Another New Year

“I’m not one to make a big deal of New Year’s resolutions.  Although I’ve declared a few over the years (and even managed to keep one or two), most of these good intentions -- like overloaded boats wallowing amid turbulent seas -- sank under their own weight into the muddy waters of reality.’

“Such is life.  It’s hard to be perfect.”

So began a post I wrote one year ago, in January of 2013.  The subsequent year taught me a few things, including the reality that the promised book based on this blog will be a long time coming.  My assumption that I could slow the pace of posting and use that time and energy to work on the book proved woefully optimistic.  I did get it started, with a much-re-written introduction and initial chapters... but then Real Life intervened with the kind of drama and demands that elbow everything else aside.  Add in the steady drumbeat of work all year long, and my own need to keep writing and posting new material simply to preserve my mental health (just for the distraction, if nothing else), and it’s no surprise the book didn’t get very far. 

And so the great resolution of 2013 didn’t come to much.  Still, no book can ever be finished without a beginning, and although I didn’t make anywhere near the progress I’d hoped for, the project still lives.  All I can say at the start of this new year -- which, inshallah, will be nothing like the benighted year we just left behind -- is that I'll do the best I can on the book and the blog.  Whether this is just another fool’s errand remains to be seen.

Check back a year from now and maybe I’ll have an answer for that one.   

Meanwhile, you’ll find a new entry under the Industry Blogroll over on the right, a tumblr blog called Assistant Director, and it’s a good one, with trenchant, well-written posts and the occasional re-post of something brilliant from another site.

Something like this.

Industry blogs have multiplied like proverbial rabbits since I jumped into the waters in September of 2007. Back then, I knew of only one other (Totally Unauthorized), which had been around at least four years at the time.  I soon stumbled across Dollygrippery -- which also preceded mine -- and The Script Goddess.*  My awareness of the industry blog-o-sphere then opened wide, with a new blog popping up every few weeks.  Some lasted and some didn’t, but all were interesting reads from voices spanning the spectrum of the industry. Although I'm rather picky about what ends up on my blogroll, that list keeps gets longer every year.

So the world at large may be going to hell in an increasingly bloody hand-basket, while Hollywood continues to suffer from the ongoing plague of runaway production, but the industry blog scene is alive and well.  That, at least, is a good thing.

Happy New Year.

* Links to all are over there on the right. Totally Unauthorized and Dollygrippery are still going strong, but Scripty hasn't posted anything new since October of 2012.  That's our loss...