09 August 2007

'scuse me while I piss and moan

The one part of the screenwriting game which I hate—abhor, detest, loath, wish to hell I never had to mess with again—is that cold-calling phase. That "approach a total stranger and try to make it clear than you have intelligence, creativity, passion, integrity, and one hell of a great story idea all in three brief paragraphs and for god's sake don't do anything to offend."

'Cuz that ain't me, kids.

I'm more of a "barrel on in without much concern and then trust that nothing there is big and bad enough to do much much real harm" kind of guy.

Except, when you're talking about a stillborn career where you might have one lucky chance to try and win some stranger's attention or else wind up pissing them off so badly that they hire someone to ignore you full-time on their behalf so they don't even have to worry about it, that approach seems less wise to employ.

The crumpled paper virtual snowballs of trashed attempts at query letters fill my virtual office to armpit depth, and I feel no closer to a winning letter now than when I started this damned foo exercise earlier this week.

I might just go beat a small tree with a baseball bat.
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frustrated B

1 comment:

sweeper said...

Which is why I was shuttled to the harmless "V.P. of Operations" position in my company rather than the useful and meaningful "Account Executive" which is nothing but a fancy word for salesguy.

I learned recently that "inside sales" folks make up to eighty (80) EIGHTY cold calls per day. To handle the frequency of being told to fuck myself far far more than I usually am and do so on a daily basis is something for gods and comic book detectives. Truly this is a job for folks with kevlar intestines and stainless steel balls.

You go, my iron-clad buddy.

D.