Do you know what Croatoan means?

If I haven't returned your email or phone call recently I apologize. Mondays and Thursdays I have Spanish class, Tuesdays I work out with Trainer, and this week I had a writers group meeting last night. Grades are due tomorrow (so watch out for the next installment of Interesting Things My Students Write) and I've taken on a job rewriting a short film. Plus, I'm trying to get together with my new editor to recommence post production on Game Night.

Also, the yearbook deadline is fast approaching and I really want to finish the first draft of Not Dead Yet this weekend. And somehow, someway I need to start up my production company's website. Apparently I also have bills to pay.

Time is a vague concept to me now.

But I still managed to hop across town in the torrential downpour last night for the writers group meeting. There was pita bread and hummus, which is really all anyone has to provide to get me to go anywhere.

I brought a short film I wrote recently with the intent to pass it along to some young, hungry director who needs something to film on the cheap. It's a story about one guy going crazy in a room so it can be shot for very, very cheap.

There was some great feedback from the group, mostly suggestions to cut some of the description and cover a few minor plot holes, but there is one suggestion I found interesting and want to mention here.

At one point I make a big deal about the word "Croatoan" written on something in the room, then never refer to it again.

Nobody got it so everybody said they spent the whole time reading the short wondering where that was going to matter.

"Croatoan" was the only clue left behind by the Lost Colony. When they vanished into thin air, that word was carved on a tree where dozens of families had lived years before, never to be seen again, and nobody knows what the hell it means. My character was dealing with a similar experience so I put the word out there as almost an inside joke.

I like the reference. I like putting inside jokes into scripts. There is a whole section in Game Night where two characters talk about The Red Badge of Courage in reference to the term "Big wafer in the sky" and nobody else but me could possibly understand why they make the reference. But in context you don't have to. These two people get it, and another character even makes the point that it's odd for them to get it because nobody else does.

So that's the thing, I guess. If you hang a lantern on it or put it in context you can keep your inside joke. One suggestion that came up was to have my character actively writing it in the middle of his fit of crazy. That way it feels like less of a clue and more of an odd reaction to the cirsumstances.

It's something to think about, anyway.