Recently, I was interviewed by a reporter from U.S. News and World Report for an article on mini-retirements. What’s a mini-retirement? It’s like a sabbatical, taking time off to pursue other interests.

The reporter found me from a post I had written about the subject, in which I discussed how I had taken time off to pursue my creative interests, including writing screenplays and a novel.

People are fascinated by the concept of mini-retirements – it’s one of the most popular search terms leading to my site. Everyone has the dream to escape office life, at least for a little while.

For those contemplating a mini-retirement, here’s my advice:

1. Have a purpose. Travel the world, learn a language, pick up a new skill, write a book, volunteer for a worthy cause – do something that matters with your time off. Time without purpose is meaningless. Invest your time in something that matters to you and the world. When you’re done, you want to have something to show for the experience, an accomplishment that you can point to.

2. Have a schedule. What are you going to do on your first day off? And the day after that? A schedule doesn’t have to be written in stone but you should have a general idea of how you will spend your time. For example, when I wrote Murder in Ocean Hall, I worked 9-5, mimicking the schedule that I was used to, though with many more breaks, including an afternoon nap

3. Have an end date. So, you want to retire for a bit from the workforce to pursue your own goals. How long will this take you? When do you plan on finding a job again?

4. Prepare for the worst. Keep your health insurance. Save up twice as much money as you think you will need. Have a Plan B and C in case things don’t work out. Once you’re done with your mini-retirement, finding a job may take much longer than anticipated. Your assumptions may prove wrong so it’s best to have a wide safety net.

5. Be willing to live with the consequences. Dropping out of the workforce may hurt your career, will certainly harm your finances, may lead to family stress, might cause your friends to question your sanity. You could end up broke or close to it. Are you willing to accept this as the possible consequences of your decision? Imagine the worst-case scenario. Is this something you’re willing to risk?

By developing new skills and pursuing personal goals, mini-retirements can lead to new opportunities opening up, in careers and fields you had never considered before. But it’s important to plan thoroughly before making the leap into the unknown.

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You do not need to take a class with a “rock star” to be creative. This faith in the magical ability of experts to transform lives is ironic in our secular  society. Gurus, rock stars, life coaches, Oprah – they can make you change. Most people don’t go to a priest for career advice yet believe that taking the workshop of a famous person will cure their creative funk.

I was thinking about this after reading comments by a talented photographer friend of mine, Mary Kate McKenna. She was writing about “rock star” wedding photographers and their high-priced workshops:

REALLY tired of newbie photogs (I still consider myself a newbie in the industry!) doing workshops for other professionals, charging a lot of money, with no real business skills and embellishing the amount of money they make in the industry. Before attending a “rockstar” workshop, do your research.

Take a class with them and, the promise goes, you can be as successful and creative as they are. You can be a rock star, too, as long as you copy their methods and approach. They’re selling a dream, one that you can buy into just by plonking down your Visa card.

Taking a class is easy. It’s certainly much easier and safer than actually trying to be a rock star on your own. That path is risky and dangerous. By taking a class, you indulge in your dream but just a little bit. You go off for a weekend, absorb the lessons of the master, and then return to your life.

And I suspect that’s where it ends for a lot of people.

I see the same thing in screenwriting. There are many, many famous screenwriting gurus that you can take classes with. They have their own trademarked systems, reducing drama to quadrants with required steps. Storytelling is broken down, like diagramming a sentence.

So easy, your screenplay will just write itself, right? No. The screenwriting biz is another big industry selling a dream, the fantasy that a screenplay will make you rich and famous.

I wrote a screenplay, Mount Pleasant, that won the Film DC Screenwriting Competition. I did not become rich and famous but it was a tremendously rewarding experience, one that led to interesting opportunities like working with the DC Shorts Film Festival. But the rewarding part for me was writing the script.

For winning the competition, the DC Film Office sent me office sent me to LA to visit the set of the West Wing, during the final season. That was a great experience but, when I wrote Mount Pleasant, I had no idea that this was in the future. I wrote the script because it was a story I had in my head. I wrote it without any idea of where it would lead.

The problem with rock stars is twofold:

1. The focus on the reward. Workshops focus on an illusory dream of creative life. You will be rich and glamorous. The wedding photogs I know love their jobs but work awfully hard. They spend their weekends crawling around on ballroom floors, trying to get the perfect shot. And a workshop on writing would, if I had it my way, stress the solitary nature of the craft. Writers spend most of their day alone, in front of a computer.

2. Ceding authority to experts. Creativity is an act of rebellion. Aren’t all the millions of books, films and photos already in existence enough for you? What makes you think you have anything to add? The first step in your rebellion should not be slavishly following the teachings of some maharishi.

I wrote Mount Pleasant with the barest of screenwriting education. I had written short stories before and originally thought of the story as a novel. The screenplay format had always puzzled me but, after trying out Final Draft, I got it. I read books on screenwriting and started writing the script. I got stuck a few times but, after putting the script down for a few months, kept at it. I wanted to see it done.

My advice is simple. Do it yourself. After all the classes, once the guru has moved on to another city, it’s going to be just you. For some people, that’s inspiring. For many, it’s terrifying.

To write that screenplay, take that picture, or create that sculpture, you do not need to take a class with a rock star. You just need to get started. Invest your time and money in yourself, rather than some high-priced guru.

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The DC Shorts Screenwriting Competition is a different kind of screenplay contest. What makes it unique is that the winner receives $2,000 toward turning their script into a film. The film also automatically gets in into the following year’s DC Shorts Film Festival.

This alone makes it worth the time of any aspiring writer. However, even if you don’t win the competition, it’s a worthwhile entry fee – all scripts receive feedback from judges. And if your screenplay is a finalist, you get to watch it being performed by actors, in front of a live audience in Washington, DC (pictured above).

As a screenplay judge for the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition, and as a screenwriter myself, I’m going to tell you exactly how to win this contest.

I hate to say it but the rules are important. They exist because we want great short films that can be produced in DC, ones that audiences will stand up and cheer for.

Most important rule – your script can’t be longer than fifteen pages. A script fewer than ten pages would be even better.

As stated on the DC Shorts web site:

Scripts are scored by each judge for strength of plot, originality, writing proficiency, ability to be produced on a budget of less than $10K, ability to be successfully read, performed, and understood by a live audience, and other values.

Your script will be judged by each one of the criteria listed above. What do we mean by them?

Strength of Plot – Story is conflict. With less than fifteen pages to work with, you must introduce your main character and their dilemma immediately. We don’t have time to get to know them – we must discover their problem in the first couple of pages. Then you must figure out a way to resolve it.

Originality – Everyone knows what happens in a romantic comedy, how the characters meet cute and are destined for one another. What’s your twist on this familiar genre?

Writing Proficiency – DC Shorts screenplay contest judges are writers themselves. Don’t annoy them with clichés, with bland lines of dialogue, with overwritten descriptions. And certainly don’t include typos, misspellings or other mistakes.

Ability to Be Produced – We’re talking low-budget. No special effects. No explosions. One or two simple locations, like a coffee shop or a bedroom. No crowd scenes or exotic costumes. Keep it simple and let your story do the work.

Ability to Be Successfully Read and Performed – Finalists get a table-read in front of an audience, who picks the winner. Write dialogue that actors want to perform, that audiences will thrill to hear. I suggest reading it aloud yourself or with friends. Act it out and see how it plays.

Other Factors – Judging is, by its nature, subjective. We read a lot of scripts so, above all, we want things in correct screenplay format. Extreme violence or sex may put off some judges. Stories that are racist, misogynist, homophobic or badly written certainly will. And it’s called DC Shorts, so we have a preference for scripts set in Washington.

What doesn’t matter is… who you are. Judging is blind. We don’t know who wrote what. Anyone can win this contest.

You can do it. Fewer than fifteen pages, a couple of locations, some interesting characters, an intriguing situation – c’mon, you could write that over an evening.

Early Deadline – March 31
Regular Deadline – May 15
Extended Deadline – May 31

Submit your script online at DC Shorts.

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Read the whole thing.

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It was a great festival again. I’ve volunteered with DC Shorts for more than four years now and each year it gets better and better.

My personal favorite film in the festival was Funky Prairie Boy. It won the Diversity Award (presented by Verizon). This short Canadian film is about:

A young boy living in a small prairie town during the early 1980s, befriends the only black kid at his school and soon discovers the prejudice that exists within his friends, his family and even in himself.

It’s got the most well-developed story of all the films I saw at DC Shorts. The characters seem real, all of them a mix of good and bad impulses. The short film captures the awkwardness of children dealing with adult issues of race and prejudice. Yet, it’s not an afterschool special, where the plot is driven by social points to be made. Instead, it’s a messy and funny look at kids trying to be kids. While they’re trapped in a rigid world that they didn’t create, they just want to dance and hangout.

Funky Prairie Boy

I’m not a fan of message movies. Funky Prairie Boy is above all, a good story, one that just happens to deal with touchy issues. Plus, it’s got some rocking music and excellent performances by the young leads.

I had a chance to talk to the director of Funky Prairie Boy, Mike Schultz, at the DC Shorts Awards Brunch. One of the great things about the festival is the accessibility of the directors. Identifiable by their blue badges, you can find them at parties, at Q&A sessions following the films and just hanging out in front of the theater. We’re so not LA…

Mike explained that this was a story long in development. It started with a script that was a recipient of  the Worldwide Short Film Festivals Giveaway Prize. Mike won a bunch of film equipment and then took a couple of years rounding up a crew to help turn his short screenplay into a movie. This time was well-spent.

As Jon Gann, Founder of DC Shorts said, this was the year of the technically competent film. Advances in technology have made it possible for nearly anyone to turn out a gorgeous looking short movie. However, the best cameras in the business can’t compensate for the lack of a good story, one with a beginning, middle and end.

Funky Prairie Boy is playing at 9:30 on Thursday night with other award-winning shorts at E Street Cinema. If you can’t make it, check out the Funky Prairie Boy web site.

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Eurabia is set twenty years in the future. In my timely story, America has lost the war on terror and Europe is controlled by radical Islam. But the CIA has a plan to change the course of history…

Read the first ten pages online.

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Read the first ten pages online.

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Where’d you get the idea from?

I originally planned to write a much different book, something much more serious and literary. It’s a manuscript that I’ve worked on for three or four years and exists on my laptop as a mix of disparate scenes and ideas that have never quite come together. The novel that I had in mind was a much grimmer story, about DC during the summer before 9/11. The book is about people chasing success, unaware that their world is about to be undone.

Finishing that big serious book was my plan. It’s why I decided to leave my government contractor job.

However, I had been thinking about genre fiction (mysteries, science fiction) since they’re supposedly easier to get published. At a screenwriting conference, I heard a mystery author, Andrew Klavan, say that the best way to break into Hollywood was to write a novel. I’ve written a bunch of unproduced screenplays (including MOUNT PLEASANT which won the Film DC Screenwriting Competition) so this idea made a lot of sense to me.

I’ve been writing my whole life – short stories, screenplays, articles – so the thought of writing a novel wasn’t too daunting. It’s a just a series of short stories, I told myself.

About the same time, Ocean Hall opened up at the Smithsonian. NOAA, the government agency I worked for, had supplied artifacts, videos, photos and text for the exhibit. My boss and many of my coworkers had contributed to this project. I had been hearing about it for years.

And I was pretty familiar with the subject matter, having been the Web Site Manager for NOAA Ocean Explorer. I was the project manager and managing editor for the site.  I worked with underwater explorers from around the world, publishing their stories and discoveries on our web site.

So, at my going away lunch, I joked that I was going to write a book called, “Murder in Ocean Hall.” Everyone thought this was pretty funny.

The idea for the plot – an arrogant bastard is killed and he’s so disliked that suspects are many – actually came from an idea I had for a short film for the 48 Hour Film Project. The idea didn’t fit for 48 Hour but it stuck around in my brain. 

The plot amused me, and the idea of using all I had learned about ocean exploration from three years at NOAA really appealed to me. Since the book would be set in DC, I could also satirize the city I had come to love and hate. 

So, as you can see, Murder in Ocean Hall takes experiences and ideas from my life, as well as things I’ve learned, to create a brand new story. In other words, “write what you know.”

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Always a bridesmaid, never a bride…

Actually, this script has done really well, making it to at least the semifinalist stages in the Austin, Writers on the Storm and American Screenwriters Association contests.

You can read the first ten pages online.

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