First Impressions and the U.S. Mail

The first batch of query letters is in the mail. If this works the way I think it does, between 9:00 am and lunch tomorrow 10 people with a serious amount of influence over the direction our lives could take will be opening envelopes, then judging me.

A query letter is essentially a job interview. If you do well, if you stand out, then you get a second interview.  More than likely, however, the response will be a form letter, or worse – nothing. 

I’ve taught a few semesters of an employment preparation class to college freshman and sophomores. The syllabus I created was pretty straightforward: resume basics and interview pointers.  Don’t lie, don’t misspell, don’t use an idiotic sounding email address.  Dress well, look people in the eye, don’t chew gum.

In a more general way we discussed how to stand out…but in a good way.  “Yes, an interesting font will make you stand out, but may be hard or annoying to read.”

One thing we never discussed was stamps.

Most resumes these days are emailed or posted online, so maybe the stamp thing is a moot point. But any way to stand out, right?  When I asked the woman at the post office what my options were at the current rate (I didn’t know how much a first class stamp costs) she seemed almost happy to pull out the book and show me.  She flipped the pages, sort of softly narrating, like she was going through a photo album. 

Nothing struck me until she said Mark Twain.  What says, “Hey, look at how clever I am,” more than a Mark Twain stamp?  Then two pages later she opened it up to Legends of Hollywood. Gregory Peck.

Done!

Of course, in the end what really matters is the letter.  That makes or breaks the deal on its own.  But like in an interview, if you can make someone smile for even a second right when you meet them, that’s irreplaceable.  Everyone knows first impressions matter, but few people (in my experience) appreciate how much it matters. 

Maybe they won’t even notice it; they open a thousand letters a day. But it’s a damn good looking stamp, a good size too.  No offense to anyone else who’s played the role, Peck is Ahab.  

But if they look, and if they see it, and if they’re a movie fan (as you'd expect at an agency that reps actors and screenwriters), then maybe they pause for a second, linger on Peck’s face, think about his place in the history of film, and that makes them smile, then when they start reading the letter I have them right where I want them, if only subconsciously, of only for a second.

I’m thinking about ordering the Cary Cooper stamp for the next batch.  

Deconstructing the Query: or Query for the Leery

Dear Whomever

The one thing any letter has to have going for it is sincerity. If it’s not honest in content and tone, then it’s built on a shaky foundation; this seems obvious, and maybe even like an oversimplification, but it bears keeping in mind.  More than the thesis, more than erudition, if a letter’s not honest then it’s worthless. The best thing this letter has going for it is the sincerity and earnestness of its author.  The trick is getting that across without using either of those words.

Beyond the obvious and general tenet of honesty (a characteristic many people seem to be lacking) a letter must be keenly focused; what is your thesis?  (Or, as I used to ask my ENG 101 and 102 students, what’s your fucking point?) 

The point here is to garner interest; interest in our work and talents as screenwriters in particular, but as dramatists in general: we can write for film, stage, comically, dramatically...you want it, we’ll put it to words.  We’ve written great stuff and will continue to do so.  Now pay us.

With the poignancy of a character-driven drama and the tension of a great thriller,   This isn’t a poker game, we’re not romancing agents; we’re trying to convince them.  And like a script (or a short story, or novel, or play, or joke...) if you don’t hook them immediately then you don’t have them at all.  There’s no second chance.  What’s your script? It’s poignant, character-driven, dramatic, and thrilling, that’s what it is! Ashes follows the lives not a day in the life, but their lives of brothers Patrick and Andrew Sullivan who specialize in sterilizing crime scenes after homicides, suicides, and “bio-hazardous events.” The unrelenting violence in Chicago that toddlin’ town with one of the highest murder rates in America is great for business, but it threatens to shatter the lives, and even sanity, of everyone it touches, especially those paid to clean up the mess. Aftermath, Inc., was a quarterfinalist in the BlueCat Screenwriting competition, earning praise from its judges, who said it was “a rewarding read,” with “great tension” and “great dialogue” “created[ed] with a highly enjoyable style and the polish of a professional storyteller.”

There’s nothing like third-party affirmation. Yes, it’s important to think your work is good. And it’s great when friends and family think it’s good (“seriously, it’s reeeeally good”), but when outsiders, especially professionals, tell you it’s good, then you might be on to something.

Since completing Aftermath, writers Ken Gayton and Pablo A. Rajczyk have gone on to complete four full-length screenplays, Armchair Quarterbacks, David’s War, Official Rejects, and Rednecks vs. Zombies.[1]

Yes, that’s a footnote in a query letter. In the research I did I found nothing about pitching multiple scripts or multiple writers. By simply adding two biographical paragraphs we solve the latter problem.  It’s a little more complicated with five scripts and this is our intelligent but hopefully successful strategy.  Query letters are supposed to be one page, and this one is. The script summaries will also be one page.

We don’t mention ourselves until the second paragraph.  It would be easy to jump in and say, ‘Hi, we’re Ken and Pablo and we rock the shit.” But, like a good screenplay, we start with the action, and the story is the action.  We’re selling ourselves (there’s a loaded sentence) but what matters is the work, so that’s the starting point. 

Pablo Rajczyk was awarded the Harold Washington Scholarship, a full academic grant, to attend Wright College, earning a degree in journalism with honors. Penny thinks I should eliminate the previous sentence.  No one, she says, cares if you earned an associate degree in journalism. While I get that point, and it’s probably true, it’s not the degree I’m trying to showcase here, but the fact that A) I have a degree in journalism, AGS or otherwise, and that B) I finish what I start and seek betterment. I also don’t think it hurts to point out that I earned a full academic scholarship in a city-wide program.  He went on to receive his BA in English from Columbia College. Sadly, the Columbia in Chicago, not the one in New York City.  There’s nothing wrong with Columbia College, there’s everything right about Columbia University.  Pablo then earned his MFA in creative writing from the New School University in New York City. You know, of Inside the Actor’s Studio and Project Runway fame.  Pablo won 2^nd place in Writer’s Digest Magazine’s play writing competition for his play Living with Women.  His second play (in a planned trilogy), Holding Court, was produced by La Costa Theatre in Chicago.

In the first draft my biographical paragraph was too long (and was actually two paragraphs). It’s a weird thing pitching yourself to strangers with money. How much information is too much, and conversely, how much is too little? Should I include my years of teaching college? I think not; who wants to hire an English teacher to sell sex, drugs and rock and roll?  Should I mention that I’ve had a couple short stories published (online)? Definitely not. I mean, shit, who hasn’t had stuff published online? (I love Divine Caroline, but does an agent really care?)

Ken Gayton studied comedy at Second City, Comedy Sportz, and Improv Olympic in Chicago.  He co-wrote, starred-in, directed, edited and independently produced his first film The Truth About Average Guys, which was awarded multiple prizes at the East Lansing Film Festival including best feature. Is there anything this guy can’t do? His second film S.O.L., also featuring Ken in numerous creative roles, won the Audience Choice award at the Trail Dance Film Festival.  I’ve read that winning the Audience Award at a film festival is better than winning Best Feature because that’s who buys the tickets.  I think I read it in an interview with Ken, actually, but fortunately Boy Wonder has done both.

Ken’s bio was also longer, but for the same reasons I kept mine brief, I did the same with his.  Ken’s accomplishments can easily fill half a page, but the question every writer needs to ask of every scene, every page, every word is a simple ‘what’s relevant?’  That’s the only question that matters.

Compelled to create, This is true...we are compelled Ken is currently preparing to film his script Wingmen, Inc., while Pablo is putting the finishing touches on his play Dadville and working on the nearly two dozen screenplays he has in various stages of completion. Ken and Pablo are currently writing episodes and three-season character arcs for a potential television series based on The Truth About Average Guys. I’m fully aware that the ‘a’ in ‘about’ should not be capitalized: don’t capitalize prepositions in a title. But it looks better capitalized, and it’s as much a logo as it is a title – TTAAG looks better than TTaAG.  To paraphrase Melville in Moby Dick, aesthetics is a part of everything.

What have you done for me lately? That’s what most people want to know. In friendships, relationships, even parenting (at least so far) the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question is the same: what are you doing NOW? For us this isn’t about selling a script, or even a handful; it’s about making careers. If you like what we’ve written so far, wait to see what we're truly capable of doing. 

We would be grateful for the opportunity to send a longer synopsis or the full script of any of our stories.

Finally, we get to what I call The Ask. When I was teaching college prep (BUS 200) we did a lot of work with cover letters and resumes, and one of the things I always emphasized was The Ask.  It’s like a date...you want a second one, you gotta ask. “Can I see you again?”  If the date is going well and you don’t want it to end quite yet, “Can I come up for a drink?” It’s really hard to get to yes if you don’t ask the right question the right way.

Sincerely,

Ken Gayton and Pablo A. Rajczyk

We’re hardly the first to struggle (emotionally, at least) about the seemingly opposing forces that are Art and Commerce. As any writer (from Nobel Prize winner to closet scribbler) knows, it’s easy to become emotionally attached to every word put on paper. Self editing is hard, outside critique is even harder (and sometimes harsher).  But as the cliché goes, writing is rewriting. That applies to everything. Of course I’ve made typos in blog posts or emails, dropped an occasional preposition or ‘s’ when meaning to pluralize, but that’s not an option in a letter like this.  We’re writers, and even the smallest grammatical error can mean the difference between a form letter and a phone call.

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[1] Please see second page for a synopsis of each script.

That Damn Query Letter | LinkedIn

I just posted a sort-of open letter titled That Damn Query Letter | LinkedIn to two of my LinkedIn forums, Screenwriting and Fade In. I haven't used LinkedIn to find a job, which seems to be its main purpose, but I've been accumulating connections and perusing (and occasionally) participating in the forums.

The problem with these forums is that a lot of the time they're filled with people who have such an inflated view of their own skills and knowledge married to (an apparent) self loathing that can only be exorcised by being shitty to everyone except for a select few who genuflect before their missives. Of course, there are times when the help of fellow travelers and those who are (or have been) where you want to go is the greatest help one can find.

If you don't have a LinkedIn account, the following is the text of my post.

After finishing our fifth screenplay my writing partner and I have decided to begin searching for an agent. Our first script (written two years ago) made it to the quarterfinals of the BlueCat competition, and though we didn't win we received some very quotable praise. So my first question is should we drop a couple of the juicer quotes into the letter?

While there are a few decent resources, almost all the query letter writing information I've seen falls into the basic category of structure: polite greeting, story hook, short bio, etc. but none of them says squat about trying to get representation for multiple scripts. Obviously, we could write the logline for each of our scripts, or write five different letters, but if anyone has another suggestion we're all ears.

Finally, none of the information I've seen says anything about submitting a query with multiple writers attached to projects. Again, we can just write two bio paragraphs, but are there are other considerations, such as the fact that if they signed us they'd be getting twice the talent for the same price (put, of course, more politely and professionally). Or is it sufficient to just let it be known that there are two writers?

I've written two award winning plays and my writing partner has independently written, starred-in, edited, directed and produced two films that have done well in the small film festival circuit, including winning a best-of award and an audience choice award. We' re confident (though perhaps delusional) that the writing is there and will continue to improve. What we're not so sure about is this infernal process of gaining representation.

Thanks in advance for your help

The Great Agent Hunt

I love it when a sentence has multiple meanings.

I'm currently in the process of trying to find an agent.  I have next-to no idea how to do this other than researching the process, which means reading lots of articles authored by people I've never heard of, (thus making me reflexively wonder what the hell they know about it) and Google. (Anyone know a good literary agent?)

The process seems simple enough.  Write a brilliant query letter.  Send to agents.  Await glowing replies.  Make lots of money (or, at least, a half-decent living) writing full-time.  Live happily ever after.

This schematic, obviously, omits certain significant points.  Such as, A) have sizable body of quality material. Check.  B) Emotionally prepare for an avalanche of rejection.  Check.  C) It's a one-in-a-million shot.  Uh...well, I don't really have a response to that other than see B).

Wish me luck. 

What If?

(A journal entry from April 2008)

Five nights a week I ride the #22 Clark Street bus home from work. Depending on how busy it is I catch the bus somewhere between midnight and 2:30 am. My route is pretty much the same; I walk up Rush Street, turn left on Bellevue, cross State Street and walk about a block-and-a-half to the bus stop at Clark and Maple. Sometimes, if I've got the munchies, I stop at White Hen and get something chocolate.

If I miss the bus, or if it's particularly cold, I'll walk to the Red Line station about three blocks north of Maple and catch the train. I prefer the bus because at that time of night it's actually quicker than the train and leaves me considerably closer to my front door.

Most of the time I sit under the closet-sized shelter and read or do a crossword puzzle. Some nights I bundle up against the cold, some nights I just watch it rain.  Rarely I'll chat on the phone or with someone at the stop (there's usually no one else there).

Tonight I saw a woman get robbed. More precisely, I heard a woman screaming bloody murder while getting robbed.

I was sitting at the bench on Maple and Clark when I suddenly became aware that a woman was screaming. At first I thought it was one of the drunks stumbling home from a night on Division Street.

I looked up and I heard it again, and I realized it wasn't someone who was drunk but someone who was scared. I looked right, saw nothing. I looked left, and about a half-block away I saw a woman standing in the middle of the sidewalk, moving toward me and a guy running between two parked cars into an idling sedan waiting in the middle of the street.

I grabbed my cell phone, stood up, then started walking toward her. She picked up her pace and the car accelerated in my direction. There was no front plate on the car, and all I could see of the driver or passenger was an outline. I tried to catch the back plate, but if there was one person in the area just then with worse eyesight than me I challenge them to step forward.

My lousy vision, the steady drizzle, the speed of the car, my exhaustion (after working 9 hours in a smoky bar) and the fact that I haven't changed my disposable contact in a week-and-a-half (it's starting to feel like a piece of aluminum foil in my eye) conspired to keep me from seeing the back plate. I think there may have been an 8 in it. Or maybe it was a zero. It's hard to tell.

The woman trotted up to me, and I have to say, quite calmly, asked me to call 911. Which I did. She told the dispatch where she was and what had happened. There were wide, red scratches on her neck, and she was obviously experiencing a massive adrenaline rush (though she kept herself incredibly composed).

She was worrying aloud about her lost ID (her passport, she said) and the fact that the person who had just robbed her at gunpoint now knew where she lived. She was thrilled he didn't take her iPod. She said, "He had a gun, and I was screaming." She looked at me wide-eyed with the realization that she could have been shot. "I'm really lucky," she said...and I knew she meant she was lucky she hadn't been shot (or worse), but it was almost absurd to hear someone who had just been assaulted and robbed say they were lucky.

My first thought was that the gun probably wasn't loaded. Armed robbery carries a much stiffer penalty than plain-old snatch-and-run robbery (I think it does). Murder, or attempted murder carries a much stiffer sentence (and I'm damn sure about that one). One way to make sure no one gets shot is to not have a gun at all (kind of like burglary abstinence).

Of course, not having the threat of a gun might make committing the act a little more difficult. After all, if someone walked up to you and said "Give me your money," while simply standing there, it might make a potential victim less likely to comply. But if someone has the business end of a .45 in their cheek, they might be more inclined to hand over their purse (or what have you).

I've been robbed. Burgled, actually. Fortunately, no one has ever stuck a weapon in my face. But my place was broken into once and for the following week I barely slept. It's a sickening feeling, really.

My second thought was, 'Wow, she is lucky.'

My third thought, and the one I couldn't shake until I was halfway home, was what if he had shot her, and what if he'd seen me as he was driving past, wandering into the street to try and see his licence plate...

Not Knowing

I recently read Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, digesting it in tiny two-and-three page bites. In the first couple of chapters he writes about the structure of DNA, relating in great detail the amount of genetic information locked within our biological hardware. His analogy is made through books. There are 200 billion binary digits (bits) worth of information on only one strand of DNA...in more human terms that's the equivalent of 4,000 500-page books.  I just finished reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (560 pages), which took me about a month to read.  At that rate, it would take me almost 350 years to read the information encoded on just one strand of DNA.

If you read every single book in even the largest Barnes & Noble (assuming approximately 150,000 books) and memorized it all (every recipe in every cook book, every line of every poem, every word of all the histories of every country on the planet), if you listened to every song and memorized every note of every opera, concerto and rock and roll anthem that's about the equivalent of 100 strands of DNA.

The genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA. Humans (and mice) contain approximately 3 billion base pairs. Except for mature red blood cells, all human cells contain a complete genome.

In other words, there's a lot going on in there that we just don't know yet.

I almost drowned when I was 11 years-old. I was swimming in a small lake up near the Wisconsin border. I'd gone up there with my friend Phillip's family for a day trip. Moored at some distance from the shore (the number I remember is one hundred yards (about half a city block) though I can't say with total certainty) was a small raft with four diving boards at varying heights. You couldn't dive close to the shore, but at that distance the lake was probably close to 20-feet deep.

I'd waded out to about waist high, where the drop off was more than twice my height. I'd spent some time in pools as a kid, and even swam in a race or two (I was much better on land where I'd won my share of park-district sponsored 50 and 100-yard dashes).

About halfway to the raft a pain shot through my right hamstring as if I was a speared trout. I reflexively reached back with both hands and immediately sank completely below the surface and took in water. I gagged and sank to the bottom where I became entangled in thick seaweed.

The burning in my leg intensified and my flailing left foot became tangled in the seemingly reaching blades of the seaweed. My gasps of panic pulled more water into my stomach and lungs.

I was drowning.

I could see the surface but was not nearly tall enough to reach it. I'd probably sank some seven or eight feet (a distance that my 11-year old mind exaggerated into 100 feet).

I stopped moving. I don't know why. My foot became untangled. I let go of my cramped hamstring and slowly floated to the top.

I surfaced spitting and sputtering and looking for the lifeguard who had to be, must be swimming toward me at this very instant to rescue me.

No one saw me.

I circled my arms in figure-eights and tread water until I caught my breath. I was much closer to the platform than the shore so I paddled strongly,

Is my DNA encoded with that memory? Did that rush of chemicals racing through me at the time mutate a few cells?  Can my physical being be infused with the fear that I felt when I thought I might die?  Is that why children are afraid of the dark?  Is it some deeply ancestral recognition that we are  little more than soft tissue attached to fragile bones?

It's frustrating to have more questions than answers.  I'll just keep reading (and writing) until the answers present themselves or I've come to terms with not knowing.

Time On My Hands

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse (not that I ever use such religiously-inspired language, but it's a very convenient shorthand), but I have more ideas than time to write them. Or is it that I have more thoughts than motivation?

When I do the math it seems easy to explain; There are 168 hours in a week, seemingly plenty of time to work, sleep, commute, watch a Cubs game or two, shit, shower, and shave and so on.

I've been working a lot lately. I mean way too much.

The last couple of weeks I've been scheduled 50 hours, which usually turns into 55. 168-55=113.

There's my 10 hours of commuting every week, which leaves me at 103.

Ideally I would be sleeping 8 hours a day (whoever came up with that number is a cruel bastard because I don't know anyone who gets that much sleep). But that's just not gonna happen. We'll call it 50 hours of sleep, or, at least, 50 hours in bed trying to sleep. That takes almost half of the "free" time I have left and leaves me with 53 hours.

In an average day I spend a little over half-an-hour "grooming," that is brushing my teeth, showering, shaving, changing, and whatever else people do in the privacy of their own (and the occasional public) bathroom. We'll call it 4 hours, leaving me with 49.

I probably spend about an hour a day eating (3 meals @ 20 minutes each, plus snacks). I'm down to 42 hours.

Three Cubs games a week eat up another 9 hours knocking me down to 33.

I need a good hour a day to decompress; from work, from my commute, from the world at large, or I will go completely, utterly, bat-shit crazy.

26 hours.

Finley gets taken to the park every day. I don' take him as often as I used to, but I could fairly say I spend 6 hours a week with the dog.

20 hours.

Then, of course, there's time for family and friends. No less than an hour a day between talking to my brothers and mom, hanging with my wife and, of course, Jack and baby Riley, who deserves no less than my full attention. 13 hours left.

There's always something to get for the house: groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies, all requiring a trip to Target or Walgreens or Whole Foods, which means another 5 hours a week.

That leaves me 8 hours a week, or a little over an hour a day, to write. Unless something comes up. And there's always the random stuff: laundry, haircuts, taking out the garbage, consoling a friend who was just dumped...and so on.

There are times when I'm "multi-tasking." I read a lot while I'm commuting (or "grooming") and I watch the news or sports or whatever while I'm eating. But generally I try to stay focused on the task at hand...not easy to do when all these ideas are rolling around in my cranium, trying to find purchase on a piece of paper (or computer monitor) which I usually don't have at hand.


What it boils down to is this - I have no time to write, the universe, at least for right now, is conspiring against me. (Actually, the universe is indifferent, but whatever). So I have to make time, or, more accurately, find time in this crazy schedule to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

It's either that, or move to Venus (where a week is 40,824 earth hours long - really.)