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  • Writer's pictureJenny Waldo

Developing

Updated: Aug 25, 2021

When I started this website, it was on the heels of my divorce and everything felt like it was changing. Ten years later, the whirlwind has died down, but the awareness of constant change remains.


A snap shot in time: I've just completed work on my debut feature film, Acid Test! As a lifelong goal, it feels like this has taken forever to be realized and yet now that I'm on the other side of that mountain, I can't quite believe that it's over. And of course, my mind is racing to "what's next!"


Creativity can feel like a sickness. The brain never shuts off. New ideas take hold and demand attention. Hours get lost to thinking and crafting. Opportunities shine through like pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.


If anyone's looking for advice, I use deadlines for grants, workshops, labs, initiatives, to spearhead productivity. I join writing groups or social media groups to connect, get feedback. and collaborate. If the momentum dies, I look for another.


Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of down time where I feel like I should be doing more. I'm not one of those people that's constantly on. I tend to have long periods of quiet followed by bursts of activity. I like to call it percolating.


So what is next? I've been developing another feature film about a woman in Baytown, TX who fought City Hall to use a brightly painted purple Mustang as a flower planter outside her Auto Body Repair Shop. Based on a true story and set in the early 1990s, it feels like the perfect segue from Acid Test. Only it's not my story I'm telling this time. This script was just selected as a Quarterfinalist for the 2021 Nicholl Fellowship!

I shot a concept trailer that we called "Junk Car" that you can watch here:



I'm drafting the script for it, finding my way through. It's an interesting mix of true-life story and imaginative conjecture.


I've also dipped my toe into television writing. It's so so different, to pace a story over the course of several episodes. I got to the end of my first pilot and thought "I need to keep writing!" I wanted to see the story through to the end. It's all very very new, but I have a sci-fi idea that I presented a scene from a while back at a table read.



And I just pitched to my friend another series following a young woman trying to find herself in a foreign country after the death of her mother. Haven't started writing that one, and it's currently Untitled, but it's been percolating for a long long time.


All the while my days are busy with 4 teenagers, a husband, being a full-time filmmaking instructor at a local community college...But writing and creating is what I do to stay sane, even when it's driving me crazy.





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