This has been one of my mantras for many years as a writer. I used to think that "growing older but not up" [thank you Jimmy Buffett] was a cool thing to say and practice in my writing and attitude. But, in the wake of COVID and the divided world we live in, I have come to the conclusion that our young adults and younger youth need to grow up and take charge with their beliefs, desires, and wants for the planet they are going to inhabit and make it a better place with their actions, stories, and values since my generation has failed on many levels. My writing partner son enlightened me to this need to grow up in a pitch we are doing for a new project about young people taking charge.

In the COVID haze of another New Year's beginning and facing another wave of mutant variants crippling our world, I have been thinking about how to begin this one with a positive tone and to reinforce that silver lining we all look for in any disaster or trying times.

In 2021 production in TV, Streamers, and Flim ALL re-booted in a big way. Development spiked as well, although not to pre-pandemic levels.

Film festivals rebounded, as did script competitions and masterclasses and workshops around the world, both virtual and live.

The HartChart had a banner year since the launch of the online story mapping tool in 2016.

We are proud to have launched 2 sessions of a 7-week training program in Spanish this year, created and guided by Jose T. Videla from Santiago, Chile. Professional Writers participated in the 7-week online live course from Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico, Spain, Uruguay, and the United States.

The reviews and feedback from the participants have been overwhelmingly positive, prompting us to explore expanding the training course to France, Italy, and possibly China.

Let me speak about Jose for a moment -- he attended one of my online workshops in 2020. I began to hear from him regularly with the same email. "I love the HartChart app, but I can make it better." Over and over again Jose continued to pester me and no matter what I replied or did not reply, he did not give up.

Finally, one of Jose's annoying emails came with several attachments

All very professional images of the chart app with his improvements and tutorials on how to implement and use them.

I was blown away. This was better and more user-friendly and added much-needed improvements.

Which brings us to the "never give up" portion of this New Year's memo. Not only did Jose not give up, but because of his expertise and his understanding of the value of the charting tool to your storytelling, we have developed the expanded HartChart for 2021 to include TV and Streaming additions which will allow you to chart each episode individually and also chart each episode on a chart for an entire season session, so you can navigate an entire season from a character drive point of view,

Essentially be your own showrunner and writer’s room or share with your partners in your writing room to break and shape the series episode by episode.

I am extremely pleased to announce the expanded “HartChart Script to Stream” edition, which will be available in early 2022 for existing subscribers and new subscribers.

The completely rebuilt and improved HartChart tool is being managed and completed by an exceptional development team out of Chile headed by Franco Margozinni and his company "ForEach".

We will keep you posted as to the launch date. Please enjoy the preview included prepared by Jose Videla, my Latin American HartChart partner, and thank him for never giving up.

And thank you, Layne, for the good works this year and to Nancy, for the continued support, and to Alex Ferrari and www.IndieFilm Hustle.com for continuing to support the HartChart and masterclasses.