One of the things I did when I purged through this office over the last month, during all the office-y projects, was to box up things I didn't think I'd be needing any longer and put them up in storage. Labled, of course, but out-of-the-way. The business plan for the romantic comedy film was one of those things because I've gotten tired of pushing that project up the hill, only to have it stall and roll back down. I, Sisyphus, and the damned business plan.
It's one of those projects that I had spent way too much time and energy on to give up completely, and yet, spending more time on it means taking away writing time. Besides, I want to focus on the book. So the phone call today from my friend in New Orleans (Melissa, who works for a production company there) was a surprise... someone there wants to read the script and is fired up over the things I (still) have attached to the project. They wanted to see the script, and the business plan.
I am too far past cynical to be excited any longer. I've had too many people almost have the money or really have the money only for it to disappear again or think they have the money but they really didn't and oops, sorry to get your hopes up, or have the money and things fall apart through no fault of theirs, and really, I'm tired. I know what it takes to get projects off the ground -- it's hard enough in the construction business when you're bidding on work and you've got to pull it off for that bid, but having to create the financing to finance that work on top of bidding it... it's a lot of effort. And in film, you can't promise investors anything more than a completed film and maybe that it'll catch on. There just aren't guarantees. At least in construction, when the project is finished, there's something tangible there they can use -- a building, a scale, a parking lot. I long ago realized I would have been able to do much better in pushing the project had it been written by someone else. It just seems the height of ego to tout my own project and try to get lots of money from people who don't owe me for a kidney, ya know? I get embarrassed, even though I have already gotten a lot of stuff attached. And that self-consciousness has kept me from pushing this project as far as it probably could have gone just on the attachments alone.
So, it's sort of a weird feeling to send out that script and business plan. I know the reader's boss... the one she's trying to find a script for, and he likes to make thrillers. This is so clearly a romantic comedy, I couldn't really understand why she was requesting it, but she wants to try to convince him to make it. (He already definitely has the money.) In most things in life, I am pragmatic, but I always have hope. I try to look for the positive and live in that sort of mindset, but with this... this is hard to keep having hope, after so much. I don't really want to have hope for it, because it just sets you up.
But there's this little bitty tiny "what if?" voice down inside that keeps piping up and wishing, no matter how much I try to squash it back down. I'll let y'all know if anything comes of it, but don't expect anything.
On the book side of things, I looked up the big NY agent that Eloise has (see the post below on the 5th). Turns out he very much loves loves loves s/f / fantasy. And my book is so... not. I doubt I'll be a good fit for him, even with Eloise's referral, but I'm going to give it my best shot anyway and see what happens. I found myself freezing up, knowing that there was interest. You'd think that knowing this would encourage me and get me busy, but it's so much clearer how big I can fail, that I started feeling like everything sucked. I'm getting past that. For one thing, Eloise and I e-mailed several times and I realized she was going to help in several critical ways, one being that she'll read for notes and understanding that it may take several passes before we both feel like it's ready to be shown. I mean, it's within the realm of mathematical possibility that she'd love it the first time out, but I doubt that, and it's nice to know she's not expecting that, so the pressure's reduced. I also found myself procrastinating today with a couple of computer games, and in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, realized I was thinking that if I don't get the book finished right now, I can't "fail" right now. Which just isn't rational, I know, and so I closed the game and got back to work.
Which I will do now.
Posted by toni at July 9, 2004 11:06 PM