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Write.

Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite.

That’s what the life of a screenwriter is all about.

I’m rewriting one of my scripts these days. I was able to put it away for a few weeks, work on something else and then come back to the screenplay. Now that I’ve got some distance from it, it doesn’t quite feel like « my work » anymore, which makes it easier to be objective about what needs to be changed. And of course now I want to change everything!

I am very much looking forward to working on a new project that is not based on a true story. It’s a tough balance between staying true to the root of the story – the reason why it was interesting in the first place – and creating enough drama and tension to make a compelling movie. I was told that the most interesting characters in my screenplay are the ones that I have completely made up. I guess it’s because I have felt more freedom while creating them.

It’s a strange situation to have to do a lot of research for a movie only to realize that you need to forget most of it in order to get to the heart of the story. The more factual I get, the farther away I stray for the main theme and core emotions. The problem is that the story is centered around technology, a subject where facts matter and I know that the main audience for this film (young men into tech stuff) will look for every single little mistake, every event that veered from the truth.

It’s a bit silly how the movie industry develops interest for « based on a true story » subjects, only to radically change most of the real events and characters in order to create a more marketable product. Do we truly care, as an audience, if a movie we watch is based on a true story or not, when we know that film, by nature, will not show us what « really » happened? Does it make us want to see a movie more if the initial story was true?

I guess we do care. I can think of quite a few films that I watched because I was interested in the true stories behind them. Hotel Rwanda was one. Shattered Glass was another film I enjoyed, and knowing that the filmmaker was very concerned about staying close to the true events was a big part of my appreciation of the movie.

I have to forget about all of these concerns, shut off the voices of the critics (mostly in my head) and make the story as strong and as compelling as it can be. It’s exciting. Exhausting. It’s been hard to focus on anything else.

Actually, it’s more than a nose job: my blog just got facial reconstructive surgery. My template was acting up in the last few weeks and on a whim, I decided to abandon it and pick one of the templates offered by Blogger. It’s not personalized much but it will do until I convince a Web designer of talent to give me a more original look.

A few things were lost in the process, including some older archives (that can be fixed but it will have to wait) and the most recent comments. I apologize if you left me a comment this week and it’s gone.

Please do let me know if anything looks funny in your browser. (No, my photo doesn’t count. My face is too big to fit in a small frame like that.)

I couldn’t make it to the BlogHer conference this weekend in Santa Clara, California, so I tried to participate from a distance. There was a live chat during the conference but unfortunately the chat was somewhat disconnected from the actual sessions and most chat participants were not in the room with the speakers. I tried to read the live blogs as I was chatting, while checking out photos of the panels on Flickr but it quickly became tiresome and confusing. A live broadcast from the conference would have been much better and I heard that the organizers will try to provide it next year. You’ve got to start somewhere and the future is promising.

So it wasn’t quite like being there but still, I could sense the excitement through my high speed connection! I’ve read some good accounts of the conference, one of them by a brave man who attended. It seems like there was a big sense of frustration with the male dominance over the various « bloggers A-lists », especially Technorati’s. Hey girls, try blogging in another language than English and see your readership and potential of recognition drop way, way down!

So was there truly a need to dedicate a conference to the subject of blogging AND women bloggers? The issue is still open for debate but it seems like all participants, male and female, loved the energy in the place and the deeper sense of sharing information. There was a big turnout of « newbies » and I guess it was to be expected. Most regular conferences about blogging are very tech oriented and a higher percentage of men – geeky men – attends them, which could be off-putting for a lot of beginners.

Every time I attend a conference, especially a conference that has to do with a Web related subject, I’m always amazed to see how few women speakers there are. Participants at the BlogHer conference made the same observation.

One of the most interesting initiative that has come out of the conference is the creation of a Wiki for speakers. Women and men who have an area of expertise and presenting skills are encouraged to add their names to a bank of available speakers. Mary Hodder, who developed the Wiki, said:

« I’ve seeded it with about 50 women, but I want men and women to put themselves up. The goal is to show conference organizers that when they are looking to have a panel or talk on an area that there are many folks to choose from. I will be adding more men, but this effort comes from a need we discussed at Blogher, where organizers often say they can’t think of any women who are expert enough to talk, or they just chose those they could find in their usual circles. »