nickelodeon writing fellowship – my first week

my first week at nickelodeon is already over! it was a full week. here’s a quick rundown:

when we got there on monday morning, the other 2 fellows and i had a meeting with karen, the director of the fellowship. she welcomed us, told us what to expect, and gave us gifts of the book bird by bird.

we had to start writing our bios; one to verbally pitch in meetings, and one to go on the website.

we had individual meetings with karen and got feedback on the scripts we originally submitted. she gave me great notes on my 30 rock spec. the revision is due monday.

we have to write a new spec script, and had to randomly pick the name of a show out of a box. i picked cougar town. we’re on a 6 week schedule to write it, plus 1 week to research. i’ve never seen the show so i’m going to start by watching all of the episodes (season 2 just started) and will read the pilot script i found online.

we had a meeting with last year’s fellows. they shared their experience with us and gave us great advice. it’s going to be a busy year, a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. they all said it went by really fast!

we had an amazing class with fred rubin. fred taught us his technique for brainstorming ideas and we tried it out. very cool. if you can take a class with fred, do it!

we had our official orientation, and learned how awesome nickelodeon was, and how it fit into the viacom family.

we had a meeting with rich magallanes. i learned so much in one hour, it was incredible.

friday was halloween at nick. we had the costume contest at lunch, and then the studio becomes a giant haunted house for kids at 4pm.

over the weekend, i signed up for dish network. i’ve just been using rabbit ears, but now that television is my profession, i need to watch as much as i can. i mean seriously, i have to watch tv for work. how awesome is that?!