I entered the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship again this year, my third in a row. I sent them My Immortal and Comic Squad back in May and have been waiting patiently to find out if I made it to the quarter finals. It's a big contest, this is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences contest - and if you place in this people come to you, none of this beating down doors to try and beg people to read your meager offerings.
And for the third year in a row I got a really nicely explained, cordial "thanks but no thanks" rejection. I psyched myself up for this months ago that whatever happens happens and I'm not going to get sidelined again by not placing in this contest. But here I am thinking if I can't make the cut out of 6000 scripts, how do I figure I'm going to make any kind of splash amidst the Hollywood slush pile that numbers many times as much?
Some people even get a nice handwritten note at the bottom that they "barely" missed the cut - not me. No nice note, just the standard rejection. It cuts to the quick, no matter how much I tell myself it doesn't matter. I think I'm just vulnerable right now, this month has royally sucked shoelaces.
I mentioned not too long ago that I have a strategy, and I do. I've got my eye on a script coverage service that, if I get a consider or recommend, they pass on to people looking to buy scripts. It's pricey, but with as much as I've spent on contests over these last few years it's comparable.
The Austin Film Festival contest is still out there and I entered a contest for John Carpenter (Halloween, the Thing) to direct his next picture. I missed Disney's contest, though.
So it's not the end of the world that I got passed over by the Academy contest that is the Crown Jewel of all amateur screenwriting competitions.
Do you believe me?
I don't. :(
<sigh>
1 comment:
Rejections and lots of them are the stuff writers' lives are made of. Do not sweat it. There are scads of stories of writers, now legends and/or immortals being rejected, getting their stuff returned, etc. E.g., the story of how Edgar Allen Poe died--penniless on the streets of, was if Philadelphia?
Ginger why work yourself up over this contest? Forget contests. Send it in to people that want to BUY. [My two cents.]
S, aka, "the rejected"
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