Why... part 2

This will be a short one because I'm just annoyed.

My new target: Criminal Minds. Two minutes into this week's episode and we've got a home invasion where the woman winds up shrieking "Why are you doing this!?" to the perps (right before they whack her with a crowbar). All right, forget everything I wrote in my first blog about why this line is the most overused, nonsensical and useless phrase writers love to force into every situation, but come on - just last year the very same scenario (and line) was uttered in the movie, The Strangers.

I could almost forgive this if last week's episode didn't also force the line - in an even more likely scenario. The agents had discovered an illegal betting ring, barged in and found themselves facing two-dozen guns trained on them. As they still tried to talk their way into an arrest, one of the perps with a machine guns yells out, "Why are you guys doing this?"

Ugh. Can't... take... any... more.

The Joy of Entering Writing Contests

Okay, contests are often a big pain, a black of hole of submissions that reward you with a different kind of anguish, a younger sibling to the numb disappointment of the more typical publisher rejections. You submit your work, pay your egregious entry fee (usually around $45) and wait... and wait... and basically forget about it until you get an email announcing... 'quarterfinalists'.

If you're lucky, you find your name on a huge list of hundreds, and you're at least mollified that you made the first cut and your work of art wasn't kicked to the curb prematurely along with a thousand others. Then... you wait and wait and wait some more for... the 'semifinalists'. You scan the shortened list, and if you don't find your name you go to your browser's 'find' feature and search for it, sure they've just created the list out of order. But alas, it's not there. You're done, thanks for playing.

But sometimes, you make it past that gatekeeper too. And then maybe with life being the hectic train wreck it sometimes is, you forget about it (and the other five contests you entered ages ago) and then on a rainy, dreary morning like this one, you get a succession of emails from different contests annoucing that, believe it or not, your screenplay is one of the top 10 finalists...
And that, regardless of whether the utlimate prize is a couple grand or just a mass mailing of your work to hundreds of professionals, is why you put yourself through this pain. Why you shell out the $ and sit around hitting your 'refresh' button waiting for email announcements.

So now, I've been notified that my latest screenplay, 'Roadside Assistance', has made it to the finals in the 2009 Expo Screenplay Contest and The Horror Screenplay Contest, with winners to be announced Thursday.

Alas... more waiting...