April Writing News

Hard to believe that the year is now 25% over! As a constant generator of internalized time-pressure, this of course fills me with a vague sense of unease about my progress year-to-date. Fortunately, I have these monthly updates, so I can now replace that vague feeling with a very concrete unease about exactly where I am, and share it with all of you!

Film- I’m now fully into the swing of producing the short film that I’ve written, “Three Conversations About No Thing”, for Scary Cow, the independent film-making co-op that I’m part of. It’s looking to be about twenty minutes, and the crew and I just completed the first week of filming, and will shoot more next week. Then follows several weeks of post-production, and a screening at the Victoria Theatre on June 7th. I’m super-excited about the great director, crew and actors working on it, and looking forward to seeing the final, which you can bet I’ll be pushing tickets for on all of you when the time comes.

Publication- My pledge to submit something somewhere every week in 2009 is still in pretty good shape, minus a week here and there. Acceptance and rejection rates are tied at 10% each, with 80% “the sound of one hand clapping”. I currently seem to be on hiatus with the online culture magazine The Rumpus, but if they come back begging me for more and I deign to accept, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I continue to write for LEGENDmag, an online and offline publication covering the progressive urban independent lifestyle. You can read my March 4th discovery of my identity here: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/03/04/quisp-like-me-the-queer-identified-straight-person/

Performance- Okay, okay, see, work and movie-making both got crazy in March. So I didn’t end up reading anywhere. I’ll get back to it this month, I promise! Let’s say the last Friday of the month, April 24th, at the Café International open mic (Haight & Fillmore)? I’ll see you there…

Novel- I’m taking the plunge and submitting the manuscript of my novel, Out In The Neon Night, to a freelance editor I met at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February. She’s going to help me evaluate its readiness to be submitted to agents and publishers, and possibly also target a select list of them. In the meantime, you can read the first chapter on my blog here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- Speaking of my blog, see my desperate excuse making in the “Performance” section above. I may not have posted much there is the past month, but what I have you can find here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/

I’ll get back in touch with you at the beginning of May, at which point the year will be 1/3 over. Egads!