After not hearing from Paul regarding John's reaction to the writers' fees, I wrote him an e-mail to convey my thoughts and to see what he thinks about the situation. Essentially, I hoped that he wasn't closed-door about it, and had some room to maneuver.

He does.

Excellent. Paul's experience in the film biz has been such that he's become jaded and cynical, so his initial reaction to John was that he's trying to lowball us. While that may be true, my unspoiled self wants to give this a chance. (If it were just me, I'd go for the WGA minimum, but this whole partnership issue throws a kink in that...)

On my husband's advice, I've since worked a pricing scheme that will allow John to become comfortable with us as writers (and therefore test our skills), and possibly allow us to go up to our original asking price. I think it's a good, fair deal, so we'll see how it goes. We're still waiting to get the comps from John, so until then it's back to the waiting game.

In other news, I found out that the short script I wrote for another independent director (this was back in July) is still alive. The director had a big job change over the last few months (it's never easy for two companies to merge), but now he's back in the "scouting for a location" mode again. Maybe this, too, will come to fruition!