Reay Jespersen

So why the change back?

The choice to become vegetarian in the first place, six months ago, was purely a psychological/moral one: People don’t need to eat animals to live, so why kill intelligent creatures to consume them needlessly? However, as many of you have heard when I’ve discussed it with you, it was always a struggle for me. I still wanted to eat meat, I just curbed myself from doing so because I’d decided for myself that it was wrong. But the temptation remained. It’s hard to overcome a nearly 40-year habit, after all.

However, one of my aunts is taking a nutrition course and mentioned in passing several weeks ago that her instructor told the class that, in his opinion, vegans may reduce their lives by as much as one third due to not consuming a proper, broad enough range of foods. Granted, I was never vegan, and the opinion is an extreme one I’d never heard before and could be wildly inaccurate, but the point of it stuck with me: what if, in seeking a higher moral ground and denying myself – my body – a specific type of food, I was actually doing myself more harm than good?

It’s clear that humans evolved over time to accommodate whatever kind of food they wish to eat. We have the range of tooth types to prove such accommodation (biting, tearing, grinding…), and our jaws can move to deal with whatever type of food we’re eating at the time. But that’s just it: we aren’t designed to eat any one kind of food. Not just meat, not just fruit, not just vegetables… but a variety of each. And recalling something that had already occurred to me many years ago, it seemed to me now a bit foolish to be second-guessing millions of years of evolution. We have come to be this way for a biological reason. So yes, we can of course choose to eat (or not eat) whatever we wish, such as meat, but physiologically speaking, should we?

The issues of eating meat I had were two-fold: the philosophical/moral question, and the health question. For the former, my friend Alex, ever-practical and insightful, suggested reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which in part touches on the moral issues of vegetarianism vs. omnivorism. The book goes on at some length as the author questions the morality of eating meat, but most pointedly, states that 1) even outspoken animal rights activist Peter Singer doesn’t feel confident about standing against eating meat from “good farms” (i.e. those where animals are allowed to live their lives freely and normally, without drugs or cages or crowding… without, that is, the matter-of-course suffering imposed by factory farming) because ultimately such a natural farm setting has created more animal “happiness” in the world than if the animals had never existed, and 2) that the same “happy life and merciful death” line is how Jeremy Bentham, “the philosophical father of animal rights”, also justified eating meat. So the philosophical question, for me, was pretty much resolved: eating “happy animals”, even to animal rights figureheads, is morally defensible.

For the issue of my health, I spoke with my friend Jenny, a holistic nutritionist. Her conclusion was that there’s no particular “best” diet that can paint everyone, as it were, with the same brush. It can’t be said that vegetarianism is (or isn’t) a more healthy diet for everyone, because each individual’s body will react to diets differently. Some people can’t handle meat well, while others don’t play nicely with lactose, or nuts, or grains… it varies according to the individual (perhaps even within the blood type group that the book Eat Right For Your Type explains). And while I can’t say six months of vegetarianism didn’t agree with me in any broad sense, my system certainly didn’t seem to benefit from it in any notable way. I didn’t have more energy (in fact, felt at times more tired), I didn’t feel “lighter” or healthier in any discernible way, my mind seemed to work no differently… and yet I was jumping through hoops not just daily, but multiple times daily, in order to maintain the vegetarian lifestyle in a house with a wife and baby who both eat meat. That, plus trying to stay on top of finding new, interesting recipes, plus the time to shop for the needed ingredients and then execute those recipes… all while being a stay-at-home dad for a one-year-old, and in accounting for a working wife who doesn’t have much time to make her own food.

Vegetarianism was, in short, demanding extra time from a lifestyle which simply doesn’t have the needed amount to spare, and was doing it without any clear health benefits. In fact, perhaps the opposite: eggs and cheese, two handy go-to protein sources I had initially counted on when I became vegetarian, may’ve had unhealthy effects on me. The Forks Over Knives Twitter feed recently posted a link to a study that found that men who eat more than 2.5 eggs per week increase their chances of prostate cancer by 80%. And cheese, as one of my uncles pointed out, is worse than meat for your body to process. All of which only added even more stress to a diet that was already proving stressful to try to maintain. And as Alex put it, yes, authorities and figureheads are constantly changing opinions on what food is good or bad for you seemingly from one week to the next, but the one thing they can all agree on across the board – one thing that never changes trends – is that that stress is bad for people. So all things considered, was I truly doing myself any favours by trying to maintain a vegetarian lifestyle?

All of this was crystalized for me when my father-in-law died unexpectedly in late October. He was suddenly taken away from his friends and family; from my wife, and most poignantly for me, from our daughter, his one-year-old granddaughter. A man who had taken care of himself all his life – a professional dance instructor and NHL prospect, whose fitness seemed unquestionable – still died unexpectedly. And it was made clear to me that if I wanted to be around as long as possible for my daughter, which I very much do, I’ve got to start taking better care of myself than I have been for… well, let’s face it, for the bulk of my life. I need to cut down on junk food, get more exercise and more sleep, and perhaps most important of all, eat a healthy diet… or at least a healthier one. One that, to say the least, cuts back on my stress.

However, even back to eating meat, I realize that in taking on the only eating “happy animals” approach, I’m still a far cry from being able to eat meat to the degree I’d become accustomed to up until six months ago. Most restaurants, of course, use factory farms for meat to keep their costs down. So unless I’m eating outside the house and can be assured that the meat being offered up came from “good farms” or that the animals otherwise lead normal lives and died quickly (and really, how often can that happen?), the vegetarian diet will still be applied wherever practical and wherever my health isn’t compromised by doing so.

Precisely what I will or won’t eat in a given situation is still being considered – if I’m handed a pork chop for dinner at someone’s house and don’t know where it came from, am I going to make everyone feel awkward by pressing the host on the issue (and then what, whip up my own non-meat meal on the spot or not eat at all)? Even if it came from a factory farm, the deed is done; I’m not supporting the system by buying meat from it, but is eating such meat that I didn’t buy still supporting that system? The animal’s suffering has come and gone; my eating the pork chop or not won’t change what’s already happened, but is not buying but still eating it knowing the animal’s suffering justifiable? In a world where people are literally starving to death on a daily basis, is it more globally conscious to eat the food I’m lucky enough to be offered, or turn it away (perhaps even risk it being wasted) despite its source? – but all that is being worked on.

I hope to post an update on how all that goes, this time shooting for less than six months from now. In the mean time, as always, your comments and feedback, good, bad, or ugly, are welcomed.

There are doubtless going to be questions from friends and family about what prompted the choice. I shall duly answer the six questions we were taught in grade school to ask about events in order to cover the bases:

Who?
Me.

What?
Vegetarian(ism).

When?
For about a week now, though still in transition. More on that in a minute.

Where?
Here. Everywhere. Also: me.

Why?
Well that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
As a quick bit of background, I bought the new Rise Against album, Endgame, and was flipping through the insert — the lyrics and notes — when I noticed a quick aside prompting the reader to read the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Intrigued by the title, I Googled it, and was immediately engaged by what I found. I bought the book shortly after, and have been reading it piecemeal since then as time allows.

As for the “Why?” itself… there’s no one, quick answer to that.
I’ve always known, as all meat eaters do, where the meat I’m eating comes from. Yet it’s very easy to forget that; meat becomes just another grocery item. But as I’ve been reading Eating Animals, I’ve been acutely reminded of meat’s source. And not just in the most basic of ways, but getting in-depth detail: how meat is produced on not just a large, but a massive — a global — scale. And it’s truly horrifying stuff. Not just on a moral level of what the animals are put through (the genetic modification to make them produce more viable meat regardless of (indeed, in direct contrast to) their own well being, the standard mutilation to prevent them from damaging each other due in no small part to the inhumane conditions they endure, the drugs they’re fed as a matter of course due to the illnesses generated by the living conditions they’ve been put in), but on a philosophical one (why is it ok to raise pigs and cattle for meat but not dogs? Why do the people profiting from these factory farming processes get to be the ones to set the laws as to how their practices are done and what does or doesn’t constitute humane treatment? How much of a creature’s suffering is too much for me to enjoy my burger or chicken strips? Why kill a sentient being for nothing but the brief enjoyment of its flavour?), and a scientific one (what are we doing to aquatic life, and the planet itself, when there are 145 other species routinely captured and killed as an offshoot of fishing for just tuna? Why use six to twenty-six calories of food to produce one calorie of meat? And most notably and concerningly: all flus are fundamentally avian-based in origin — by forcing so many chickens in such close quarters and feeding them ever-more powerful drugs to combat the new strains of illnesses that are invariably produced by the nature of the system we’ve put them in, mankind is setting itself up for a far worse flu pandemic than the one we’re already long overdue for).

Where one issue of opting out of meat eating may be settled with one solution (organic, family-style farming where the animals are treated well and allowed to live in as natural a manner as possible before killing them, for instance), it doesn’t answer another (why do I need to kill that sentient being for food at all when eating in this other way will sustain me just fine?)
And as been confirmed again and again by professionals, the fact is that a balanced vegetarian diet is at least as healthy as an omnivore diet. Other than liking the taste of meat, there’s no reason to eat it. And given everything involved in letting me have that taste — the ethical, philosophical and scientific issues — I’m ok with stepping out of that cycle.
As I said… there’s no simple answer to the question of why I’m doing this. Perhaps the best way I can put it is that, all things considered, this is what I feel I need to do.

How?
Carefully. As tempting as it has been (and still is) to just change these gears to feel better about myself, I know precious little about what a safe transition to vegetarianism involves, and as with other things, making sweeping changes without the proper knowhow can be dangerous. Until I have a solid grasp of what I’m doing to make this switch safely, my meat eating shouldn’t fade completely, but more appropriately be phased out (though I am trying to speed that up).

So there’s the bulk of the scoop. I’m wide open to any questions anyone has, but to cover what may be a few of them:

Won’t you miss the taste of meat?
Hell yes.

Does this mean you’re not killing anything ever?
No. While I often try to help out living things (ask Jackie — and our neighbours — about how many spiders and the like I’ve transported outdoors rather than kill them), there are times when circumstance requires it. We had a lot of little ants that were invading the kitchen last year and already this year, for instance. Left unchecked, they’d take over the place. The larger, black ants have been coming in lately, too. They’ve gotta go, as well. But that’s of course completely different: practicality vs. killing something to eat it.

Are you going to harass me if I don’t join you in this change (into a left-wing commie pinko hippie animal-hugging dreamer)?
Not at all. As with my choice a few years back to not support Coke and its affiliated products (see killercoke.org) and in the last few months to not support chocolate manufacturers who use child labour (i.e. a lot of the big producers; do an internet search for Is There Slavery In Your Chocolate?, among others), this is about my choices for me. To each his own.

Are you joining PETA, or anything of the like?
No. PETA does raise valid points (can anyone really deny that there are animals that are mistreated, and that they should be treated better?), but their methods are extreme and sensationalistic. Anyone who’s known me for more than a day will know I’m neither of those.

Is Jackie joining you?
While she supports me (albeit with due, loving mocking), Jackie’s not on board the Vegetarian Train. Yet, at least. She’s still breastfeeding, so we agree it’s best to not to risk shocking or forcing such a change on her system when Laila needs her to maintain a status quo.

Is Laila joining you?
While now on ever-new (liquified) solids, she’s not on meat yet. Jackie and I are going to do what research we can on long-term benefits or drawbacks to raising a child as a vegetarian from scratch. At the very least, we’ll do whatever we need to do to get her hormone/drug-free meat to raise her on, and let her make her own moral choices about continuing to do so later in life. In short, we want whatever the evidence suggests is best for her.

Are you giving up anything else? Drinking? Junk food? Sex?
No, no, still trying to cut down but indulging, and dear god no.

If you were on a desert island and could only survive by killing a pig to eat it, would you?
Tough call. I probably would. Hell, those plane crash victims in the mountains years back ate dead passengers to survive. The drive to live another day makes people do things they never thought they would, or could, do. Luckily, I’m afforded a lot more opportunities in everyday life. Here, now, I wouldn’t kill a pig to survive, because I don’t need to. Nor do I need to ask someone else to do it for me.

So does this mean you’re going vegan at some point? After all, dairy products and eggs, and such, come from animals, which must be farmed to some degree, and are therefore suffering to some degree for your overeasy or bowl of icecream.
Fair point. If I thought I could make it to that big a leap in one go, I probably would. As it is, I like milk, I like cheese and eggs, and I really like icecream. This change to vegetarianism by no means wholly clears my conscience as far as farmed animal welfare goes, but it’s now one helluva lot better than it was. As my best friend Alex puts it, small changes can make a big difference. And as a guy who’s turning 40 this year and who’s eaten meat all his life, I’d say becoming vegetarian would certainly count as a least a small change.

A philosophy isn’t an easy thing to change. We grow up being taught certain things (intentional or otherwise), believing certain things, and have opinions formed by interactions with the people in the world around us and our experiences - things that are right and wrong, things that should or shouldn’t be, and why.

It has long been my philosophy that while I’m a creative idea man - I have notebooks full of them, for everything from stories and characters to settings and isolated independent scenes, inspired at times by anything and everything I experience and hear - the fact that I see precious few of those ideas through to completion, always writing something only to be distracted, crow-like, by the sparkle of a new idea, means that I should protect what relatively little I do finish.

Protect it from what? In short, theft. Which sounds exceptionally egotistic put so bluntly, but truly isn’t so. My concern has never been that of course people will steal my material because it’s clearly so damn good, but rather that I’ve been writing stories of various kinds literally since I could put two sentences together, and so with a lifetime of writing to my credit and with a passion to make even a modest living writing my own material, that it would kill me if someone somewhere took any of my material and presented it as their own and had success with it when I hadn’t.

Then several years ago I came across the website of a friend of a friend (whose name I unfortunately no longer recall, with some embarrassment), who regularly posted new short story material on her site. It blew me away, in part that someone could crank out fresh material that quickly, but more because she was just laying it out there for anyone and everyone to see and for anyone and everyone to take. I contacted her in that regard: here’s my baggage, and aren’t you similarly concerned about people taking your ideas and using it for themselves? Her response was that she has more than enough ideas to go around, and that what she posted was the tip of the iceberg of her completed material arsenal. Intriguing!

Years later, part of my wanting a website of my own was to accomplish the same feat: to not only write stuff, but post it. This was around the same time I started pitching some of the feature-length scripts I’d been working on, so it was part and parcel with not just finishing material, but trying to start getting some attention for it and for myself. And you can’t do that by sitting on a (slowly growing) pile of finished material and not telling anyone who had the ability to do something with it; to make something of it and, over time and with some luck, of you.

That first point of the website failed when I found myself still unable (ok, unwilling) to post my material online. Same old reason. Despite the big steps toward going public with my stuff, I couldn’t quite step over the threshold and actually do it.

A few years later, cutting now to a scant month or two ago, I read an interesting, brief article which cited someone - I believe Cory Doctorow - who stated that writers shouldn’t fear pirates of their work, but should instead fear anonymity. An interesting outlook which truly struck a chord with me.

Then this last week, I followed a link from Bubble Cow on Twitter which hit even closer to home. Seth Godin’s point in his excellent article on how to protect your ideas in a digital age is to not protect them at all, but in fact get them out there as much as possible. You aren’t going to be successful keeping ideas all to yourself, but may find success in making a name for yourself as someone with a lot of ideas.

In that light, and inspired in part by Twitter followee Alan Baxter constantly posting and hyping new material, and by new followee Simon Later’s infectious love of writing and posting about it, my philosophy is at least in the process of changing, with a huge part of that being my taking that step over that threshold I spoke of.

My next post will be the first time I’ve let the public see a story I’ve entered in contests but have shown to precious few; my first #flashfriday entry; the first time I’ve posted something I was hoping to save for future print publication. And hopefully, far from my last.

So the winners for the first mifiction contest were announced today, and I was none of’em. Basically, they’re taking the classic Choose Your Own Adventure-style approach to stories and formatting them for use on mobile devices. Great idea, to be sure, and one that I think will do well. However, it would seem that my concept - having the reader be a superhero and take on various criminals en route to discovering what a supercriminal mastermind is up to at the climax - either wasn’t done well enough, or wasn’t their cup of tea (no UK pun intended). What makes it a little more disappointing is that I had thought that if it were a success, my story could very easily be spun off into other stories featuring the same character. Much like a comic series.

Having said all that, I’d already known for the last week or so that even if I were rejected, I’d plow through and finish the story, at least for myself. It’s not only proving an interesting challenge to offer the reader multiple choices for certain actions while trying to keep the main thrust of the story moving forward - a unique challenge to this kind of format - but at over twenty packed pages, it’s also easily the longest (prose) story I’ve written since high scool. Anyone who knows me knows that while I’m constantly struck, and smitten by, new ideas for stories, characters, and settings, following through with them to completion happens all too rarely - typically due to getting hit with other ideas which then lure me away from work on earlier ideas. So having pushed myself to get this far in the hopes of publishing through mifiction, I’m eager to finish the story, if only for myself. I at least want to finish the first draft, as I’m not sure how much polish I want to bother putting on it when it’s not going anywhere at the moment, and the often-advised putting it in the proverbial drawer and forgetting about it will let my fresh eyes in months or years to come take a more clear-headed approach to editing and re-writing, should I wish to fix it up in the future.

This also raises an item of note I’ve been considering the last couple of weeks:
It shall be my New Year’s Resolution to submit stories and/or screenplays to no fewer than twenty-five contests or publishers in 2010. A scant number for writers who’ve been pushing themselves on submissions as hard as I should’ve been for a long time, but a wholly achievable number for someone who’s done precious little submitting in the past. An average of two submissions per month (plus one for good measure) should by rights be something I could do in my sleep. And if I happen to blow that target out of the water early on in the year, then so much the better.

In light of that, if you’re a writer and submit your stuff to contests or publishers who are looking for short story/flash fiction or feature-length/short screenplay material, please mention them in the comments section or contact me directly with your (much appreciated) insight.

Thanks very much!

I’ve officially signed up for Movember, a prostate cancer awareness/cure fund for which men grow moustaches through the month of November. Please help me raise cash for prostate cancer awareness and cures! http://ca.movember.com/mospace/41973

In light of my recent shift of approach to writing, Jackie suggested - and not for the first time - that along with writing at other times, I deidcate one night a week to it. Wednesday was the day she recommended, typically being a rather uneventful night and being the last day of the week when I have a pretty good idea of when I’ll be getting home from work.

Sadly, this was an unusually busy night, so while I left work on time, after making one stop for food shopping and another for seeing a friend we’d been meaning to see for some time, we only got home at 7:30. Tack on dinner prep, eating, and catching a few scant extra minutes of the second period of the Leaf game - interesting team they’ve cobbled together… be watching to see how they do this year - and I was only sitting down to start writing at 8:30. Hardly the “night of writing” it was supposed to be.

Still, by 10:00, I’d done a notch over 1900 words on a kids’ story which I think has a solid idea behind it but whose execution isn’t really doing much for me. I’ll keep pushing on it and try to finish it regardless of how brutal a first draft it may end up being, however, because if I keep trying to get a new start to it I’m happier with, I may never make any real progress in it. I’ve realized recently, apparently a quality Jackie had long-since identified, that I don’t like lack of progress in my work (and the more I think about it, in other aspects of my life, as well). Hence, I figure my re-hashing the opening to this story, potentially again and again, will only get me more frustrated/less interested in it than forging ahead and finishing it would, even if it results in a far from perfect first draft. Rough aspects can always be worked out in re-writes, after all.

For now, off to sleep in pursuit of another aspiration of mine: getting a decent amount of sleep during the week. So crazy an option to my often being tired and looking like hell that it just might work!

Talk soon.

So I dropped the ball a week ago.

In failing my first attempt at 100 words a day for 100 days, I got back on the saddle and did it right the second time. Not only that, blew past the original 100 days and kept going. And I recently amped that up to 200 words a day. Not a lot, perhaps, for someone aspiring to be a writer, but far more than I’ve (perhaps ever) consistently written in the past.

Then last week some time I woke up in the morning and realized that I hadn’t done my words the day before. We’d had friends over the previous night, and my watch alarm had gone off at the set time - a last-ditch reminder I used to get my words done if I hadn’t done so previously each day - but I didn’t do them. Time was, particularly amid the 100 words a day for 100 day challenge, I would’ve been mortified. But I was strangely alright with it.

In part I think it’s because I realized that while I want to make a living from writing, every writer has his own approach to getting that writing done. And while I’d stuck firmly to the 100 words a day for 100 days challenge (v2.0) and beyond, while the challenge was clearly designed to get a person into the habit of writing every day, that never really took for me. It was always something I went out of my way to do (first thing in the (early) morning, over lunch, etc.), or was reminded to do (typically via watch alarm and sometimes via Jackie).

And it was shortly after that, in an I Should Be Writing interview podcast, that I heard China Mieville say that he doesn’t really have any particular approach to writing. He doesn’t do it every day, nor at the same time, nor in the same place, nor anywhere near a consistent volume of words.

The point is, every writer approaches writing differently. Doing the daily thing was never really my bag, and at times felt like I was just writing to fulfill the agreement with myself, not writing becuase I had anything I was particularly passionate about writing. And there’s a strong argument to be made for stopping (or changing tactics) when something you love doing starts feeling like an obligation.

Hence, as I lay there awake on the morning of realization that I hadn’t written for the first time in what I figure is in the range of a year and four months (give or take), I was actually ok with it. Time to revisit the drawing board and see what else I can try in order to keep the writing both flowing and interesting to me. Any and all suggestions on that score are, as always, welcomed.

Talk soon.

I was listening to a podcast last week - called I Should Be Writing, which is excellent and should be checked out by anyone aspiring to write fiction - when I heard a commercial for The Amazing Meeting 7. It’s a conference on “critical thinking”, and says that among other things, it will “sharpen your skeptical skills”.

This is the second or third time in perhaps a year that this notion has been presented to me. A former was a podcast that had been recommended by some friends, which I found the urge to stop listening to in short order because it began with a group of guys sitting around and talking about how they’re all skeptics. Even more, they were lauding a member of their group (who wasn’t with them) who was, they all agreed, a great skeptic.

And I don’t get it. I don’t get the appeal of being actively skeptical. Certainly not of being a notably “great” skeptic. And really, how is being skeptical about everything you hear any better than believing everything you hear? How is one extreme better than the other?

Personally, I don’t know that any extremism of any sort is a mentally (nor physically) healthy thing.

Maybe it’s just me. I’ve certainly got a more temperate personality than many do, so extremism of any flavour isn’t big on my list of qualities, nor things I find appealing. And there’s doubtless an argument to be made for my spending a lot of time playing with story and character ideas in my head, so perhaps it’s just not in me to default to questioning if/how that this or that could actually happen so much as revel in the possibilities; enjoy the wide-eyed wonder of “what if”s.

Do we know everything? Of course not. We’re constantly building up our base of knowledge about ourselves and everything around us. So it smacks of hubris when “great skeptics” write off certain concepts as being impossible. Unproven is one thing. That it simply can’t ever be, or ever have been, the case is a whole other matter.

Do we know a lot about a lot? Absolutely. I just think that a healthy mind is one that’s open to possibilities and constant learning, even about things we think we know.

And for anyone who’d eschew the notion - dammit, we know what we know and what is and what isn’t - I’d remind you that at one time the best and brightest minds knew for a fact that Earth was the centre of the universe. Looking back, how foolish we were then…

Having been idly wondering lately what I should be doing with my website - what I could talk about, what I should focus on, how often I should post, the best way to do whatever it is I decide to do, etc. - I’ve finally decided that the very least I can do is post regularly (as I can’t in all honesty see doing it daily) on what I’m doing with writing. Well… really, I guess the “least I can do” is ignore the site completely and drink whilst playing Wii, but you get the point. It seems simple enough, particularly given the concept of having a site in the first place years ago was to promote my writing. I’ve tried to do this before, but not with any real determination to make it stick. Well, consider me determined.

In that light, a new update: in one of my pitches today involving a werewolf screenplay - and there are some of you who will doubtless know precisely the one I mean - I was told by the rep that he was going to pas on it; that werewolves aren’t a big seller; that in part it’s because vampires are sexy (and werewolves, the implication concluded, weren’t). And I certainly understand the point. I’ve tied vampires and sexiness together since Christopher Lee played Dracula, and there’s been no lack of underscoring the point in the many years since.

I asked him about New Moon, the Meyer book/pending movie that involves werewolves in a broader storyline which has females from high school to retirees getting hot under the collar. He countered, fairly, by pointing out that yes, that one story involves werewolves, but it’s really in an overarching - and initiated - story involving sexy vampires. I had to grant him the point.

But the more I thought about the comment through the day, the more I wondered: why can’t werewolves be sexy?

It’s true there would seem to be more innate sexy characteristics to vampires: they’re often from a bygone (romantic) era, and have gaunt (nay, chiseled) features, intense eyes, oddly ubiquitous athletic figures… all of course just too much for the enthralled females to resist; who fight off dark temptations but ultimately succumb, offering up their thrusted (bosoms and) necks to be feasted on.

HOT.

Werewolves, though, are by nature beastial. Maybe even as much animal as human. And could it not be sexy to give in to animal instincts, particularly when it comes to sex (or steamy, sensual innuendos thereof)? The alpha male: a dominant male figure protecting those under his care, including the females, who knows his needs must be fulfilled. And you want to talk convincing cases for lean, athletic figures? Werewolves are finely tuned creatures of action: they hunt, they chase, they fight, they kill…

And on a personal note, I’d like to say that since I first saw American Werewolf In London, likely at too early an age, I can no longer hear Van Morrison’s “Moondance” without thinking of the sex scene. That kind of thing makes an impression on a (young) guy, and the impression is that werewolves can damn well be sexy when presented the right way. That, and that sex looks really interesting.

So, I’ve taken the rep’s causal comment as a challenge. I’m officially taking on the task of writing a sexy story about werewolves. And not just via descriptions of hot men and women who happen to be werewolves standing around looking good and having sex (although…), but by giving the whole thing a genuinely sexy vibe. Which will prove interesting, as I’ve never really done much geared that way. But then, it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy. You know… by it’s nature.

No idea what form the story will take, and no promises about when it will be completed, but if it’s the last thing I do (and it may be), the story will be written.

Talk soon.

“Well it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
with the stars up above in your eyes.
A fantabulous night to make romance
‘neath the cover of October skies…”

All cards on the table. I don’t like pitching. I get its use - encapsulating an idea in order to save the both writer and production companies/reps time in knowing whether or not it’s something that may be production-worthy - but I’m really not a fan of it.

Here’s my thing: I got into writing screenplays because my best friend suggested that since I’m a visual thinker (still true) and enjoyed writing (ditto), why not work toward a visual medium and write screenplays? Brilliant! So, many years later, here I sit, having written several screenplays, and over the last few years also getting into TV show concepts, development, and episode writing. All while working on short stories and haikus and book ideas and game concepts and whatever else srtikes me from one day to the next, of course. Take it from one who knows: inside my head is never a boring place to be.

But the point is that screenplays and teleplays allow me to take the story visions I have and present them in a form which will, ideally, become a visual medium. And to have to pitch that not only removes the material one more generation from its intended form - a vision forced into written words, and then those written words re-formed into vastly truncated verbal ones which strive to convey the whole original vision - but also puts me in the uncomfortable position of having to be the proactive one in talking to people I don’t know. And not only has that never been a happy place for me, but worse still, I’m sitting there squirming to lay out part of myself - my stories - for the close scrutiny of these people.

Meanwhile there’s part of me saying hey, I’m an award-winning writer (albeit of severely modest degree). I know for a fact that at its best, my writing can convey more power and emotion than I’ll ever be able to manage while sitting and trying to convince someone else of its merits. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as the saying goes. And verbally pitching about writing strikes me the same way: it’s one artform striving to relay another. Two very different disciplines that have been intertwined, and where failure at one could so easily result in the other never being seen at all, quality be damned.

Had I mentioned I’m not a fan?

In any case, I’m happy to say that despite the frayed nerves and buckets of sweat the day produced, Pitch Expo 2009 was generally a success for me. Not everyone I pitched to seemed huge on the various stuff I was offering up, but more did… and some just loved it. And it’s with thanks I offer a tip of my proverbial hat to the reps who went above and beyond the call to not only hear me out and seem encouraging, but also offer advice on how I could build on what I’ve got. In one particular case, this opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me to mull over and pair up with current (and future) TV series ideas, hopefully making future pitches (*sigh*) stronger.

Another cool aspect of events like this is bringing an ecclectic group of people together who form new relationships. And luckily, with most people in the world being more comfortable at breaking the ice than I am, several people took the first step and introduced themselves, or asked how my day had gone, or how such’n such a prodco rep seemed when I pitched, etc. To all of them I’d like to say a big thanks for being the ones to make the first move. I’m hoping you all got the (accurate) impression that I’m happy to talk once I get to know you a bit, but that making the first move to that end just isn’t my forte. Which of course may have something to do with my take on pitching…

In any case, a special thanks to Josh, Meryl, Kelly/Kaz, Jesse, and Yolanda. Glad to have met all of you (in Jesse’s case, again). What mutual writing benefits may come of the new relationships are one thing, but a good friend recently pointed out to me how important family and friends are in life. Here’s hoping we can all improve each other’s lives by staying in touch.