I know...it's tempting...

When I'm not blogging, or when I'm not putting videos on YouTube, I'm still writing movie-and-TV scripts. And nine years into my second wind as a writer, I'm still plugging away...even at a time when artificial intelligence has made tremendous strides.

AI has been able to do more things for people than it could even two years ago. And one of those things is...it can, with just the right prompts, write an entire television script or a screenplay.

Yes...it's tempting to go to ChatGPT or Gemini or some other source and have it turn out a script.

And I'm not going to go there.

Now...I actually feel more comfortable feeding a screenplay of mine (or my one teleplay) through a site like https://screenplayiq.com or https://ScriptReader.ai and getting back an analysis. Last year, I started turning to ScreenplayIQ and ScriptReader out of curiosity...and to get one perspective or two as to whether I'm on the right track in this journey I'm on.

Of the 31 scripts I've written (or revised from my first try at screenwriting...the 1980-1994 period), all but three have earned at least one "recommend" from ScriptReader.

The other three picked up "considers" across the board.

I don't mind using the pitch trailers I get from ScreenplayIQ...and, in fact, I've been able to upload them to YouTube. (They don't look too bad...even with those little or not-so-little quirks.)

Both sites have helped me make better written pitches: ScriptReader and ScreenplayIQ shine at identifying script themes, script moods, and character arcs.

That all said...there's still absolutely NOTHING like the TV-and-movie-script evaluations (paid or not) you can get from flesh-and-blood human beings. The AI evaluations help...but the final word comes from scripthousing sites like Stage 32 and Script Revolution.

If anything I've ever written resonates with people on Script Rev and/or Stage 32, I'm happy.

And if you've ever read any script I've written...thanks so very much for putting my stuff to the test.

Two milestones!

Within the last five weeks, two unexpected things happened in my online life.

I first got on YouTube in 2009; four years later, I started putting my own videos there...most of them turned out to be music videos (olay, me doing the music on most of them).

Nothing spectacular...nothing viral. For the next ten years, I was content with having 40-50 subscribers to my YouTube channel.

All this time, I'd wanted to digitize my VHS tapes...tons and tons of VHS tapes. And do it without tying up my TV set.

So...this past March, I sent in for a VHS-to-DVD converter in order to do the work at my computer. Then I started going through my VHS videocassettes to see which old TV shows I'd taped would be suitable to put on YouTube.

Well, late last month, after putting up six telecasts from the 1990s (one a rerun of a 1970s show), I received an email from YouTube saying I'd reached a hundred subscribers.

No, it's not a thousand...but I'm still very happy with a hundred.

In October 2019 (nine months after I joined Stage 32), I joined CJ Walley's outstanding screenwriting/TV writing platform, Script Revolution. (The philosophy was: "It really shouldn't hurt to get as many eyeballs on these scripts I've written as possible.")

At the time I joined up, I'd written four feature-length screenplays. I'm now up to 27 full-length scripts and a TV pilot.

I'm proud to follow 298 other Script Revolution writers...and I'm humbled to say that earlier this week, I gained my 200th follower.

Thank you so very much, YouTube subscribers and Script Revolution followers.

And I'm going to continue to try my best to come through for you.