when is a brad not a brad?

Well, we’re getting into springtime here in the states and that means contest deadlines are sneaking right on up. I’ve picked my comps this year and feel pretty good on the draft that will be out facing the harsh eyes of reality. I even talked myself out of buying the ‘sooper-delux’ brads which I consider a completely good thing for a few reasons.

Tools. Now there’s a cetain amount of comfort to be found in ‘standards’ when you’re blindly pursing this writing crap, getting the formatting right, printing your first whole copy- exciting as hell. But you gotta wonder, why the hell are the #5s and #6s nearly 5-7$ more at say, the scribe store, when Home Office Central has the same brand and product ID for less? Well, fill in your candied cliches here. At one point someone warned me cheap brads could totally screw you over and I immediately wondered if I’m buying the cheap brads and where to get the good stuff. But then I thought, you know what, it doesn’t matter. If someone is going to pass my script because the goddamned brads I use are an 1/8th of millimeter thinner or have some sub-standard nickel alloy substitute, then my writing is clearly wanting. And I need to remind myself that from time to time- the writing needs to overcome. Now, sure, this is operating under the fallacy that- hey, I don’t entirely suck perhaps, but going nutso over the cardstock and brads and screws isn’t helping anything, much less improving my writing. The time should clearly be spent a little more productively.

Now this is just me and I don’t distribute a lot of scripts, but I have two philosophies that I’ve held onto for when I hope to:

1) Make the writing good- Make the presentation boring.
It may be idealistic, but I want the fact my story is words printed on a physical paper in the reader’s hands to disappear. This is my first goal with regards to writing a script.

2) Present a script consistantly.
Which is to say, complete, with covers and brads and not willynilly and piecemeal. If it’s going out for one person, should look the same for any other person who gets a copy.

And I honestly don’t adhere to these two rules, but they’re my ideals for when I am in the position to be passing scripts out all over the place. If it ever comes to pass.

Anyway, so the other bit I wanted to post about is getting things in the mail early which I’m going to try to do this year. It’ll be a first so consider it an experiment. As level-headed as I try to be, sometimes I just can’t help but be one susperstitious mofo. To that end I just haven’t found the lucky hat/shoe combination for my Nicholl win and be instituting new mojo this year. And if necessary (and by necessary, I mean if someone just vaguely suggests it will help) I can bite some heads off of chickens or hamsters or something.