11 posts tagged “dog tees”

I'm so thrilled!!

 I've finally started to really put myself out there with my dog tees, I've been sending links to my dog blog  and samples of my tees out and it's actually paying off! This has been a huge step for me this year, with my writing and with my other creative pursuits, like Rattle and Bark. I'm not expecting overnight success with either, but it's important that I start putting myself out there so that good things can happen.

Check out my press from these two blogs: NYC Dog Blog and Gotham Unleashed

I've been in a bit of a funk lately - sort of re-evaluating where I am in my life - career, goals, writing, etc. and feeling a little down about things. But, thanks to some great friends and an amazing boyfriend I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Here are some observations on the way out.

1. Those Best Buy commercials where the salesmen talk about how great they are for installing people's TV's depress me - I don't want to see a commercial about how important TV is to people.

2. My boyfriend has a theory that the occasional roach that appears on it's back in my bathtub are coming from a hole in wall right above the edge of my bathtub, so that it hits the rim then slides down and ends up on its back. I think this is way less exciting than my theory that they come out of the drain but have a weird disease that makes them have a seizure and flip over onto their backs. I think I've been watching too much 'House.'

3. There is a serious hole in my grown up wardrobe: blouses. Let's get some of those. 

4. I'm going to cut out booze for all of next week - I just want to see how it makes me feel. I've been going out a lot and I find that if I have more than one drink my motivation to get up for the gym the next morning is shot. Plus, who needs the extra calories?

5.  I really like printing - i've been doing a lot of experiments with linoleum blocks, carving rubber stamps and printing with stencils. I totally dig it. Check out some of my work so far at my Rattle and Bark blog: http://rattleandbark.blogspot.com/

6. I'm not as bad at my job as I think I am sometimes. Sometimes, I'm even good at it.

7. I need to get better at self promoting. This is something I hate about trying to start my business. I was telling my boyfriend that I didn't want to take the dog tees into stores, that I just want to sell them on my own, but that's not entirely true, it's really that I'm scared to do that. I hate admiting that, and this is something I really want to get over this year. You never totally get over fear, but I have to take a few stabs at it.  

First of all, just so I don't bury the lead, the dog site is up!!!

www.rattleandbark.com

Take a look! Please let me know what you think... there are still things I want to improve, but please forward to all your small-dog-having buddies!

And now, in other news...

It's been a really really strange few weeks. I haven't written because things have felt so up in the air. A few weeks ago my boss called me into her office and let me know that I might be getting laid off. She didn't know for sure, and she was really sorry, I was a great employee, yadda yadda yadda. But she wanted to look out for me, and for me to look out for myself. She even set me up with another job interview. Being at work was really hard after that. When things were good, it was hard because I felt like I was going to be out of there at any minute. When things were bad it sucked because it felt pointless.

But it made me re-evaluate things. I really want to have my dog tee business, but it's not off the ground yet. I really want to be a writer but the book's not done yet and I don't have an agent. My job has been to make other people's creative visions happen. And sometimes I get to interject some of my own creativity - sometimes it's a collaboration with the photographers, but sometimes it's not and I just feel like an administrator. So then I started thinking that this was a really good thing. I made some phone calls, I got some opportunities lined up for freelancing part time while I did my own thing.

And then my boss called today - from her home, she's on vacation right now. She told me my job was safe, and wanted to make sure I hadn't found anyting else yet. I'm having mixed emotions. On the one hand, I feel like the girl on "America's Next Top Model" who Tyra tells she's got to cut someone... and then lowers her head and whispers, "Congratulations, you are still in the running for becoming America's next top model." I want to flap my hands a little and tear up.  I want to tell Tyra that I'm going to get my act together and she doesn't have to worry about me being a diva when it comes to body paint anymore.

But then there's the other part of me that's dissapointed, that feels like this window just closed and this is where I'm going to be forever, making other people's visions come to life.

I need to find a middle ground with this - I know what I want to do, adn I can still do it. I don't have to be unemployed to get my book published or my dog site out to the word. And when I'm ready to go out on my own, I'll know it. I won't need an economic crisis to give me that final push.

This book - Save the Cat! is fantastic - I originally got it for working on my screenplay, but as with most screenwriting books I think it's just a great tool in general - buy it if only for the "Beat Sheet" which is basically an outline that makes you break down your story idea. If you hate anything that looks anything like a formula, you might hate the beat sheet at first because it makes you take your story through traditional plot points. But for me this just forces me to clarify in a few sentences what happens and when. It's not so much about plot as it is about your main character's emotional arc. These aren't really plot points, but more like points where you take your character & story's temperature and see where you're at and what needs to happen next. I.E. if things are really heated in one scene that heat has to go somewhere, you have to see the cause and effect of things.

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

Blake Snyder

I finished the first draft of my screenplay over the weekend, something that you would think would make me positively elated. I even gave it to my friend, the one who is my partner in this project and will be handling the producing side of things once it gets going. Anyway, you would think that all this would make me feel great, but somehow I just feel weird about it. While you're working on a project it's still under your control. You can make changes, you can work on it, you can not. You can have a great day with it, a bad day with it, it's like a companion. And then when you finish it, even a draft, it's like it's gone. And there's nothing you can do. You just have to wait while other people read it and judge it. Man, no wonder it's so hard to finish things - there's this slight feeling of satisfaction when you do, but if you're someone without an agent, without serious prospects for the project it just feels like it's being release into the ether....

Wohoo! Good thing I decided to leave for work at 10 am today... I was just about to leave when the UPS guy rang my bell. I've never been so happy to see one of those guys. I'm going away for a wedding this weekend and was worried I would miss the delivery... The UPS guy was in a great mood too. I hate it when you're really excited about a package and then you open the door and the guy basically drop kicks it to you. Not this guy. If this had been a musical we would have started dancing and singing or something. The bugs from my apartment would even have joined in, like the kitchen scene from "The Muppets Take Manhattan." 

I had the best sleep last night - I was totally exhausted - I'd been in this chilled out fog all morning from yoga, then went into a cranky fog later in the afternoon and was just tired by the end of the day. I had wine and cheese with friends who just got engaged and I tried to get their dog Scout to fit into one of my dog tees. Scout was totally into it and really tried to fit into the shirt - he was surprisingly still while I tried to put it on him, but it was just too small. He kept sniffing it after I pulled it off him though and I felt like he was sort of like one of those models who tries to squeeze into the sample sizes after they've been on a serious champagne and birthday cake binge... (this is what I imagine models do when they do on binges. It's totaly what I would do). It was kind of a bummer that Scout didn't fit into the shirt, but I do have two ofther dogs whose owners have volunteered their dogs. And one of these dogs is so ridiculously cute. She is like the Shawn Johnson of pugs. 

I had a GREAT meeting with a friend who runs her own PR company last night to talk about the dog tees. She's amazing. Obviously really really good at what she does. Right off the bat, as soon as I told her about the conept and the look she had a million great ideas about how to promote and the tees and me : ) This is exactly what I need, someone who can think along these lines for me. One of the scariest things about trying to start my own business is feeling like I have to wear all these different hats - designer, writer, business person, accountant, marketing and PR person. It's nice to know that I can tap into the knowledge of someone else. It's also nice to know that there are all these people out there who are willing to help me, friends offering their dogs for models, my boyfriend taking the time to design my site, and now this friend offering to help me with the PR side of things. 

I went running this morning. I mean to run to my gym and then have a workout there - a little treadmill running, a little weight lifting, a little comparing myself to everyone else there and seeing how I fell short. But it was so weirdly nice out early today - purple clouds moving fast across the sky and a little humid chill in the air like right before a storm, so I ended up just going for a run in my neighborhood and then doing weights when I got home. I'm a little frustrated with my running, I wish I had more endurance, more muscle, more speed. But of course the only way to get those things is with practice. I'm going to try going for a run every morning this week. Just to see what it feels like. 

On the writing front: For some reason Laundromats can be amazing places for getting writing done. My laundromat is 2 blocks away - just far enough that it doesn't make sense to leave my clothes there while they're washing and then come back to put them in the dryer. So I just sit there and bring a notepad and whatever project I'm currently working on. Because it's not a coffee shop I don't feel self-conscious - like one of those pretentious people working on their screenplay at Starbucks. There's also a time limit - the wash cycle and then the dry cycle - so it's somehow easier to focus. Plus there is no shortage of interesting characters if you're looking for one - the 70 yr old woman selling the detergent with the 3" long gold fingernails, the little boy running around pretending to shoot all the washing machines, the guy in the cheap suit flirtatiously offering all the women fabric softener.

So needless to say I got a lot done at the laundromat. I set myself the simple goal of trying to put together an outline of the rest of the screenplay I'm working on and with each scene write at least one line of dialog. One line of course turned into two, and three and all of a sudden I've got 7 notebook pages full. I may not use all of it, but I've gotten my brain, and my pen,wrapped around the rest of what I need to do.

I feel like with these writing projects, both the novel and the screenplay, and even the short stories that I write, I've been shying away from actually finishing them because I'm terrified of the next step. I'm terrified to take my work out into the world - to agents, to editors, to anyone. What if I put it out there and it's just not good enough? Lately though this idea is less scary to me than the idea of never finishing anything, never putting anything out there.

On the dog tees front: I have two amazing dog models lined up. The tees get here on the 28th, so I'll set up my photo shoots with the dogs after that. Also, the web design book that I ordered, Learning Web Design, has arrived! Now I just need to read it... and understand it...     

One more thing, To the bugs in my apartment: I'm calling my landlord. It may be unsportsman like, but you also may be an alien species and I really don't have time to deal with you.                                                                                                                                     

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics