Welcome Australians! Today you lucky folk get to watch a lunar eclipse in first person. (The rest of us can see it live on google, 11am-3pm pacific time: http://www.youtube.com/google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/watch-lunar-eclipse-from-anywhere.html )

And if you Aussies are too awake after the lunar excitement to get to sleep, Samuel Jackson can help out with a bedtime story: http://fuckyeahalbuquerque.tumblr.com/post/6531324324/go-the-fuck-to-sleep-adam-mansbach-narrated

Darn it, Atlanta! You beat me to the Samuel L. Jackson thing, scheduled to post at 11AM PDT. Man, you are good!

Haha, no, just five minutes to kill here and there, which I manage to fill with silly (nothing silly about it for Mansbach, actual movie deal for his well expressed tale). With whole 30 minutes to fill at appt today, I got to read first chapter of Lumet's Making Movies, now that was some real pleasure, thank you so much for that book lead.

This may be better SJ link: http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/6544565542/ihc-after-dark-samuel-l-jackson-reads-go-the-fuck-to

Aussie living in Solomon Islands here, so a big South Pacific shout out to Scott and the other readers!

I've been religiously reading this site for the last year, and my writing has improved dramatically for it. So, thank you Scott and thank you to all the other contributors to this site.

This place is about as far from Hollywood as it gets - there isn't even a single cinema in this country. But thanks to GITS, I can always feel some sort of connection to what's going on.

ps. about 10 years ago in Vanuatu I saw a blood red lunar eclipse. Simply amazing - didn't know what it was at the time... seriously thought it may have been a weird blimp or even a UFO. Even the local dogs were scared. Haha!

So, yes, I got up to watch the eclipse, best views here in the West, apparently, but I was robbed of the moment. Must have been that new character I've been thinking about, Ash Cloud (a bit of a drifter, thief, and very good at melting into the background).

I'm sorry, I've looked at the Go The Fuck To Sleep thing, and I have some difficulty finding the same level of humour as seems apparent in American tastes. Maybe we Australians are a bit over all he mystery around getting kids to sleep and being very fucking pissed off when they don't. Sam Jackson's read is nice, but the poetry is a bit ordinary, and somehow the 'high concept' so vaunted here escapes me as being different enough to warrant the hype.

Anyway, good luck to the authors/publishers et al - I only wish I had have recognised it as being a fantastic 'high concept' when I first said it twelve years ago with number two daughter. And I said it often. Fortunately we had Charlie Daniels, a bunch of Disney songs, Eagles, Lee Roy Parnell and others to do the job.

So I now have a new mantra - Get The Fuck To Work.

@Ben: I have met a lot of writers around the world via my teaching and mentoring online, and of course GITS, but this is a first: A writer living in the Solomon Islands! Whatever the traditional island greeting is, I'm sending that your way! How do you watch movies there? Can you get Netflix?

Unsolicited advice: You have something perhaps no other screenwriter in the world has: Direct experience of life and the specific subculture on the Solomon Islands. If you can create a story at least involving something of that, Hollywood is a sucker for new and different story venues, even writers from places other than UCLA, USC, etc.

All the best in your creative efforts!

@Kevin: Your point is a valid one and is a big reason why Hollywood may be tilting away from as many comedy movies as they have typically produced in the past. The CW is that comedy doesn't travel as well internationally as action, thriller, etc, which are more visual and less reliant on dialogue, jokes, etc. Now that 65% of theatrical B.O. revenues derive from international markets, Hwood has clearly decided to do what it must to service those markets first.

But look at it this way: The post did let you come up with a fantastic writing mantra! Get the ____ to Work!

And to help you out, I'm sending a gust of creative juju your way. Whoosh!!!

Hi Scott and GITS readers. Long time reader (ok, maybe a year?), first time poster, Dan here from Wellington, New Zealand. What a terrific site; a joy to find honest, generous, USEFUL advice and inspiration on screenwriting - without it simply being a front for selling something or collection of URLs. I've been sending the link to all my TV / film colleagues and had nothing but gratitude back. Thanks - you're much appreciated.

Scott, You are too kind.

Currently working on final edit process of new novel about Magic critters in dark deep south West Australian forest. Due for publishing new year. Have a musical theatre version of it in the pipeline as well.

And got a politico/thriller steaming set in Fremantle. Hopefully get that finished by the end of the year as well.

Are these settings different enough, do you think, Scott?

@Dan: Thanks for the kind words. I put many hours of my day into this site, so it's great to hear it resonates with folks, even from around the world. Good luck with your writing!

GITS is on my daily blog roll, I am amazed at the amount of great info Scott regularly shares with the world. I think I tend to web-stalk Scott more often than he'd be comfortable with if he knew. He's helped me solve a few difficulties in my current novel (and the proposal for the next two). And one of these days when I get organised I'm definitely taking his courses. As for the Lunar eclipse, it was cloudy, got up at 3am to watch it and the moon was a no-show.

@Natalie: I love hearing from international GITS followers. And I love even more hearing from novelists. This year for some reason, I've gotten a lot of emails from novelists, even playwrights about how they get something out of this site. While I'm focused on screenwriting, at the end of the day, writing is writing. So glad to hear you're benefiting from your time here. And good to hear you're being prolific with your writing (one novel down, two to go). Here's me sending some good writing karma your way! Whoosh!

P.S.: I look forward to the chance to work with you in an online class.