Screen Free Week – Day 1

On Monday, April 18th, I received a one day assignment which was nice (money in my pocket!) Working definitely filled my time and was a less likely way for me to partake in visual media consumption.

At work, I read the news online, read the Metro New York paper, read a screenplay while providing coverage (I’m a script reader now, no pay, but more on that later), and read a chapter from the book club selection of the month – Alias Grace. A very productive day at work for me, apart from the fact that all I did was answer phones (oh how easy reception work is).

When I arrived home, I quickly made dinner and read one of the many magazine subscriptions I have (Spin, which I realize that 1-I don’t know what the hell is going on in music and 2-I’m more of a movie person anyway) while eating.

I looked over and edited my screenplay coverage and sent it off. Which brings me to – being a script reader!

Last month, I applied to anything writing related because I wanted to be involved in something creative that I enjoyed liiike…reading and writing about movies! I applied to be an script reading intern but the position was filled. Instead, I was contacted by the president of the company to become a script reader for them which means reading scripts sent via email sending them script coverage. It’s easier for me because I can the reading from home or wherever I have an internet connection. It’s not that much of a hassle and scripts are so easy to read.

After that, I did a little dance to some body shakin’ tunes and settled for the rest of the night with Alias Grace and a Beatles biography book I received for my birthday. I totally have Beatle fever with every chapter I read.

Quite the evening – very quiet but fun nonetheless.

I did find it difficult looking at my TV – lonely, abandoned, cold waiting for me to watch movies to review for my blog or for general entertainment. After I work as a receptionist for the day, I spend all day in front of a computer reading so when I come home, I want to veg and watch something! It was hard to do but all week I’ll be busy being social, so it shouldn’t be so hard.

‘Til tomorrow!

Random Craigslist post

You want a writing gig? Write emails for someone on a dating website! Here’s the info below:

“I recently began an account on match.com and I’m posting here for some help. I implore you to read the ad carefully before you respond. I’m a 25 year old male, and I’m hiring someone to help compose messages for me on match.com. The payment plan is as follows. You will get 6$ for writing up the message and an additional 9$ if the recipient responds to the message within a week. There are dozens and dozens of girls I plan to message, so if I end up selecting you, we can have a steady arrangement. Now this is the tricky part. I’m only posting in this section because I suppose its the most appropriate, categoristically speaking. I mean, the gig involves writing something. HOWEVER, your qualifiedness bears very little on your experience, state of accomplishment, or even skill at formal writing. You have to have a particular knowledge in online dating, of which message-writing is one, but a significant, aspect. Please don’t respond thinking your just a good enough writer and you can wing it as far as the online dating messaging medium is concerned. We’d just be wasting eachother’s time. There’s obviously a lot detail that needs to be talked about here. I plan to have us read each girls’ profile and scrutinize it so that we can tailor each message to the girl in question. We would go over it over the phone. After, if any of the recipients respond, we can talk about perhaps the next step and work out a financial agreement for it. Respond with why you think you can be particular helpful and ask any questions you may have.”

 

I did Not make this one up, folks. I sporadically read craigslist posts for amusement and found this one in late October last year. I did not respond but I did save for later use like now! I wonder if anyone actually responded to him.

 

Happy Friday!

Distraction free writing tools

If you are like me, when you open a screen to write for an allotted amount of time, you find that you’ve pissed the time away surfing the web for something and nothing at the same time. And guess what? Then you do something else because your scheduled time has expired. At least, that’s what it feels like for me.

Below are great tools to help you keep on track whether online or off.

Freedom. This software can lock your internet for up to eight hours so you can get some work done. My memoir writing instructor first mentioned Freedom and I never used it until I found the software online. Apparently, the software was only available for Macs and now Windows users (like myself) have access to this. I have not used the software yet but writer friends have accomplished a lot using it. Oh and it’s free.

Write Or Die. This is a website (and can also be downloaded for a small fee for your computer) that provides you with options to choose how long you want to write and how many words you intend on producing. You write in a blank space once you plug in your numbers (30 minutes for 1,000 words) and you type away. I mostly utilized Write Or Die during the National Novel Writing Month for fulfilling daily word counts. It works! How does this help, you ask? When you stop typing, you either hear extremely irritating music (bad violin playing or Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”) or if you choose the Kamikaze Mode, your work starts erasing because you are not writing. When you are complete, you hear a trumpet and you have an option to save your work after you are done. There was something soothing and empowering about being focused on putting words on the screen until you were finished; I had tunnel vision with every session and I produced a great amount of material on Write or Die. Check it out.

For the distracted writers like myself that constantly find themselves resisting writing when there’s always something online to research, either of these options work. Mostly Freedom though.

Happy distraction free writing!