THE STORY SPOT

My advice is [that] you have to sit in the chair and you have to read other people’s stuff and you have to do it all the time. If you can do those two things, you’re well on your way.
– Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is a newly published writer who was recently interviewed on Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm. The quote above is taken from that interview.

Incidentally, authors are not usually invited to the show having published a single book. Pollack started writing in his forties, left his long-term occupation in his small town to pursue his MFA, and talks of how his life has changed as a result of his leap into the creative great beyond.

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock on Amazon.com
Pollock on KCRW’s Bookworm
Pollock’s official site

iScript is a service that provides writers with full audio readings of their screenplays by actors for a cool $225. Send your script and payment, get an mp3 in return. Why? Well, if you don’t read aloud to yourself (as you should, shame on you) then this might be the ticket. You may be a director without time to sit through a table reading. Perhaps you want to allow that potential financier to experience the world of your script without all those tedious words. And perhaps, like the jaunty “handsome exec” in the photo, you just have better things to do with your Prada’d eyes on a Tuesday morning.

It’s silly and infuriating and dead-on useful all at once so it’s bound to be an indispensable hit in this town any day now. I’m waiting for The YouTube Players to sell quick turnaround productions using celebrity doubles. And why not?

As John Stewart said, “Hello non-readers!”

iScript.com. Hearing is Believing

NOTE: A *free* option is to attend Peter Coogan’s ALT.SCREENPLAY Thursday nights at Venice’s Beyond Baroque. Peter’s been hosting these sessions where writers and actors collaborate for several years now. While the group loves documentary writers, all screenwriters and genres are welcome. Sessions resume, after a summer break, in September, 2008.