Oh Sally Field, how you did give us one of the most ridiculously needy quotes in the history of awards shows. Bless you.

Anyway –

For those of you who are writers, and I know that at least a few of you are, you know that it’s all about being liked. Maybe not you personally, but your painstakingly put together creations need some recognition for sure. No matter how we may claim “I write for myself. I don’t need nobody’s approval!”, if we weren’t hoping for our writing to connect with someone, to stir some emotion in someone other than ourselves, then we would just think our compositions up in our heads and save a few trees.

We writers are green like that.

Even when writing is only a hobby, it can be an intense, full-time, stressful pastime that causes burnout and brain pain. For wannabe pros, like me, and those on the more obsessive end of the hobby spectrum, it can alter your world until your life becomes less about you than your characters (henceforth known as why Riley is so much fun to know in real life – or – why Riley sometimes wonders if she should seek a proper diagnosis). Then again, it is possible that my characters are just that much more interesting than I am.

Okay, back on point…

I experienced a small moment of Zen earlier this week.

I entered a screenplay of mine into Slamdance a couple of months ago and, because I’ve been needing some industry insider feedback on this particular script, I ponied up for the coverage (this basically gives me an idea as to what the reader thought of my screenplay as they were reading it). And –

Apparently they think it’s quite good. (“This is a very well-written historical drama.”)

Thank all the gods in all the holy heavens in every language on earth, including the ones that I don’t even know exist.

I really, really needed this screenplay to be well-received. Oddly enough, it is both my best screenplay AND the one I think stands the most chance of actually selling. Normally, I wouldn’t expect those two things to go together.

Not only was the coverage helpful in making me think, “Okay, yes. I really do have something here,” it let me know where things went a little bit wrong. Only three suggestions though and they weren’t even hard to swallow. Two of them, I already suspected were possible issues, a little confusing, a little out of place, which is exactly what I was told. The third thing nearly caused a Linda Blair-style head whirl, it was so out of the blue. It was a fairly big plot point that I really thought I left no room to misunderstand. I’m still not sure that I did, and I have theories as to how something that I thought was perfectly clear came across as streaked at best, but those theories matter not. One line of dialogue can clear up that snafu in comprehension, lickety-split. Big problem. Small fix.

All told, it was a damn positive evaluation. We’ll see if that translates into a ranked finish and a prize (some cash would be, you know, helpful), but regardless…They liked the screenplay. This quote tells me so. “The story is very original and will really make a great film when produced.” But I could also actually sense that they liked it. It was apparent. And it matters.

And is it just me, or does anyone else find that ‘when’ kind of encouraging?