I’ve decided to turn the phrase “stressed beyond belief” to “coping with a wealth of opportunities”.  That sounds so much more positive and lovely! 🙂  I haven’t had time to blog in a few weeks, time has passed so fast it’s unimaginable that I just took that trip to New Media Expo and now I’m packing my bags for PAX in Seattle!  So crazy! Seeing a Twitter by Jenwriter tonight about how she was looking forward to a blog entry by me was what spurred me to write, so thanks Jen!  I can’t guarantee quality, but I can deliver quantity ONE BLOG ENTRY! 🙂

I have been totally overwhelmed this past week.  So overwhelmed I haven’t even had a chance to TOUCH a video game, gasp!  Not only did I have to juggle an unexpected commercial job (shooting from 7pm to 7am for two days in a row!) but I’ve been scrambling  to get Guild Season 2 jump started.  It was an executive decision by me and my producer Kim Evey to start planning to shoot at least a few episodes by end of September.  I looked at the calendar a few weeks ago and was like, “It’s been WAY too long, I’m not waiting anymore. We have to shoot!”  And with that, we started getting ready for pre-production.  We have been waiting all summer to meet the right funding partner to enable us to shoot and pay people.  Unfortunately, people are slow to let go of their money, haha.  Not to say we haven’t gotten offers, but none of them has felt right to me yet.  The New Media landscape is so crazy right now, and every deal is different and has it’s advantages and disadvantages.  Kim and I decided a while ago to try and retain the rights to our show, and that has definitely ruled out some avenues of funding, but we know the right opportunity will present itself in time, we just have to keep plugging away.  We still have a few interesting possibilities looming on the horizon, but now we’re working with a set goal to shoot in September no matter what and it makes me feel so empowered to have that line drawn in the sand.   The lesson I’ve learning the last year or so is that waiting on other people to solve my problems is never going to accomplish anything and I just had to remind myself of that to get the ball rolling.

Not having the script totally done has been the main stress because it takes me long uninterrupted blocks of time to write.  I’m also developing a script with Machinima.com at the same time that is also fun, but another time-block-requirerer.  The challenge for me is somehow letting emails and other correspondence  go rather than automatically responding and spending 3-4 hours a day on messaging, which has been the case the past 3 weeks or so.   Video Game Addict => Email addict anyone?

I saw an interesting article on Tim Street’s Blog the other day about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.  He has a clever way of dealing with emails:  He send people a link to this video:

I love it because he’s so polite and he obviously cares that people take time out to contact him but he simply can’t respond very quickly and he wants people to know that.  I don’t get nearly as much mail as him, but to make time to finish this script AND get everything else done in my life, ruthless triage must be done, at least for the next 4 weeks.  I missed a dear friend’s baby shower due to Comicon and utter chaos, and it was kind of a wake-up call.  I think I may be copying Senor Vaynerchuk! 🙂

I’m proud to say that the effort to delegate is now a goal of mine for the next month.  We put a post on the Guild website last week asking for volunteers for the show and had to take it down again the next day due to the overwhelming response!  All THOSE emails have ironically taken a lot of hours to deal with and respond to, haha, but now we have a great group of people we know we can call on to help us, and as for set PA’s:  We could staff a Michael Bay film with the # of volunteers on the list!!!  Thank you all who offered their time and services, it means so much to us.

Anyway, enough whining about how hard my life is!  I’m leaving tomorrow for Seattle, and if you’re at Penny Arcade Expo please stop by and meet me and Zaboo and Kim Evey my producing partner!  We’ll be selling and signing DVDs and screening the first season of The Guild on the big screen, yay!!  Check out The Guild site for details on signings and the Friday night screening!

I leave you with an interview I did with Pop17.  It was quite fun and was done at New Media Expo!