Oh, and here's some money for what you wrote...

So the big day arrived. Amy and I sat by the telephone, waiting for our conference call with Mimi and Doug at Front Row Media in Los Angeles. The phone rang... And we were off.

Just as we'd felt a connection with Mimi just in our e-mail exchanges, we quickly felt a similar comfortable sensibility while talking with them both on the phone. It was pretty clear that they "got" our script and appreciated its quirks.

We talked about our characters like they were real people. We talked about plots. We talked about possibilities.

What I remember most clearly was Doug saying, "Well, we take on only about five projects at a time. We had availability for one more, and there was a stack of about six scripts on Mimi's desk that we were considering. Tough luck for the other five--she read yours first, and said none of the others matched up in quality..."

The conversation lasted maybe thirty minutes. It concluded with the news that they'd be sending us a contract to sign, and once that happened, they'd begin taking our script around to meetings with producers, studios, networks, etc.

It was one of those scenarios where you understand all THE WORDS that somebody is saying, but you can't quite wrap your brain around the idea that these words relate to something that you have actually written. Surely, there must be a mistake. Surely these people aren't talking about taking OUR SCRIPT to meetings with network honchos and studio bigwigs..?

Even as that kind of "unreality" swirled around us, the contract pages arrived over the fax machine. Wow. It was true. We were about to sign a contract and receive a check from Front Row Media, granting them exclusive rights to market our script.

We were--and even now, I can't quite believe it--now professional screenwriters! Somebody had paid us for something we wrote!

NEXT: What do you do while you play the waiting game?

Los Angeles comes calling...

Shame on me for being away so long. It won't happen again! So, where we were?

Oh, yeah... "Interesting things" were starting to happen on the site where we'd posted a synopsis of our pilot script. People were looking at it. Some people were looking at it quite often.

Now, Amy can give you a better idea of how this whole displaying-our-script thing works. As far as the technical aspect of all this goes, I'm basically just along for the ride.

But our synopsis was getting quite a few "look-sees" and every time one of these occurred, we were notified. And in a lot of cases, we knew who was doing the looking. I don't mean to be coy, but I'm deliberately not naming names (some of which you would certainly recognize) because I'm not sure about the legalities of making this public information.

But as I said, people were looking, and a few people came back and looked again and again. That really got us curious...

A few people/companies contacted us about reading the entire script. One, a production company based out of Los Angeles, really "clicked" with us. One of the partners in the firm, a woman I'll call "Mimi" (mostly because that really is her name, and in case she's reading this, then, Hi, Mimi!!!) e-mailed Amy.

Amy forwarded the e-mail Mimi had sent to me, and we were both struck by how "sympatico" we felt with this woman, based entirely on the short message she sent. We could tell she shared the same humorous sensibilities as we do, and there was just something about the way she approached us that felt "right."

So we allowed her and her partner (who I'm going to call "Doug," because....well, yeah, you get the idea. And if you're reading this, also, Doug, then Hi to you, too!) access to our full script.

Then we did what we had gotten really good at doing... Sitting back and waiting. Trying to keep our hopes and our expectations realistic. Trying to convince ourselves that a rejection or another of those ever-popular "never hear back from them again" scenarios wouldn't crush our little hearts and break our little spirits.

We'd half-convinced ourselves that we'd be okay with rejection. We actually started to PLAN for it. Then Mimi had to go and upset the apple cart by getting back in touch and saying that, well, she kinda liked our script, and could we arrange a time to have a conference call with her office?

Just imagine how disappointed we were not to be disappointed this time.

NEXT TIME: We talk to Mimi and Doug on the telephone.