Still, I am alive, and I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still drawing oxygen.  And while I’m at it, I might as well throw in a few offhand comments.

I’m sorta famous.  That still blows my mind.  Sure, I’m not Jim Varney famous, but I do have a Wikipedia page (woefully out of date, but still there) and I do have 6 (soon to be 7) published books to my name.  In the right circles, I’m even recognizable.  Crazy, isn’t it?

I gave a short presentation at the Dallas Screenwriters Association last Friday.  It was a good event, and I think people enjoyed it.  Whenever I give these presentations, I find the best advice I can give to any aspiring writer is relax.  Writing ain’t that hard.

I’m not suggesting that it’s easy, but the hardest thing about writing is finding a way of doing it that works for you.  There’s no secret to it.  It’s an individual process, a way of doing things that gets you where you want to go.  I can’t tell you how often I hear an aspiring writer tell me how relieved they are when I admit that I don’t outline in advance, that I often write by the seat of my pants, just making it up as I go along.  If I can make an aspiring writer’s life easier, then it’s well worth my time.

Saw The Lightning Thief this weekend.  Didn’t love it.  Didn’t hate it.  It was enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.  I did like the monsters, of course.  Any movie with a minotaur and a hydra is going to score a few points on the A. Lee Martinez neato torpedo scale.  But pacing wise, the story seemed to just wander around.  I’m not usually one to comment on plot structure, but when it’s not there, you can definitely notice it.  And in this case, you could shuffle many of the scenes around without damaging the film.  So I wouldn’t say the film was bad.  I’d just suggest that it wasn’t quite great.  Just good enough.  I enjoyed it enough, but wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it again.

Finally saw Zombieland, too.  Thought it was a good movie with a nice story.  It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but at this point, is there anything new left to do with zombies?  So instead, the film just embraces the zombie mythos (oooh, writer word) and uses the setting to tell an interesting story.  Overall, it is an entertaining, fun film.

My only complaint (and it’s a minor one) is Bill Murray’s cameo.  Rather, the resolution of the Bill Murray cameo.  It’s just too jokey and involves characters acting foolishly.  While the film is a comedy, its characters never behave foolishly.  That’s a particular point of the movie with all “The Rules” emphasising how to survive during a zombie apocalypse.  I have to assume that one of those rules is “Don’t play zombie pranks on your fellow survivors.”  The results will be exactly what is depicted.

I still enjoyed the movie and this one bit is easy to ignore in the end.  But it really doesn’t fit with the rest of the film.  Still good though.

Okay, I guess that’s enough for now.  I have real writing to do, so I’ll catch you later, gang.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee