I Sold a Feature Screenplay!

Ugh – I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last post. Hopefully, that stands as a testament to how busy I’ve been. (I feel like I’ve said that before.) I have a few big pieces of news to share, the biggest of which you can already tell from the title.

For starters, I’m pregnant. HUGE deal in the life of me, and a big reason why I haven’t blogged much. I seem to be in the small percentage of women who wind up being sick throughout the entire course of their pregnancy (5 months now and the nausea’s still going strong!) so I’m learning a whole new level of working around being tired and sick. (Next new level will come when our bundle of joy arrives in August 2014!)

Also, I’m now the blog manager for the Digital Film Academy (dfablog.com), which is a part-time job I absolutely LOVE. So, admittedly, I’ve been cheating on this blog by doing at least one post for them per week. Here are a few in particular I think you might be interested in (but of course, check out the whole blog when you get a chance!):

5 Rules of Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns

4 Rules for Writing Your Screenplay

5 Rules for Doing a Web Series

But onto the news that’s probably most interesting to YOU, which is, yes – I’ve sold a feature screenplay! This was news I actually had back in November, but I wanted everything to be official and signed before I started spreading it around. (Although I hinted at it quite a bit in my last post.) This is the first feature-length script I've sold.

It’s a screenplay I wrote about 8 years ago back in grad school… it underwent a massive revision in Columbia’s Screenplay Revision course last year (a pricey course, but definitely wound up being worth it) and began to get shopped around last fall. I had listed the logline on the International Screenwriters’ Association website, where an indie producer found it, asked to read it - and the rest is history.

So the most direct piece of advice I can give you out of this? Have a presence on networkisa.org, and list your ready-to-sell screenplays there.

Another, less direct but no less important piece of advice? Make sure your screenplays are in as good a shape as possible before you send them around. I had this screenplay sitting, occasionally rejected, for 7 years before biting the bullet and revising. I rolled up my sleeves, did the hard work of getting critiqued, making changes – and only a month after putting it out there again, it found a home. (And I made some decent money and got an IMDB credit.)

Let this be proof, No MFA-ers: you can do it, too! The script is going into production this month - I can't wait to send you updates of how things progress.