Nothing like a Christmas feast to sap away all my motivation. All I can think about is the five pounds I gained in two days. I have to roll myself to the gym and work off the Christmas calories. On the bright side, I finally clued into the mania behind Boxing Day sales. I hate going to any store on the slowest of shopping days. The thought of being stuck in a store on Boxing Day fills me with dread. However, this year, I wandered into an Eddie Bauer to kill some time between matinee movies (Rocky and Pursuit of Happyness... going for an underdog/melodrama theme). A week earlier I tried on a fleece that fit me perfectly and was very cool, but way too expensive. On this day, the same fleece had been reduced by 25 dollars. I figured this would be a nice Christmas gift to myself, but then I felt an adrenalin surge when I hit the cash register. The fleece was marked down even more, so that I could get it at half price. At first, I thought this was a mistake. Then I felt like the woman in the IKEA commercial who walks out screaming "Start the car, start the car." Anyway, the bargain rush was so cool that I wanted to find out what other deals I could get. Thankfully, the other movie started right away and I couldn't hit any more stores. Now I know why people go wild on Boxing Day. Does this mean I'll be lining up at a store at 5:00 am? I guess I'll have to see how I feel next year.
December 2006 Archives
I'm shutting down for Christmas today, so I want to wish everyone a safe and joyous season. See you all in 2007.
Marty Chan
I'm now reading up on religion and science in preparation for the revisions to a play that I want to produce at the Fringe Festival. The play, originally titled Nearly Normal, was supposed to be a kids play, but I've since discovered that the play doesn't work for kids because it has a far more dark and dramatic thruline. I think the story is great, but the structure is flawed. I have to reorder the scenes, and I have to explore how a nine-year-old boy deals with his grief over his father's stroke. I think the dramatic spine can bear the weight of some important ideas about the debate between science and faith. I'm getting excited about tackling the revisions, but I'd better get some ammunition for the rewrite first.
Today, a courier delivered 17 boxes of my two books. I now have over 500 copies of The Mystery of the Frozen Brains and 550 copies of The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul. Am I nuts? Well, sort of. My publisher is a smaller house, so the print runs are small, so when a book sells well, the publisher must order another printing. Often times, there's a lag time of 6 weeks to get new books. I figured if I stockpiled my books I'd never have to worry about telling people to wait for the book. Usually, people won't wait that long and end up passing on the book. This way, I'll always have something in stock to sell.
Sigh, the more I learn about the book publishing world, the less glamorous it seems.
Hi Linda,
Sorry for the delay in posting this, but I only saw your comment this morning. Thanks very much for following my blog.
You were wondering about pitching to newspapers and magazines. Because I write mostly humour pieces, I try to write pitches that demonstrate the kind of humour that I'd be using in the article. It's safe to say that your query letter or pitch is a mini-sample of your style, personality and expertise. The letter is a tool to give the editor an idea of the kind of writer you are. For example, if you want to pitch an article about touring France, you might want to slip in a few points about your expertise (ie. you've been to France or you worked as a tour guide in Cannes or you are a former contestant of Amazing Race). The other thing to keep in mind is to set yourself apart from the other writers who might be submitting a similar idea. Think about how you would approach the topic that is fresh and unique to your style.
Before you submit a query letter, however, the best thing to do is read as many issues of the magazine or newspaper section. There's nothing worse for your credibility than to pitch something that the editor published a week earlier. In my query letters, I always try to mention an article in the publication that caught my eye. Yes, sucking up is a strategy... as long as you don't go too far with your praise.
The final tip is to be respectful of the editor's time. Try to find out the best time to approach them. If you're going after VUE or SEE magazine (the weeklies), the worst time to try to talk to an editor is the day before the paper goes to press. Also, human nature being what it is, people tend not to want to take on new projects on Fridays (however, that's not always the case). If you're unsure, the best thing to do is call and ask for the best time to submit ideas. If you're lucky, you might even get a few tidbits about what the editor wants to see. Again, be respectful of their time, and don't be offended if they give you the brush off.
The one thing that I should say is that all these tips are guidelines. I've followed the rules and been rejected, and I've broken rules to get accepted. Every editor will have a different preference. Hope this helps. Good luck with pitching! Let me know if you land anything. It'd be great to hear your success story.
Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I had very simple directions to the school. Basically, I had to make two turns and I'd be at the school. Unfortunately, when I looked for Highway 21, I was looking for a major off-ramp and the turn off was an intersection. I got horrible lost, and I became intimately familiar with the range roads east of Edmonton. Nothing like driving on a day where there's fog, snow and freezing rain to remind me that I really should have snow tires. Fortunately, the kind staff and students at Ministik were patient enough to wait a half hour for me to get to the school.
I had a blast talking to the students from grades 1 to grades 6. Everyone seemed to be fascinated by Buddy and Max. I even got some great ideas on where to find my pens. I think there are a bunch of detectives in the making at the school. I hope the students follow up on my suggestion to write their own stories about their own pets or about Buddy and Max. I'll get working on my picture book right after Christmas. Maybe we can swap stories and compare notes.
Thanks so much to all the students and staff for making my visit so memorable. I got a new favourite pen, from the "best school I ever visited." Also, someone was turning eleven the next day, and I got to share in a birthday cupcake. The coolest moment of the visit was the mini tour that the students gave me after the presentation. This is my last presentation of the year 2006, and I was glad that it was at Ministik. The students were awesome!!!!
Thanks to the students participating in the video conference virtual-artist-in-residency, I have my story starters. I've been kicking around the idea of a character named Big Foot who has two celery sticks tied together like nunchuks and is in a Winnipeg blizzard.
I guess the first question that will help get the story going is "why?" Why is Big Foot in Winnipeg during the winter, or is it winter? Could a blizzard happen in summer because of global climate change causing strange impact on weather. The reason why might be that Big Foot is running away. For some reason, the image of two celery sticks tied together makes me think Big Foot is taking food with him. He has no pockets because he has no clothes, so of course he'd tied food together and hang it around his neck. I like the idea that Big Foot is a kid who is running away from home. But why? Maybe he's fed up with being a Sasquatch and wants to be like a normal kid, so he shaves himself and runs away as far as Winnipeg when a blizzard traps him in the city.
Hmm, I think I might have something. I have to jot some more notes down on what happens next, but I think I might have something that I can work into a five chapter story.
I'm back from my meeting with the Forbidden Phoenix composer. It went relatively well despite my inadequate musical vocabulary. He must think I'm an idiot the way I'm describing what I want each song to do. We got pretty far on the first act discussion, even to the point where we were mapping out what was happening in the fight sequences and in the songs regarding the actions. I still have some brain work to do on three sections before I can talk further with the composer, but he's got a lot on his plate from today's discussion, so he'll be busy. Also, I've got a very cool change in the first act that will make everything flow more smoothly. I'll probably get cracking on the piece this weekend and try to get some revisions done by the end of the year.
It's nice to work on the play again. I don't know if the thing will ever get produced, but at least I'm doing something I love.
First day that I started feeling well enough to work. Good timing. Lots of deadlines are piling up. I have to get cracking on a Fringe play. I spent a couple of hours working on the outline for The Quiet Room, a psycho thriller but at the end of the session, I decided that the story wasn't grabbing me. I've bailed on the thriller and decided to revise Nearly Normal, the one-hander that was originally a kids play, but now I think is something more than a kids show. I'm using the structure of the play to explore the relationship between faith and science. It's going to be something way out of my comfort zone, and I'm scared of tackling the project... which is exactly the reason why I should be taking it on.
Tomorrow, I meet with my composer to talk through the music for Forbidden Phoenix and how to get it up to speed. The songs are great as songs, but they aren't quite theatrical songs yet. I'm starting to learn the difference, as I listen to tunes from musicals. There seems to be more space for performing between lyrics and even within lyrics. The current Forbidden Phoenix songs sound more like concert pieces rather than theatrical pieces. My big challenge is to try to communicate this with my limited music vocabulary. Hope the meeting goes well.
And if you thought that wasn't enough to keep me up all week, I have 3 Edmonton Journal articles, a 5 chapter kids story, the revisions to my Mad Science Teacher manuscript and two picture books to write. What am I doing? I have to start saying no!!!!
I'm sick as a dog this morning. Picked up the flu that has been flying around Edmonton. But one piece of good news is keeping my spirits up despite my inability to breathe through my nose. I found out that The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul is going to second printing, only 7 months after it was launched. Yay! Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of the book.
Well, part of being a playwright in today's times is also being a producer. I received a grant to produce a 2-week workshop at the Banff Centre in February, but the cost of doing business in theatre has risen, and my grant falls short of the mark. So now I have to come up with an extra two grand and/or find ways to cut corners. The upshot of all this is that everyone on the workshop will be paid except me. Welcome to the world of theatre.
The good news is that I'm not too panicked. I have a few options to pursue, namely talking to the theatre producers who were mildly interested to see if they'd be able to kick in the money to test the waters. I'm at a point in my career and my life where the only failure is failing to ask.
I know this sounds weird, but to take my mind off my health issues, I started to write pitches. There's something soothing about coming up with ideas. So, I wrote three pitches for the Edmonton Journal, and the editor liked all three of them. Now I have to deliver 3 articles by the end of the year. The good news is that I'm not thinking about my heart or my health. Instead, I'm panicking about how little time I have to do all the things I promised to do. Yikes!
It's stress, but a good kind of stress. And I'm back in the gym and running, so I'm also taking care of myself. Okay, I have to organise myself for the tasks at hand. Whew!
So, last week, the Edmonton Journal ran my article about my hypochondria. In the article, I was constantly worried about suffering a heart attack. I often went to the doctor complaining of chest pains and every time the doctor would put my mind at ease. Well, here's the punchline to the story. A day after the article ran, I pulled some muscles shovelling snow, so I went to see a doctor for painkillers. The doctor ordered an ecg. Today, I find out that I have to go see a cardiologist about something called AV Block. It's not serious, he says, but it wouldn't hurt to see a specialist. He told me not to think about it. Alright, I won't think about it or the white elephant in the corner.
