Someone read it

I sent the PDF on a Tuesday after work, after renaming the file twice and staring at the title page long enough to start doubting the title, which is usually when I either rewrite the first scene or submit so I can stop touching it. Undefined Forest sat in a folder I would not show anyone, a short in Courier 12 with the usual superstitions about scene headings and whether the last line was doing any work. Software is honest about rejection, you compile, it fails, you know which line, you fix it. A screenplay just leaves. You don’t get a stack trace from a festival, just silence and then an email. Cal Film Festival picked it for 2026. Los Angeles, shorts and scripts, curated online. The bio on my sites has always been some version of “builds software and writes about systems,” which is true, and a convenient way of not saying I write screenplays. That sentence looks unserious next to compilers and a job that already takes the whole day.