Two blogs you should read

You guys should all know about Geoff LaTulippe's new blog. He's a talky bastard on Twitter, and now he has succumbed to the urge to put his thoughts about screenwriting into longer form at http://www.geofflatulippe.com/

LaTulippe is the writer of that fine Justin Long/Drew Barrymore film Going the Distance, but as you should know by now, IMDB credits only tell a fraction of the story. The guy knows the business and has a lot of good stuff to say on the subject. Hopefully he'll keep this thing going.

And if you're not already reading it, you should also regularly check Doug Richardson's brilliant exploits in the film business. He wrote Die Hard 2, Bad Boys, Money Train, Hostage - in short, the dude has a long and interesting career, and he talks all about it in the most wonderful stories that you must read.

Go. Read. Learn.

Validation

It's been a very exciting day. As you may already know because it's totally important, A website that likes to list stuff, called Bachelor's degree, has listed the top 60 blogs for aspiring screenwriters. I'm number 17! Weee! Apparently I talk good.

I started this blog years ago after another blogger got a book deal and I wanted a piece of that. I have yet to get a piece of that, but being mentioned on the same list as John August and Ken Levine is pretty close. Fortune and fame, here I come.

I've made friends here, and improved my craft, and the daily writing has done wonders for my ability to produce pages. I discovered that once in a meeting at work where we were all supposed to write a couple of paragraphs about something in an English workshop and my coworkers spent forever figuring out how to get started while I cranked my assignment out in no time. As I looked around I realized how forcing myself to write a daily post has made that kind of stuff easy.

Anyway, most of those blogs on that list I already read, but there were a few I'd never heard of, so it was cool to get a look at some new material, I recommend checking out all the blogs on that list. Personally, I always use the blog roll to get an inspirational jump start to my writing day. Half the battle of writing is getting that shit started.

Three blogs

I want to pass on a couple of new blogs by two very entertaining writers.

Pogue is old hat at this screenwriting thing and a regular over at Wordplay. He name drops as he waxes on his philosophy of writing, and often shares his reading and viewing habits. I give you, Pogue's Pages.

And Joshua Grove-Patterson uses his gobs of personality to entertain with his new blog But the Third One was Great. He focuses solely on horror film sequels. I don't really like horror movies, much less sequels of horror movies largely because of the gore factor, so I have thus far enjoyed his posts immensely because I get to learn all the fun stuff without having to watch anybody gauge out an eyeball and eat it or something. Josh is funny. If only I'd thought of a gimmick that good.

I'm also enjoying Carson Reeves' ScriptShadow, where he reads scripts and reviews them in an informative and educational way. Almost every time I read his blog I run off and search for a script he mentions liking. He's honest and clear and fun to read.

I've put all three blogs on the sidebar. I read several other blogs too, but I only link to blogs that post regularly and focus largely on writing. So if you write about your kid or politics as much as about writing, that's why I haven't linked to you. And if you haven't posted in a month you are automatically deleted because the first thing I do each day is go down my links, and if I keep seeing the same entry every day I get irritated. I say this because I've deleted a few blogs and I don't want those writers to think it was personal. I might still check out your blog, but the ones I link to are the ones I read every day.

At any rate, check out the new folks. They're a great new way to procrastinate while still feeling like you're working.