I had a rubbish week last week. If I hadn’t lived it, I would have thought it was one of those bad rom-coms where everything goes wrong for the protagonist in Act 1, culminating in the ultimate cliche of getting home early from work and finding your wife in bed with another bloke. Luckily I was spared this, since I don’t have a wife and I work from home, but hey ho.

But this week is another week and I have many plans. I got ten rejections last week, working out at approximately 2 a day (though I got 3 on wednesday), but I DID get a two script invites and two nice emails, proving that life does indeed go on… Besides, it can’t be as bad as THE DAY OF SIX REJECTIONS. That was in my pre-blog days and three days before my wedding. Niiiice. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, like my husband jilting me at the altar… But of course he didn’t, ‘cos I am fabulous and now of course he knows I will hunt him down like a dog if he ever leaves so he’s mine, mine forever!>EVIL LAUGH< Where was I. Oh yes: you still have just over 24 hours to get your loglines and/or synopses in for our alternative to Fever Pitch. Remember, the aliens are watching and will steal your ideas anyway people (unless you wear a colander on your head of course, like I do), so you might as well put them to good use and post them here in the comments section or email me them. All the loglines will be posted this Wednesday, July 4th and voting will begin in earnest. We will then all worship you if you win. How can you resist??? Also: the top ten per cent of The Bluecat Screenplay Competition have been announced. Because it was last week, the week of evil (and obviously nothing to do with my writing talent), none of the three scripts I entered made it. Oh Gordy Hoffman, how can you do this to me? You’re supposed to be my friend… Well, on Myspace anyway. Still, at least it proves there’s no nepotism involved! If you want to see the list of those who did make it, you can check it out here.

The lovely Chris, whom I read for recently, has this question:

Right now I’m re-writing an obscure 70’s Swedish revenge film. When it comes to the point where I want to register it and send it to a script doctor, do I need the original writer’s permission? Obviously, I will be acknowledging them on the front of the script, do you know if that’s ALL I have to do? Does the original writer’s/owner’s rights only come into it if the script is being optioned?

I read rewrites of other movies very infrequently; as far as I am aware, rewrites of this kind are *usually* commissioned by producers, as opposed to speculative in the way Chris describes. However, in short, I’m foxed. Has anyone out in www.land rewritten another movie speculatively, then got it optioned? If so, what did you do regarding that original writer’s rights? Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

And finally: it’s official. The word “naked” puts up your stats by approximately ten per cent as perverted Googlers search for naked stuff every single day. What I find more bizarre though is the average Googler who searches for naked stuff, finds this blog by accident – then stays for approximately 3.5 minutes!! Does this mean all the Googlers looking for naked stuff are secret screenwriters?? I’ll leave you with that thought.