|
|
|
                 |
Why am I panicking? My Associate Membership in the Writers Guild runs out in June. For those of you who don't know, Guild membership is earned via a points system. Each piece of literary material that you sell, be it a treatment, story, or full script, has a certain point value, and to get full Guild membership you need 24 points. Selling a feature-film script to a Guild signatory company is worth 24 points, which automatically qualifies you. But anything less (such as selling a story, writing a television episode, etc.) only gets you partway there, meaning you become an Associate Member. This is actually pretty cool, because you get most of the benefits of membership - about the only things you can't do is vote and qualify for health insurance through the Guild. However, you can only stay an Associate Member for 3 years. If you haven't earned enough points to qualify for full membership by then, you go on Inactive status and lose your benefits (although you don't lose the points you've accumulated to that point, so it's not like you have to start from scratch, thank goodness). So, since I sold my 2 stories to "Star Trek: Voyager" back in June of 1997 (worth 8 units), my time is almost up, unless I come through in the bottom of the ninth and make a sale before then (which is what I'm desperately trying to do - hence, the panic). I must admit, I regret that I haven't gotten more involved in the Guild during my tenure so far. I've actually only set foot in their headquarters 3 times over the nearly 3 years I've been a member. I haven't attended the WGA Awards ceremony (a little too expensive for my budget, unfortunately), and I didn't even attend their Christmas party until this past December (it was a blast!). The biggest benefit of membership I've used is the ability to see almost any movie at any theater in town for free during awards season (approximately from Thanksgiving up until the WGA nominations are announced in February). Of course, my nasty case of the flu kind of screwed that up for me this year - I didn't get to use it as much as I would've liked. But, I can't worry about any of that now - I have to figure out how to get those extra 16 units I need to qualify for full membership! So what am I doing? Well, I'm marketing the scripts that I know are ready to go as hard as I can. In fact, just this morning (as I write this), a company that I had sent a query letter to last week about one of my scripts asked to see it (Yay!), and another company that I'd queried about a different script recently wants to see a synopsis (Yay again!). I'm also about to rewrite my latest script (a romantic comedy) based on notes given to me by some friends, who were quite enthusiastic about it overall. Then I want to go back and rewrite my next-to-latest script, which has generated some interest from a couple of production companies I mentioned it to. Basically, over the next 3 months, as much as I am able, I'm going to do a full-court press, trying to keep my membership in the Guild. Hopefully it will pan out. But the worst thing that can happen is that I'll have at least 2 more scripts in sellable shape, and I will have made contacts at more production companies, neither of which is a bad thing. I know it's just a matter of time before something hits for me - the key is to keep moving forward and never let rejections stop me. If someone says "no," then I move on, confident that soon someone will say "yes." As so many of our monthly speakers over the years have said, perseverance is crucial to making it in this business. So keep writing and keep putting yourself out there! You never know when you're going to stumble across the person who says "yes."
| ||
