MR. BAGELS.   It took me months to plot out the outline of this story and I am finally at a place in the writing process where it’s kind’a fun to write (usually it’s not and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or drunk).

Finally, I end this post on something I came across called the 7 Rules of Life.  I could not find the author of this piece, but I wanted to share it as they are great rules to live by.  It’s been an interesting year and a half to say the least.  Between Covid (where we’re all living in a kind of brain fog that seems to be lifting), the struggle with writing (I’ve received countless rejections which is not motivating and I’ve sent plays/screenplays off to producers and hear nothing back but radio silence) and my mother’s health (she is a warrior), the rules listed below can be a challenge to live by.   But if you try, you’re a better person for it.  My best rule (one in which I do pretty good at) – 7.  My worst rule (one in which I can do better at) – 4.  What are your best and worst?  Share below…