by thedreamer -

Oh My Gosh It Was Yesterday!

If that phrase is familiar to you… then you know the panic I am feeling right now.

Back in October, I managed to miss a required civics course. I then was lucky enough to have someone reply to my emails and tell me when the next one would be. February. Well, I wouldn’t be there. So… June. 15. At 8am. Which for SOME reason I put in my calendar on June 16. How on earth did this happen? Because it was in there for several months. And I got a paper in the mail with June 15 on it. And I look at my calendar frequently. And I found and looked at the paper just the other day. How did it not register?

double-facepalm1

 

Until this morning at 6:30am.

by thedreamer -

One Week, One Short Film. Now What?

Yeah, we did it. I knew we would. No biggy. 😉

This morning the final cut (or… final cut for the festival) got uploaded to the 168 servers and all that was left for me to do was convince the printer to scan 26 pages of release forms for me. After a software uninstall and reinstall, we came to an understanding.

But yeah, I have another short film under my belt! In a couple of months a longer “director’s cut” will be finished and put on DVD, most likely after the festival (so we can mention what awards we won or were nominated for on the sleeve, ya know?).

Our work is not finished, though, and it’s time to answer some questions.

Will we submit it to other festivals after 168?

Will our Making Of film get finished in time for next week’s deadline?

How soon can we get a teaser online?

Where will we screen it for the cast and crew?

And what is my next project?

by thedreamer -

Steps to a Better Blog

Well, I have been keeping up with this blog for about five months now, yay me! I’m still feeling my way around, and finding my groove, and I thought I’d share a little bit of the behind the scenes thinking.

My blog is different.

It’s not just a blog about acting.

It’s not just a blog about travel, or Paris.

It’s not just a blog about adventuring, or volunteering or vegan food or anything.

It’s everything.

itsruchir@yahoo.com

So I’ve had a hard time finding a “niche” for myself and feeling confident in how to move forward. Because yes, somehow, I want this blog to make money. I’m a wandering creative and you know, I’d like to live in a nice apartment, buy a nice house, not be in debt, all those lovely things that everyone else wants, too. But I also want my freedom. Another funny balancing act in progress.

I’ve been gathering information on blogging, and observing what other people are doing, and trying to apply it to my own efforts. But I feel like I need a bit of accountability. Sure, I’m a member of 3 websites that should provide some of that, but they’re private and I want to make this public.

So. Steps I’ve taken this week.

1. I’ve signed up for Google Analytics. I thought I had before, but I guess I didn’t complete the steps. So now I can start tracking the traffic to my site. I need to learn how to find information for each individual page and see what’s popular, because the next step would be to analyse that myself and make sure future posts are something you’re interested in!

2. Blogging! I’m trying to post regularly, though I don’t have a schedule for it. I’m afraid to make it into “work” yet. I do have many things I want to blog about right now, I just haven’t had the time. But I know it’s important to blog regularly. Otherwise you might think I’ve died, and unsubscribe. And that would be sad.

My next steps:

1. I need to review and post affiliate links for products and ebooks that I’ve purchased that are related to the things I talk about here. I know affiliate products can be a large part of a bloggers income, and I’m hoping you guys trust my opinion enough to check out things that I’m excited about (and maybe you are too). I need to figure out the best way to organize these product reviews, too.

2. Search the web for other people like me. Travelers, actresses, vegans. Get connected. I need to expand my network.

3. Videos. I still want to interview people who have used social media to kickstart their creative careers. Right now I’m thinking more about film and music, and I have a few people in mind to contact. I need to get on that. I need to come up with a title for the series, and a tagline. Something to keep it focused. Then I need to contact people. I should probably start another YouTube channel for it then as well.

So there are plenty of things I need to do, and these are only a few. But I’m starting there.

If you have a blog, what are you doing to get it out there, build traffic, monetize? I’d love your suggestions!

by thedreamer -

Step by Step

kitty cage

So this week, I’m in L.A. I’ll be here until April, though the cat is back here for good, and that return trip to me looks like the edge of a cliff, the edge of the world, which I can’t see beyond. But for now, I’m good. And although my cat seems angry at me, he’ll be fine too. Better than he would be in France.

What I wanted to write about today is goals and steps towards goals. It’s something I need to work on, I’m not very good at. I have pretty vague goals, or maybe even specific goals (like work with Joss Whedon) but no clue about the steps one takes to reach the goals. So I end up kind of running around doing whatever I can think of. I still don’t know how to walk in a straight line towards a goal. But last Saturday was kind of a lesson in goals.