With the U.S. April 15th Federal tax return filing deadline less than two weeks away, I thought I would mention the appropriately titled How to Write Your Script and Deduct the Expenses Off Your Tax Returns.

This DVD, part of Creative Screenwriting’s Screenwriting Expo Seminar Series, features Scott Rubenstein explaining what writers and fledgling screenwriters can deduct, and how you can show the tax man that your writing is a profession and not a just a hobby.

Rubenstein, a partner at L.A. Tax Services - who has also written for Star Trek: The Next Generation and MacGyver by the way - debunks a lot of myths and covers the basic deductions anyone who is self-employed should know about: home office expenses, meals and entertainment, research, and travel.

And while not one hundred percent applicable to Canadian writers such as myself, this seminar presents a few bold arguments that might satisfy the CRA (who are expecting your returns by April 30th).

Nevertheless, this DVD is a great primer for new writers and anyone who is venturing into home-based business territory. You can get more info about it here.

I’ve been taking a Podcasting for Writers class at UCLA (Extension) over the last ten weeks as part of the TV writing certificate I am pursuing there online. It’s a great course that not only covers the basics of developing and marketing a podcast, but goes into great detail about the scary technical stuff that might otherwise make one think twice about podcasting.

I highly recommend it. Podcasting is another (overlooked?) medium writers can use to not only promote themselves or their websites, but create fresh and original content for: interview and variety shows, sketch comedy, radio dramas, etc.

As part of the course, I had to put together a podcast, too, and created a companion piece for this website. You can listen to my final project, SopHok - The Podcast, by clicking here.

I love using my MacBook Pro while working outdoors, but its underside does get hot sometimes, especially when the outside temperature peaks. As such, I have to always make sure to keep it raised up a bit, in order to keep it cool.

Normally, I use Rain Design’s wonderful iLap at my desk, which features an angled anodized aluminum base to support a laptop computer and keep it cool. However, while this ($45 to $63) base sure is stylish, I find it a little too bulky to fit into my laptop bag at times, so it usually just stays on my desk.

Recently, I came up with a more cost effective and pretty ingenious (I think) solution to keep my laptop cool when I found myself without a much-needed cooling base while traveling.

I simply purchased a cooling rack – the kind used to cool off cookies, pies, and cakes – and set my laptop on that.

While this three dollar purchase gets me a number of odd looks when I first take it out of my laptop bag – it’s thin enough to fit behind my laptop and add extra support to it – people around me quickly see the “clever logic” behind it, and often ask me for the “name of the specialty store” where I found this “chrome device”, so they can buy one.

They’re usually even more surprised when I tell them they can find a number of sizes wherever kitchen gadgets and baking equipment is sold, or buy a pair at Amazon for about six bucks. Plus, you can use it to make cookies.

If you’re working on a screenplay or teleplay that features an evil genius as an antagonist, you might want to visit Peter Anspach’s Evil Overlord Inc. for a few tips that will give your villain a fighting chance, and bust some common clichés in the process.

Anspach’s hilarious list – which originated on an early Internet mailing back in 1994 – looks at the common mistakes evil geniuses and overlords make when setting up their secret hideout and capturing their nemesis.

The list includes such gems as:

* I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

* I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

* My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

* I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

* If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

There’s 100 clever observations in all, but only breaking one of these clichés in your story is bound to add some originality to it.

“You only get one life so you might as well make it a happy one, and that’s why I tend to just jump into things. I’m sort of a fearless idiot that way.” — Nia Vardalos

Screenwriter David Goyer discusses his attraction to darker themes and conflicted characters in The Dialogue: Learning from the Masters, a DVD I recently picked up given I really enjoyed his work on films such as Blade and the very creepy Dark City.

While this series seems to be aimed at more novice writers, there are still some notable tidbits, especially if you’re planning on writing a comic book adaptation:

“You have to be very careful about what you choose to change and not change. The (films in this genre that haven’t been) successful veer away too much from the source material,” says Goyer, who adds that one can get away with a lot more by adapting lesser-known properties, such as Blade.

Goyer also talks about his experiences working on a number of blockbusters (Batman Begins), as well as a some of the more forgettable projects (Death Warrant, Demonic Toys) he took on to break into this business early on in his career.

He also discusses the importance of creating your own discipline (when it comes to finding a fixed time to write), the advantages of cannibalizing your own unproduced work for inclusion into a current project, and the need to outline:

“The few times I’ve tried to dive in I’ve become hopelessly lost around page 40 and just fall into despair. I usually write a 30-page outline.”

Phil Rosenthal recounts the creation of Everybody Loves Raymond, and how he got his start in the TV business in You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom.

While this book is both a personal memoir and a look back at every season of this successful sitcom, and fans of the show will enjoy its many behind-the-scenes anecdotes, it also contains a number of valuable tips for aspiring (and professional) TV writers.

For instance, Rosenthal credits “specificity” for the success of his show: “I didn’t know it then, but I learned that this was the universal element. What I stumbled on was that each of our lives deals in specifics, and we relate to that specificity in other people’s lives. For example, people tell me that they still can’t give a gift to their parents without it blowing up in their faces. And, even crazier, they’ve had that exact experience with their parents and the Fruit-Of-The-Month club. So I’m very happy that so many people are out of their minds, and we can all laugh, or cry, together.”

He also believes that reality shows have become popular at the expense of comedies because a lot of sitcoms are not writing real people: “The characters are not believable as people. So we turn on a reality show and we say, ‘That character is funny!’ That’s a real person that we recognize and relate to, because we understand what it’s like to be a real person. So when we watch a sitcom and the characters speak like nothing on the planet, and don’t act human, and they’re just cardboard cutouts of human beings, I’d rather watch the reality show. Even though it’s not reality, the people on them remind me of people.”