As we face an uncertain jobs market, many of you are asking yourselves 'What does the future of animation hold for me?'  To see what lies ahead, one only need look to the past...

There is no precise definition of what writer’s block is.

Most likely, it’s just the terror of staring at a blank page or screen and thinking that the next words that come out of your cranial matter have got to be Oscar quality.

Whatever it is, it’s really not that hard to handle.

©Disney PIXAR

Write me the next “Toy Story”!

Oh, and did I mention there’s only $25,000 for the script?

The Old Man and the Sea ©Warner Bros.

Ever get a big fish on the line only to have it get away before you could pull it into the boat?  You probably didn’t set the hook.

Rule #1 in fishing: set the hook!

The same is true in screenwriting, only you’re not trying to hook a fish, you’re trying to hook the audience.  You don’t need a fishing rod, you need ten great pages.

Self promotion turned out to be the hottest topic yet on my blog.  My three posts on the subject are approaching 6,000 reads! 

I have received dozens of comments, both on the blog and at LinkedIn, over 95% of which were in agreement that self-promotion is vitally important. 

You get it!  That's good!  Here's what I got...

Does self-promotion really work? 

What happens when you promote your writing via blog, Facebook and LinkedIn? 

Over the past several weeks I've done just that. 

The results are in. 

Check out this post and find out exactly what happened with my experiment in self-promotion...

A funny thing happened on the way to my Facebook page.  A handful of professional contacts refused to be my friend, not because they didn’t like me, but because they weren’t on Facebook.  The interesting thing was that they seemed to take pride in not being on Facebook.  This reminded me of something I’ve noticed over my career, an odd anomaly about many writers and artists: They don’t like to promote themselves.  Not a good idea!  Here's why...

©1999 Miramax Films

Do you write part time?  Do you write for just a few hours a day?  Are you writing a spec screenplay a few days a week or month?

If you answered any of these questions in the affirmative you may be losing more time (and creativity) than you think.

Let me give you a few suggestions that will help you get a lot more writing done...

What is the #1 most important ingredient of every great screenplay?

Is it great characters?

Great plot?

High Concept?

It’s none of these.  The #1 most important ingredient of every great screenplay is...