I’m not really someone who usually believes in bad luck but the past two days made me change my mind a bit. There are basically four things that pissed me off:

• My bikeseat got stolen; not the cheapest one either seeing it had a shock absorber.
• I tried to get concert tickets for the Killers: Sold out within one day and I wasn’t able to buy them on the first day.
• My computer is still not fixed. The computer store still doesn’t have the motherboard in stock.
• I almost had a fire yesterday; my microwave/convection oven didn’t turn off its heating elemetns after it was done. If I hadn’t smelled something burning it might have gotten to the point where it would have started to burn. It’s unacceptable that an oven could fail that way; there should be safeguards in place to prevent that kind of failure. Shame on Daewoo.

I haven’t been in a good move to begin with; as I said before: I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

That my computer isn’t fixed yet still isn’t helping the script writing. I actually managed to write a scene last week but I can’t put it into the computer yet. It might not be that much but it’s a start, one scene is better than no scene. Nothing towards the ending but more a scene that fills a gap in the current story and adding to the character development of two of the characters. Also meant I had to do some minor changes to one or two other scenes but nothing major.

As for the websites not much happening there either yet. I’m considering completely changing the lay out and concept of starletlinks.com to  get more visitors. Right now that site isn’t really worth its time looking at the numbers but with some of my ideas it might work. Could also be a waste of time but if you don’t try you won’t succeed.

Well, this week plain old sucked. I still don’t have my computer back after the store wasn’t able to properly analyze the problem with the motherboard. They first said it was fine after more testing it turned out to be broken. They just don’t have mine in stock right now so that’s going to take another week.

Otherwise I’ve just been in a bad mood; not sure why. Probably a combination of things; a job that sucks and a general feeling that I’m not going anywhere fast. I have to work the next two days and then it’s five days of dogsitting duty for my mother. The advantage of that is that I won’t have access to a computer so I have time to think and hopefully get fresh ideas for my script. Being in a bad mood really isn’t helping the creative process.

I need to change things in my life I just have no idea how right now. The script will still be written, it’s more my day to day life that has to change. It’s just a lot easier to talk about change than actually doing it.

I’m also thinking about drastically changing the concept for starletlinks.com seeing the site just doesn’t get enough visitors. The idea I have might improve that but it’s also quite a bit of work to set it all up, the maintenance would take about just as much time as with the current version. Though I probably should talk to TVGuide.com about changing it, seeing I might have a bit of a role for them in that.

So I had a phone meeting with TVGuide.com today; I expected to speak only to my contact but it turned out it was also with her boss, the head of online marketing. Wasn’t quite prepared for that; guess I could have made more of the call. Oh well, maybe I can correct that mistake in the future.

They basically wanted me to impliment widgets from TVGuide in the Starletviews.com and Starletlinks.com websites. Result of the talk is that I might implement one and that they have to do some work on the other ones. They were happy with the feedback that they aren’t as easy to integrate as they had hoped, so maybe more will come of it in the future.  I need more content; that’s a fact.

No idea why I got myself all wound up before that call….. it’s not like there was a lot to it. I silently hoped a bit more from the call but I’m glad I stayed realistic. The bad line didn’t help that much either, I have to say though that they are punctual. They said they would call 2pm EDT and they called 2pm EDT.

It plainly sucks right now. My computer still isn’t fixed; the computer store says the motherboard is fine and is actually charging me for testing it and they want me to send them more parts under the same conditions. All I can say is horrible customer support. I hope that they can manage to give me some actual support soon, I might have a secondary computer but I still like the new one better.

Also means that the script is still a no go though I’m still thinking about it. Problem just ist that I can’t properly concentrate when I have a cold and that’s what I have right now. At work things also suck because they all of a sudden have a lack of shifts; I don’t work again until Saturday. So I’ll spend part of my time looking for a new job in the next couple of days, just not today yet though.

For some reason Final Draft isn’t working on this computer anymore and I can’t really be bothered to try and fix it. Seeing I’m affraid it would take away one of the licenses. I’m always thinking about the story though so I’m hoping that I’ll manage to finish the script this year. I also have a week of no computer time coming up (dog sitting) and I usually manage to get some manual writing done in that time.

Hopefully my luck will change, somehow I feel just bleh right now; not happy with my current situation.

I’m slowly getting into the writing mood again; I haven’t continued on my script yet but I’m getting there. I first want my computer fixed seeing it’s messed up again, there must be a problem with the power supply or motherboard; luckily it’s still under warranty.

Once I get back to writing I have some ideas to change the story in certain sections to improve character development on two of the characters. I always felt that there was something missing. I know one thing now; being distracted by other things in life can really suck the motivation to write out of you. I’m also trying to get into the writing mood by reading Script Magazine, there were a couple of issues which I didn’t really like but the latest one is a lot better again luckily.

I even had a new movie idea in the past week though it was more of a general concept. No real idea about the story but a rather interesting premise where I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of movies or TV shows about. So there are plenty of ideas in my head; the getting them down on paper is still the hard part. Though I’m still in the learning stage on that one.

I really need to get a different job; the over an hour commute is starting to annoy me and certain aspects in the working place just suck. Superiors just won’t listen, changes are made that aren’t exactly improvements. You would think that an employer would try to avoid RSI; not in this case, quite the opposite looking at the changes.

Also that I’m only there as a temp is a bit of a problem now. So far it wasn’t seeing I usually worked an average of about four days a week but the number of available shifts has gone down quite a bit. Two or three shifts a week I can stand for a while but one shift like next week isn’t exactly a healthy long term financial plan. Even though I just got a raise for being there for over eighteen months now. Which in reality is also a bit too long. The people there are nice and all but in all reality the job just sucks.

The fact that I’m underappreciated, they’re not listening, bad planning and the low number of shifts makes me think I should look for something else. Though that’s easier said than done in an uncertain job market with the financial crisis. Though that also might be a motivation to change jobs seeing my job probably won’t be untouched by the financial crisis in the long run.

On the websites front there is good and bad news. The Mileyforum.com site I was talked into by someone else isn’t a success as of yet; it clearly shows how slow you get a decent ranking on search engines like google. You can apply SEO all you want it’s not a guarantee for success. That’s despite the fact that it’s simply hard to open a forum and get a lot of members right away. It does take time but without members it’s hard to draw activity, that’s besides there being quite a lot of Miley forums out there already. Not that it matters that much, the hosting account for that is on a monthly renewal.

Starletlinks.com still isn’t getting a lot of visitors but I’m not expecting for that to change soon. I though the concept might be something but not really so far, people just prefer google to find things. Starletviews.com is actually doing better yet the visitor numbers are down a bit. That might seem strange but I’m quite glad that google image searches are starting to be replaced by normal google searches to get to the site. So more and more people are seeing the actual content. So the total number of visitors might be going down but the general quality of visitors should be improving, even though there are still plenty of dirty searches. I installed a SEO mod on the site and it seems to be paying of. I could install it on here as well but I simply don’t care enough to do it; nobody reads this junk anyway.

I’m also still in contact with the people at TVGuide.com and certain things about that are quite promising. They’re talking about adding a blogroll to the site and Starletviews is a candidate to be added on that so that could be a good thing. They’re also talking about partnership opportunities but I still have to find out what kind of opportunities, can’t get in touch with my contact until next week though. I really wonder what kind of thing they’re talking about because I suspect they might be vastly overestimating the visitor numbers the sites get. Then again that’s something that’s easily checked on the internet these days.

It’s just something I have to wait and see about. It can’t really hurt to be affiliated with TVGuide.com anyway. It’s not like they’re part of the “evil” part of the internet.

Over a month since my last post and virtually nothing happened on my script. There are a couple of reasons for that.

1. Still suffering from a bit of writers block.
2. Busy with work.
3. My hard-drive crashed

A hard-drive crash in itself wouldn’t be so bad but this was my prime Windows install. Don’t worry, I make backups so the script is safe. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t make backups of that.

To distract myself from that writers block I also let myself be talked into something by a friend of mine. As a spin-off from Starletviews.com there now actually is a forum dedicated to Miley Cyrus; which can be found on Mileyforum.com.

Starting a forum that will do well isn’t easy so I hope that this will succeed to some extent. It’s not that a lot of time was put into it but it still would be nice to see one of my sites becoming bigger. I’m also getting sick of fan forums that are only about the positive, I’m a moderator on a specific fan forum about Lindsay Lohan and I get booed away when you dare to criticize.  So hopefully Mileyforum.com will be different and some decent discussion is actually possible.

Also brings the number of domains I own to sixteen which is quite a lot. Someone actually wants to use the mileycyrus.nl domain I have protected and which is available for forwarding. I ony have some minor rules as far as that is concerned and if those can’t be followed I don’t see the point. The discussion with that guy is going absolutely nowhere.

I do hope to continue with my script soon though, that’s still my priority in a way. Though I haven’t been in the best of moods lately, really seems like I’m not going anywhere fast…….

Almost no writing the last month, simple as that. The reason is simple; writer’s block. I wasn’t happy with the ending I had in my head so that just kept me from writing; I think I have solved that problem now so I hope things will speed up soon. The old ending I had in mind was just too anti-climactic and not “Hollywood” enough, not that the new ending will be full out Hollywood it will just be less boring.

Confidence hasn’t been that high lately anyway due to various factors, I just feel stuck in my current life and don’t know what to do about it besides finishing the movie script. Though that’s everything but a secure future plan, it’s a long shot at best. In the end it’s just a side project where I’ll see what comes from it.

Doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything in general, I redesigned the other websites after all. The visitor numbers still aren’t as high as I want them to be, though I still hope that will change in time. It’s not like starletviews.com is the only celebrity blog out there. I’ll just see what the future holds, the site looks a bit better now so every little thing might help.

Very short this time but there’s not that much to tell.

I haven’t written anything on here and I haven’t written much as far as the script goes either. The combination of being busy with other things and having a irregular work schedule can do that. On top of that I’ve had a really bad cold for two weeks, I know that a cold isn’t anything major but I just can’t focus on a story when I my head is full of snot. And when I mean full of snot I mean full of snot, everything fills up in my head, to such an extent that I get tooth aches.

I also made a major mistake, I set myself a deadline. Sometimes you just can’t predict if you’ll get busy with other things so there was no way of knowing whether I could finish the script in June. Turns out it won’t be done in June. I’ll be a couple of days off next week though so I’m hoping I’ll be able to get some writing done then. Another thing that might be holding me back is some doubt I have about the ending. Most scripts have happy endings, it’s just the way it Is. I’m now torn between two endings, one bad and the other one very dark and bad. The second option might even be too dark, I don’t know. I’ll decide when I get to it. Which hopefully will be soon.

I’ve at least managed to get the posts up on starletviews.com and the site has been getting record numbers of visitors. Still not that many but it’s slowly growing though sadly mainly due to weird image searches on google. Maybe that will change in time, something that needs to change I think though is the look of the site. It doesn’t look bad but it just looks a bit too plain with the color scheme.

I’m still grateful to allisonp1 for doing this graphic design and I will keep using it for starletlinks.com. There isn’t that much sense in keeping them graphically matched right now so I might as well change it a little bit. This time I’ll try to do a new graphic look myself, to make it easier I bought a Wacom graphical tablet. They’re not cheap but they’re good and they make work in graphical programs a hell of a lot easier. Note that I use Paint.NET and not Photoshop, I simply don’t have the money to pay Adobe prices and my computer is completely illegal software free and I want to keep it that way. To practice I did the header for this site, I couldn’t think of a more basic way to do it but sometimes less is more.

I don’t know when the new design will be up and if I’ll put it up, I need to ask for some opinions before I do that. I don’t see myself as the most talented in computer graphics so we’ll have to see. I’m also very self critical so even though something might look good I might hate it because I think my work sucks. I’m also not sure whether I should even include pictures in a new header, a site might work better if there’s just a uniform look to it without a lot of graphics. I guess I’ll just keep toying with the graphics for a bit.

I have input all the things I wrote while I was away into Final Draft, sadly it’s less than I hoped for. Only got to 72 pages where I expected 80. On second thought it isn’t that bad a thing though, the story is going where I want it to be going and it means I don’t have to rush through the last part of it.

I’m proofreading what I’ve written so far; I was amazed at how many times I used the word just. It was really annoying so I removed it in most places, no idea why I was using it that much.

I’m actually working this weekend so the proofreading is done on my way to work on the train. It just sucks that those trains are in the middle of the night, I really prefer late shifts over early shifts. But they have their advantages as well. Even though I’m off on Monday I don’t know if I will get to a lot of writing.

Not that I don’t know what to write but I also have other things to take care of, starletviews.com just being one of them. Trying to increase the number of posts on that site, it just sucks that people only seem to be attracted to either trash sites and sites with pictures. When you actually want to write something positive or not simply mean but critical people won’t visit it. As for the images, I just don’t want to get into trouble with image agencies. I have tons of pictures the problem just is that I don’t know the original source. Though I only use pictures for editorial use so there some once in a while.

As for starletlinks.com, I’m actually increasing the number of people featured on the site. It’s up to 58 now while I once vowed I would only do 50, thing just is the more names the more visitors so I don’t really have a limit right now. The fact that I set certain rules as for who is featured means it won’t grow too big anyway. I always remove names as well anyway seeing the site is focused on the under 25 year olds. Might seem like an odd limit but I just find it interesting to see how young actresses develop.

I also should edit the look of this blog really, the standard layout is annoying the hell out of me. A different banner would already make a huge difference so I might do that tonight seeing I’m not really motivated to write after an early shift and a bad ride home.

Seeing that I run a site on younger celebrities I often get the question who I would like to see fill some of the parts. Yes there is one big role in the movie that would be for a younger actress but I don’t write for actresses. If THEVO was ever to be made (which pretty much never happens to spec scripts) I wouldn’t say that a specific actress would be perfect for a role. A role should be a character and not an actress, just like an actress would have to become her character in a movie.

That’s enough for today though, still hoping I will get some writing in this week. I’ll try and keep the one scene a day thing in mind if my schedule allows it.

Back home again and I actually achieved quite a bit of what I wanted to get done. First of I finished the book The Script-Selling Game, though it’s far too early for me to read books like that it’s still helpful in certain aspects. Not that I’m going to use everything out of it but I’ll sure take certain pointers. At a later stage I would probably use more from it.

It actually made me consider going to writers conferences at some point. Of course that would be quite a large expense but it might be useful at some point. So I’d better start saving up for that, though I wouldn’t actually attend one until I had a completed script and outlines on several others at the least. Otherwise it wouldn’t really be worth it.

In the last couple of days I actually managed to get 25 written pages of the THEVO script. Though that’s hand written pages, typed up in Final Draft it should be anywhere between 30 and 50 pages. So that’s real progress, not saying that all of it will end up in the final script of course. But it’s finally some real writing in over a month. Inputting it into the computer will take some time as well, not sure if I’ll be doing that today or tomorrow. I want it done before Wednesday though, going back to work then. Not looking forward to that but paying the bills is still a necessary evil.

I actually added some extra scenes that I didn’t plan on in the script at first, main reason for that being that it just needed something extra at some points. Though you shouldn’t put too much information into a script not enough isn’t a good thing either.

My copy of Script Magazine still isn’t here, guess I have to send them an email yet again. This is getting annoying, I don’t doubt them sending it so this isn’t just annoying to me but to them as well. Not that I can’t continue writing without the magazine but I still paid for it so I still want it.

Though THEVO is the only script I worked on while I was away, though I’m always thinking about other ones I didn’t actually write anything down for the other ones. THEVO is the most important one, I’ve set many deadlines for it and those only work against me. So it will be done when it’s done, I’m not mentioning any dates. Though it’s quite far done now.

I didn’t want to work on it fulltime either of course, one of the other points of taking time off from work is to simply relax. That’s important once in a while too.