Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Writer's strike

In a comment yesterday, FARfetched said...

I guess y'all have seen the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike in Hollywood. Those guys and gals pretty much live on residuals; as DVD sales make up a bigger piece of the pie, they're asking for (among other things) a royalty increase from 4 cents to 8 cents per DVD. The studios are flat refusing to budge on the DVD issue though.It occurs to me that, as writers, we can support our cousins in Hollywood (and elsewhere) by turning off our TVs until the strike is settled. I know that's difficult for a lot of people, and I rarely watch TV anyway, but doing it (and letting the AMPTP know about it) might help — if studios lose their audience, they're toast.

Let 'em know:

Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers

15503 Ventura Boulevard
Encino, CA 91436818-995-3600

Contact form

If we could get them 1000 letters, they will interpret that as a million lost viewers and I think there will be some rapid action. Despite the rhetoric of the AMPTP about "wealthy writers," the vast majority of WGA members earn less per year than I do as a technical writer.

Spread the word around. I'm going to.

You might want to also email supportive messages to mbaissues@wgaeast.org -- I did.

Note from Nancy: I did, too. Turned off tv. (And lived to tell about it. So far.) E'ed the AMPTP. E'ed the WGA.

40 comments:

Nancy P said...

Good morning! I read yesterday that when kids get enough sleep it helps keep their weight down. I should be slimmer this morning. heh.

BLOG BUSINESS:I'm going to Emporia (Ks) this afternoon, giving a talk at a library, spending the night with friends. So there won't be a new post in the morning. I may put some little thing up before I leave.

Now to go read last night's comments!

AndiF said...

I watch almost no TV (right now it's only Torchwood and Weeds and the only other shows I watch are Doctor Who and Mythbusters) but I'm willing to pretend I do for a good cause.

Family Man said...

I'll do the e/m thing today, but I have to say, it will be near impossible to keep FMom away from the TV. Once she learned how to work that remote, there was no holding her back. :)

Nancy P said...

andi and fm, lol! Andi, I think there are a lot of not-much-tv watchers here, so you'll have company pretending. On the other hand, you have good taste.

fm, my mom was going to do it, but I said I thought she should be absolved, and so should your mom. :) Mine was a teacher's union officer back in the day, so she has done her union duty and then some. My dad was also a local union officer, so I know that lightning will strike me if I cross a picket line.

Kelly McCullough said...

Hi all.

You will find me at home today, not turning on my TV.

I just posted the Q&A Nancy had with my students over at Wyrdsmiths. She says a lot of smart things about writing.

Thanks, Nancy!

Nancy P said...

My pleasure, Kelly. I hope something in there helps somebody.

GhostFolk.com said...

I just keeping going Wow! when I read this blog.

Nancy, Kelly. I am just now back from Nancy's Q&A at Wyrdsmiths.

So much charm! So much smarts! Nancy, are you sure you're not Katherine Hepburn??

Nancy P said...

lol, ghost! Nah, I haven't got the cheekbones. Or Spenser Tracy. Or enough hauteur. Hmm, it might be fun to develop a little hauteur. I always loved how she walked in those French doors, exclaiming, "The Cal-lah Lillies are in bloom aahhgain."

GhostFolk.com said...

Cow falls on moving car.

I am burying myself in research for a book of stories on a given topic. I need a finished, professional (yuck) proposal by Dec. 1 in order to sign an "offered" contract. I need a clear synopsis for each story and there should be 20-24.

I have four or five in place. (Maybe six or seven. I'm not counting yet.) And have made an amazing discovery.

The stories I have so far are very good and very rich (I haven't written them yet and I could ruin each one, of course). Really, though, they're good stuff, storywise. POV wise. Ways in and ways out. It's all there.

And that's the thing. These stories are there. I am somehow discovering them. Never written before, I promise, but they are being brought to me.

Nancy, Beth, this is true.

The secrets you need to know, Beth, are there.

Nancy, are you ever just "given" a story?


No kidding, I'm getting these things complete. Stories that will take me 15 to 20 pages to get down.

I sit here, doing my research, and I look at a sentence and say "ugh, no, stuipid and dull." I mean, that sentence I'm reading is fking stupid!

And then blammo! a story comes to me. The bones of it are laid out on a seaside rock in a hidden cove. I'm on a little cliff, watching. Then the bones come together and skeletions stand up and one of them is talking and the whole story is in place. Bingo!

Does this happen to anyone else?

Am I insane?

P.S. Nancy, that sounds just like her! Must be the French doors.

GhostFolk.com said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
katiebird said...

Generous Death

In which we meet Jenny Cain and her friends and lovers for the first time.

"I didn't know Jenny until after I started writing this book. When the words for the prologue starting coming out of my fingers I realized that: a.) somebody was speaking; b.) it wasn't me; and c.) whoever it was, she/he had a strong voice and a sharp sense of humor. But it was not until the first chapter that I found out..."

Larry Kollar said...

I've also posted this to my tech writing rants blog. Now to point my Techcomm buddies to it.

Ghost, according to this article the people in the car weren't injured.

But if they'd been moooooooving ever so slightly faster.....

Nancy P said...

far, moooving. . .lol!

kb,you're a sweetie, has anybody ever told you that before?

And dearest, ghost, well duh, of course you're insane, along with all of the rest of us nutty writers out here! But omg, having to write syns for that many stories would drive anybody batty. . .except for the fact that they're being handed to you. That is so very cool. Clearly, this is the right project for you at the right time. Or, so says the universe.

And where's the beef, etc. . . snort.

Larry Kollar said...

Oh also... (dangit, can't I just post once w/o forgetting something???)

Ghost, at my last job, I wanted to get trained up as a proposal writer, but it never happened. There should be plenty of guides & helps out there on the net & in bookstores, though. And yes, I know what you mean by the stories coming to you. If I could speak without a lot of "uh... err..." I could probably dictate stories into my cellphone's voice recorder on the commute. (When I'm in the car, anyway.)

Nancy, have a good time in Emporia. Here's hoping your talk is late enough in the day that people can get there from their day jobs. :-)

Nancy P said...

Thanks, far. :) The talk is at 7 at the library. Dinner's at 5:30. Ya'll come!

Ghost is a master at proposals. I think HE could write the book!

GhostFolk.com said...

Far Thanks for the correction! And for finding the story.

I heard it in passing on TV and I don't always listen well.

GhostFolk.com said...

Yeah, Fetched. Grant prosposals must be where the money is. I'd like to be good at that.

Or maybe proposals for peace. :-)

Anonymous said...

I've been so busy commenting on yesterday's post that I forgot about today's! What a crazy morning.

Nancy, wish I could show up in Emporia...where's Scotty when you need him? Have fun!

I don't watch TV unless there's a ball involved, so don't have to pretend...until this weekend, when football starts! But I don't think that counts against the strike, does it?

Great observations, ghost - the stories ARE out there. All we can do is hope that we are blessed enough to stumble across them at the right time.

Now I have to check out Wyrdsmiths again - I must have been there too early.

Moooooooving - still laughing.

Nancy P said...

I believe I misspelled y'all. Bless mah heart.

Mornin', Beth! It's a bright shiny morning for sitting down at your computer and killing somebody. ;}

Nancy P said...

Over at Rick's blog, he's asking, "Where do you find your muse?" Hike on over there and give him a funny answer. Or, hey, a serious one.

Anonymous said...

I'm in the middle of writing the climax of the story. So all KINDS of things are going to happen in the next couple of days - death, destruction, pestilence, locusts...

Okay, no locusts. :-)

Is there a wrong way to spell y'all?

Nancy P said...

lol, I believe there is, and it's ya'll. But I'll leave it to the experts (far and fam man) to adjudicate.

Kelly McCullough said...

Hello again,

One of those days, dontchaknow.

Ghost, I can't take any credit for the Q&A. I just put smart questions together with a smart writer to answer them and got out of the way.

Back to digging. (waves shovel vaguely) TTFN.

Rick Bylina said...

Y'all can turn off your tv dinners. I cook supper every night, and it ne'er hurt me to whip sumptin up for me and the Mrs. I just hope those riders out there strike something good with all the time they've got now. I betcha more den one of 'em is working on a screenplay about a bunch of writers that go on strike to protest the lack of protection from cows falling from the sky. Is it part of Star Wars? Did the aliens reject this cow and forget to turn it inside-out? Is this Iran's version of intercountinental cowlistic system? I want answers. I want the truth. Even if my brain is fried and I can no longer handle the truth. TV is quiet; radio off; birds are singing; my muse is awake; I need to NANO. Bye.

-rick
http://muse-needed.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Did you say intercowtinental, Rick?

Nancy P said...

lol, both of you!

Okay, time for this cowgirl to mooove along to ranch country, Kansas. I'll watch for falling cattle. Hmm, where could they fall from in Kansas? I think they'd have to be "throwed" cattle.

See you Krazy Kids tomorrow.

xxoo

Anonymous said...

Be safe and have fun - watch out for throwed cattle! xoxo

Larry Kollar said...

Not having anything pressing to write about during lunch, I did Nancy's exercise — looked out the window, saw a stone sign (for the shopping strip next to the one I was in) and wrote about someone scurrying to it for cover, watching for predators. OK. No problem tossing that.

But THEN, on the way back to the office came this:

---

"Evil weather a-comin'," the old man said. "The gods, they be hungry."

My first thought, forgive me, was: if his soul looked like his maimed body, the gods had tasted him already — and spit him out.

---

Dubbayou tee eff?

Larry Kollar said...

Nancy, my first thought on reading the article was the catapult scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Twannnng mooooooooo!

Anonymous said...

Oh far, Monty Python. LOL. I went to high school in London, and every Friday we had a Bible Study (which ended up being more of a social event than anything). MP was on Thursday night, so every Friday we'd rehash the entire episode. I just have to hear the theme music and I start laughing.

Another MP story: I was dating a Catholic boy in college, and we wanted to see Life of Bryan. Got to the theatre (SMALL town in upstate NY) and his uncle, a priest, was picketing...we had to sneak in to avoid his family's wrath! :-)

boran2 said...

Late to the party again. Good idea, Nancy.

Rick Bylina said...

TV is off, but I did watch "Fargo" last night. It's the white noir that I'd like to write. Winter is so wonderfully portrayed.

It deserves to be in AFI's top 100 movies of the 20th century, but as I was watching it, I wondered how it would play as a novel, and I suspect, not well. There would be so much visual that was effective communicated on screen, that I have a tough time imagining mystery readers reading through it with patience.

Maybe it's me, but next to the action/thriller bunch, I think mystery readers read impatiently.

Eh?

-rick
http://muse-needed.blogspot.com/

Conda Douglas said...

I'm way late to the party, but wanted to get my take on the writers' strike in:
Why is it that creative people are never honored, venerated, even exalted? I sometimes wish we'd all disappear for a year and then re-appear. A year without art of any kind...that'd teach 'em.

Okay, now back to real life of editing and teaching exercise.

Nancy P said...

Hi, guys, I'm back home, after a delightful visit with really nice people.

Now back to reading email and catching up on news.

Family Man said...

Nancy is back, Nancy is back - Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Glad you had a good time Nancy.

Nancy P said...

lol!! Thanks, fm.

You guys behaved yourselves suspiciously well in my absence. I have found no empty beer bottles. Of course, I haven't talked to the neighbors yet.

Larry Kollar said...

They've been paid off, Nancy. You won't get anything from them.

boran2 said...

Actually, Nancy, FM danced naked on the table, but only after drinking all the alcohol in the joint. Fotunately, he actually has some pretty good moves.

katiebird said...

And they were pretty cheap too.

Considering.

Nancy P said...

lol! I knew it!


Sheesh, though, I missed all the fun.

Don't anybody tell Fmom.