THADDEUS selected for ScriptMatix Genre Festival / Regarding the Writers' Strike

My animated feature screenplay, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THADDEUS THACKERAY, has been selected for inclusion in this year's Scriptmatix Genre Screenplay Contest.

Now, onto a somewhat related note regarding today's announcement of a WGA strike...

The WGA strike in 2007 pretty much shut down the industry, and left me out of a job. 15 years later, history repeats itself. I'm at a crossroads where I'm considering another industry to work in.

Last time, I had considered getting a masters degree and become a teacher, but I found that teachers in the arts within California get paid a pittance. I started taking classes when another opportunity (a contracted stint at Disney) came my way, and so I grabbed it. That, in turn, led to 12 years at Warner Bros., and so on, and so on...

While I'm not a member of the guild, I certainly sympathize with the plight of writers, and marvel at those who are able to scratch out a living doing it.

I've written a few things, and have won or received honors at over 40 screenwriting festivals and competitions...but have yet to make so much as one single sale. It's disheartening to say the least, and it throws me into some very, very dark moods.

This is one of the reasons why I think screenwriting contests are often predatory, with their exorbitant entries fees. Even so-called "winners" rarely get their due attention.

There have been times when an agent or production company expressed interest in my scripts...but again, nothing ever came to fruition.

If it wasn't for my being married, and the friends I have out here in L.A., I'd be tempted to escape to a simpler, less expensive life. I have silly, romantic notions of living as a relative hermit in a little cottage somewhere in the mountains of New England or the Pacific Northwest, spending my free time painting and writing, even if it's to an audience of no one. But I think even that sort of modest dream would leave me disappointed.