Re: Craigslist

Posted by: Marisa on: March 22, 2010

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Last week was a great kickoff to turning twenty-nine.  I started a new part-time gig that pays more, allows me some time to write, and the people I sit next to are thoroughly entertaining.  Hopefully one of my co-workers doesn’t provide too much entertainment as she is bound to give birth any second now; seriously her due date is this Sunday.  All and all it’s not too shabby of a desk job.  Locked in a chair for eight hours makes having the internet a gift from God.  Between searching for animals gone extinct and finding out that an Oscar isn’t so great for a relationship, I answer a phone call or two.  As the saying goes, “idle hands make for the devil’s playground.”  I’ve had to find other things to do with my time and avoid FB telling me to “catch up with” an ex or some random guy who I met for five seconds who decided we should be BFF’s (and uses that term). 

I’ve tried to make this time productive.  Writing my blog has been a great after lunch activity but what I find the most painful, the three-to-six slump.  I try not to look at overstock.com or the trips to Cabo.  Now I know who those pop-ups are for.  I decided to find something to help bolster my career as a writer, so I turned to the wizard, Craig.  Craig has a list of all the answers.  You want a no-fee apartment you have to pay for, craigslist.  You want to find a completer stranger to hook up with, craigslist.  You want to find the answer to The Secret, craigslist.  There is nothing you can’t find on craigslist.  I was on the hunt for anything to do with film and television.  I found it a little difficult promoting myself as a twenty-nine year old inter.  There weren’t many takers. 

One of my kind co-workers and I started chatting about writing.  She was looking to get distracted from actually working, I needed a distraction from internet surfing.  She told me about and organization called Script Frenzy.  They challenge writers to stop talking about that amazing idea and just do it.  Without judgment or prize money, the contest is thus: write a script in thirty days, the month of April, 100 pages.  You simply log in your page count everyday.  The goal is to write, write, write.  The group sponsors “Write-Ins” where you gather with others passionately, angrily type or stare at there computer.  Maybe communal frustration brings about progress, at least that’s the theory it seems these days in Washington.  A nothing to lose situation, except of course, for time and sanity.  I have no time and little sanity, nothing to lose, I signed up. 

After I sat there pondering what the H-E double hokey sticks I was going to write, I checked my email as a distraction.  There it was, a response.  Someone actually sent a “Re” to my application.  I submitted to a position as a reader, non-paid, for the film industry.  I was finally being ‘re’garded.  I had “the kind of background they were looking for.”  They want to try me out so they sent a sample script that I was to read this hundred and nine page script, evaluate using their guidelines and send back within three days.  I sent my coverage (that’s what the call it in the biz) back in less than 24 hours.  Five pages ripping apart the screenplay.  I disliked it on so many levels.  When asked if I would recommend the script, I said pass.  When I asked about the writer, I said consider.  I thought the dialogue was strong and the idea was different but I felt disdain for the script.  Maybe I felt guilty about “passing” on a fellow writer.  I slammed the work of a fellow scribe.  Here I was joining a couple thousand writers in the camaraderie of creative catharsis but thanks to craigslist I have become a critical cannibal .

Tags: Cannibals, Script Frenzy