PicoBlog

Hi friends, Everyone wants their book to get turned into a movie. And lots (so it seems) of books get turned into movies, and/or they get “optioned,” which is a word you’ve probably heard if you spend anytime around publishing news/writers on twitter. But $5 says you don’t know what it means. I really didn’t understand what it meant until I actually went through the process with one of my clients!

I have a friend who worked for a major movie studio where his job was to organize all the red carpet movie premieres and star-studded after-parties. Most of them were in Hollywood, but there were plenty in New York, where I lived. So often when he came to New York, if the guest list wasn’t already full, he would invite me to attend. I don’t know how many premieres I attended.

Last week, Rev. Al Sharpton caused some titters to erupt across the internet by his commentary on the Trump indictment over the Jan. 6th issue. “One day our children’s children will read American history,” Sharpton said, “and can you imagine our reading that James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government so they could stay in power?” As many noted, Sharpton apparently failed to get the memo that such is exactly what James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did when they helped found our nation.

Today, my social media feeds have been filled with authors upset about Prosecraft, a website from a software company called Shaxpir (yes pronounced Shakespeare) that claims to use A.I. to analyze novels. As far as I can tell, the company is minor and the project probably got little attention before today. Their blog hasn’t been updated since 2019. That isn’t to say authors are wrong to be upset. Prosecraft clearly used authors works without permission or payment.

This post is part of a series devoted to exploring what I am calling “The Long Eighties”. This is the extended decade between 1979 to 1993, which, as I read it, marked the last days of analog culture and our full transition to a fully digital society. You can read the first post here. — ap ONE DAY WHEN I WAS ELEVEN I was watching as my father flipped through a consumer catalogue, and at one point he stopped and pointed to a small, black lozenge that looked like a cheap typewriter.

If you’ve been paying attention over the past four years, especially to a popular strain of centrist and center-left political analysis, you’ve probably run across a lament or two over the pitiable state of our “institutions.” Maybe the concern du jour is instead the breakdown of our “norms.” In this strain of often-breathless discourse, “institutions” and “norms” serve as shorthand for the guardrails and guideposts that shape the behavior of actors within the peculiar American political system.

Last week I wrote some thoughts on managing my energy better at work, through the lens of leading and lagging indicators. When I was writing that post—judging by the amount of times I had to check and recheck the definitions—I realised that I often get them muddled up. So, what better way of making sure I understand something than writing about it for a large audience? Here we go… Q: What are leading and lagging indicators?

I’m in the middle of writing a long thing on the NFL. It wasn’t meant to be a Long Thing, but now it is, in part because there’s a lot to say about the NFL as a “rich text” as the academics say. And by rich text I mean rich text of American toxic masculinity, pretty much! I’ve had an uneasy feeling about The Most Powerful Woman in the World ending her year of total world dominance by falling into the arms of the NFL, aka Bastion of American Male Violence.

Hi and welcome! My name is Meg Ruocco and I’m a second-year Screenwriting MFA Candidate at Feirstein School of Cinema in New York City. When I’m not staring numbly at my computer screen waiting for screenplay inspiration to strike, I like to chat. I chat with my roommates, my friends, my family, and I chat with myself sitting in front of the mirror when I’m home alone. Most of my 20s has been spent chatting about what it means to be a fully-realized person, and how I can get all my “good healing” in before my brain freezes over at age 25.