is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Jan 29, 2009

17 Months Off posted by kza

Wow -- we're really doing this, huh? I really have to learn how to use Ecto again?

Actually, I'm very excited to restart Spitball!, or as I think of it, Spitball! 2.0. The original Spitball! had a great premise, but one that simply wasn't going to live up to its potential, at least not with me. Or more accurately, not that me at that time. As Martin said earlier, in 2006 and 2007 we were still learning how to work together, and one thing we learned definitively is that I (and maybe Martin, but definitely I) need to work face-to-face. The written word is a great form of communication, but there's still too much ambiguity and too much time delay this way, causing problems that are easily solved (or wouldn't exist) when talking directly to my writing partner. So fuck this wack experiment in my opinion. (Apologies to the Cinemasters crew.)

So here's what's been happening lately.

Martin and I meet every weekend to go over our projects, something we've been doing for ... I don't know how long, but certainly since the last Spitball! post, maybe earlier. So about a year and a half. Technically, we don't live very far from each other, but getting together can be difficult, so this standing meeting time ensures contact with each other. I really think our writing, our communication and our work in general have increased ten-fold in quality since we started doing that.

But what have we been working on? Right now, we have three screenplay projects we're juggling, and one of them is the Spitball! Story Idea 2nd Place winner, known at the time as Black Little Stray, now known as Stray. That's right, not unlike Clay Aiken, winner of American Idol's second season, the runner-up has eclipsed the winner (in this case, Time to Die.) Time to Die is on the back burner -- it hasn't been forgotten, simply put on pause until we deal with these other three that, in our parlance, have "the energy" about them. In fact, Time to Die is next on deck as soon as we finish one of the other three (or if one of the three is shelved for intractable structural problems, which is always a possibility).

Along with screenplays, Martin and I have also jumped into the dark deep waters of prose fiction writing. (Martin moreso, but I'll let him talk about that.) I've started my first novel, which, wouldja know it, is based on one of our Story Idea contest entrants, The Atmospherist. (I'm gonna make it work, dammit.) I suspect that, despite this site's usual focus on screenwriting, we'll talk about the fiction side of things as well.

So basically, 2009 is all about the writing. Early last year, I was hired by the comic book website ComiXology to pen a column about comic book movies called The Watchman. It was a tremendous opportunity, and I think I did some of my best non-fiction writing ever there. But after doing it for almost a year, and finding more and more of time devoted to it (meaning more and more of time sucked away from screenplays and fiction), I had to make a hard decision. I decided to give up The Watchman. It hurt to do it, and it depressed me for a bit, but ultimately I think it was the right move. I have a kid now, Laura, who's almost two (!), so my time and my priorities are different. Everything that isn't about her has to go to, oh let's just call it all "storytelling". That's what I am now -- a storyteller.

And maybe one day, one day soon, I'll get paid for the privilege. But until then, I gotta keep practicing.

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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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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.