Yesterday was Day 0.

Today was my first full day of classes. It was okay. In the morning, we talked story structure with a guy named Brian, who has done a lot of work in film. We went over all the stuff that is now general knowledge about what, according to Brian, is now the global standard for storytelling. Establish routine, inciting incident, increasing stakes and conflict, etc etc.

The pure artist in me frowns at the fact that apparently storytelling has be reduced to a standardized formula. Where’s the fun in that?

But the side of me that just wants to be able to get work when I am done in 48 weeks is happy that there is now this common language that provides structure in the same way that the form of a sonnet or haiku provides structure, but doesn’t really restrict what you can do all that much.

At least, not if you are creative enough to make it work.

While he explained this stuff, he also told us stories of what it was like to be a working screenwriter, and wow, it sounded tough. All these people lining up to contribute their “input” with “notes” that you are, I assume, meant to implement, at least some of the time. And so many rewrites!

But honestly, I am pretty sure that, at least at first, I would just be glad to be getting work, and would do whatever the morons wanted me to do to my script for as long as they kept on paying me. Once I have built up enough money, I can make my own movies with green screen and such.

Then again, maybe I will skip the Hollywood step and do my own stuff while I am a VFS student and have access to their facilities and equipment. I glimpsed a room at 420 Homer that was entirely green screen. Walls, ceiling, floor. Imagine what I could do in there with the right people!

Namely, technical people. I can write it and I can direct it, and help with the design aspects of implementation a little. Heck, I can even edit the darn thing, as long as it’s not too complicated. But what I can’t do is lighting, sound, and special effects.

So I must go a-wandering in the two campi some time, in search of technical types! Come, join my mad coterie of lyrical lunatics and jovial jesters! We’re going to make WILD ART!

Makes me sound almost chaotic, really. Well, I have my moments.

In the afternoon, we had TV Genre with Rick Drew, and he and I hit it off immediately. I showed up for class early and chose a seat near him, because deep down I am a teacher’s pet and being near the teacher makes me feel safe.

He mentioned that he was developing a miniseries based on the time Buffalo Bill took his western adventure show to England. And as it turns out, I know enough about that subject to ask pertinent and intelligent questions about his project, and just like that, the ice was broken, or at least dented.

Then later, I got up and closed a curtain when it was time to watch a movie, and he seemed to appreciate that.

But the most amazing thing happened when he said something about one of his first jobs in TV was as a writer for one of the worst sitcoms of all time, and jokingly I said “Check It Out?”

AND IT WAS. He was amazed. So was I. He really was a writer for Check It Out! I thought I was making a joke about an obscure Canadian sitcom and I absolutely nailed it. Wow.

When he asked me how I knew, I said “Well, when you put ‘terrible sitcom’ and ‘Canadian’ together…… ”

Hardly a logically complete answer, I admit. What about Mosquito Lake and Schitt’s Creek and basically every other Canadian sitcom that wasn’t Corner Gas?

After the morning class, I was really hoping that it would turn out that TV writing had less bullshit involved that writing for film. But then we watched this documentary about the making of an episode of Homicide : Life On The Street, which followed this one writer named Yakumura (Japanese guy with a total Baltimore accent) from the idea for the episode (the episode is called “The Accident” if you are curious) all the way to it being a finished episode, and wow was it a lot of work. Rick said it’s not uncommon for the writers to work 80 to 100 hours a weeks while the show is in production. And it involved almost as many corporate animals coming to pee in your pool as well.

And I honestly, I was starting to wonder what the hell I’d gotten myself into, and wondering if I should have stuck with being a science fiction writer. Novelists don’t have to put up with that kind of crap!

But of course, they do, at least in traditional publishing.

Anyhow, that was just the voice of feeling a tad overwhelmed by it all on my first real day of classes. I am sure I will get with the flow and my future brilliant career as a mover and shaker in the television biz, trading heavily on my wit, charm, and talent, will seem at least a little more realistic soonishly.

I will probably need to get more paper for my binders and start behaving like an actual student soon. I was foolishly hoping that maybe this would be such a radical, hands-on form of education that it would not require note taking and so on. But nerp, some of it will be required.

Besides, taking notes gives me something to do with my excess energies and helps me pay attention.

Spent part of lunch break chatting with my fellow students in the break room/kitchen. Well, mostly this one chick talked. But the important thing was that I participated and was social. There was even a moment of truth where someone saw me looking in on the kitchen conversation and said “Come on in, we have room!”.

For a moment, I was all “Well, I didn’t mean to, uh…. ” but then I overcame that and said “OK”.

And it was quite nice!

So I am making little bitty baby steps towards fixing my social damage and becoming the me that I know is straining to get out.

Soon, big fella. Soon.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.