is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Jan 20, 2006

Re: When World's Collide posted by Martin

Damn! I’m digging it. Now how the hell are we gonna pick just one? And, still more to go?

Okay—anyway—I have to say this thing right now. #3? Yeah. Like, if somebody told me “Oh, I casually want to write a sentence or two that will both evoke Borges, the most brilliant writer that ever existed, and Rush, the most rockin’ Canadian power trio that ever existed.” I would have told them to get lost, but you, my friend, have done it. I applaud you.

I applaud all of these ideas, and I want to take a whack at your bonus idea, because it reminds me that I really want to read the new Ray Kurzweil book.

In a World where nanobots cleanse the blood of disease, and people live indefinite lives, a man waiting for the subway in New York explodes, contaminating a large crowd with an aggressive virus—a mechanical virus of microscopic robots. We might stand a chance to fight them, if only they weren’t completely sentient, smarter than us, and designed by the only man in the world who we might have trusted to stop them.

Now—everybody sing along with me from the book of Rush, chapter 2112:
We are the priests of the temples of Syrinx.
And our great computers fill the hallowed halls…

Comments (0) — Category: the screenplay

What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.

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Our Twitter account, where we note when longer articles are posted. While we're at it, here's Kent and Martin's Twitter accounts.

Kent M. Beeson

Urban Shockah pic

Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

Burleigh Grimes pic

Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.