Archives: Writing

I will update the rest of the blog at some point in the near future, but today has been too good to pass up the chance of blogging about it immediately.

As I’ve rather cryptically mentioned over the last couple of weeks I started writing a project that I’m really keen on. Many of you will now know the name of Chris Jones, a friend of mine who set out in 2007 to make an Oscar-winning short film. Many scoffed, but all were eating humble pie when he was short-listed down to the final 7. Now, that short (Gone Fishing, buy it here, it’s awesome) has landed Chris with all sorts of meetings and potential jobs as well as a top-flight manager Stateside.

Never one to re-invent the wheel when others have ploughed the furrow previously (nor, clearly, afraid to mix a metaphor), I thought I’d see if I could write something that might hit the same kind of notes and be the same kind of showcase as Gone Fishing has been for Chris.

So I started writing one night and came up with a story I liked. I sent it to my brother to look at and he liked it. More than that, he sent me 2 pages of notes to bring it up to scratch and then today we’ve spent the afternoon working through the script and really ironing out the detail of some very heavy military sequences.

What I have now is the first official draft of what I believe could become my calling card to the industry. *EGO ALERT, please look away now* I’ve known for a long time that I have the talent to succeed in this business, but I’ve never quite worked out how to convince other people of what I know I can do myself.*EGO OVER* This is it. This is the script that can change everything for me – I 100% believe that.

More than that, my brother likes it so much he’s putting the wheels into motion to get me the kind of support I could only dream of to help get this made. I can’t go into detail here as it’s in way to early a stage, but mark my words – keep your eyes out for Remembrance. It’s going to rock your socks.

I was up middlingly-early this morning to drop K at the station to go in for an exam – she’s all done with lectures for the year now, just exams and assignments left – then home to go through the minor email backlog that I’ve built up over the last two days.

That cleared, I jump in the car and head to Toddington to the house of one of the writers whose pieces I’m directing for the MKT Snippets showcase. We’d planned a read-through so we can all meet – KH (the writer), myself and the cast – and go through the script to polish it up. I was a little concerned about some of the dialogue but actually most of it read fine and the bits that didn’t KH was really open to changing and adapting into the right language for the characters as the actors felt it.

Lots of valuable work on one script done, I came home to try to collar the cast for the second piece, to discover that one of them had pulled out and the other we STILL hadn’t heard from. The last remaining cast member has been absolutely awesome in trying to find us replacements, but it’s not easy at such short notice. Here’s hoping.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spending tidying up the application and cracking on with the rewrites. I finished the major load of script work by the early evening, had a break for dinner and chill time, then went back in to redrafting one of my shorts and polishing another pair of scripts.

It was another late night/early morning finish, but I’m really happy with where I’ve got the scripts to. The short – the ambitious project I was talking about having written a couple of weeks ago – will need a further tweak for dialogue and authenticity, but I’m really excited by the whole thing now. I’ve got lost of projects which are really getting my creative juices flowing at the moment and it feels fantastic – I suddenly feel like I know what I’m doing and precisely where I want to go rather than sitting feeling open to all possibilities. I still want to work in multiple mediums, but I know what I want to do within them now, rather than having aspirations all over the place.

Now I just need to apply myself and push forward to get myself where I want to go. To borrow from a friend, “Onwards and upwards!”

It’s interesting how you end up perceiving time when your wake up calls move all over the place. I was up at 7am again today, which feels like an early start. When K is in the middle of a uni semester, though, it’s actually an hour-and-a-quarter’s lie in if we get to wake up at 7am. Strange.

Anyway, it was another early start this morning to get to the Grove for a short follow up to the first aid course in January to learn the specifics of paediatric first aid. We all expected the course to be a full day, but it turned out to be only a half-day, which was a nice surprise, although equally frustrating as I’d just paid £4 to park when I could have spent £1.50.

Still, post-course I headed straight home and settled down to my Arts Bursary application. MK Community Foundation offers an annual grant of £10,000 to an artist to help them develop their practice and create opportunities to earn their income from their art forms. The application calls for examples of your work, so while I had finished DVDs of my film work and some really nice photography to give them, I realised hastily that I needed to do a re-draft of one of my screenplays for my writing submission, as well as a polish on two others.

This afternoon, then, was dedicated to pushing on with the redrafting of the script. It has to be said there weren’t a huge number of wholesale changes to the script, but there was a lot of re-jigging and dialogue revision to be done. I worked on it solidly from 2pm to around 7pm with a couple of breaks, then settled on the sofa with K to chill and watch some TV.

When K called it a night I was back at the computer, getting to around halfway through the screenplay by the time I called it a night around 2am. Late night writing suits me, but it’s a pain in the proverbial if you’ve got things to do the next day. Luckily, I don’t have a heap of stuff on tomorrow, other than forging on through the redraft and application.

After a personally-enforced Easter away from all things work-related, a blissful 4 days off, I spent the large part of last night sitting awake in the lounge unable to sleep. Frustrating isn’t the word.

Still, having been mulling over a new short film project in my head for a little while, I finally managed to get it down on paper. A 13-page stream of constant writing from 3am-5am got me through the whole thing in one shot and I’m actually really proud of the result. I’ve got to assess the options with it now, but I’m likely to “go big” with it – watch this space for grand plans to follow.

In the rest of the world, I slept for a grand total of about 3 hours between 6am and 9am before taking K to the doc’s in Northampton where I intended to work while I waited but ended up listening to a Radio 4 doc on Tommy Cooper instead – it’s almost work! Also chatted to my bro about advising me on certain parts of the new script, so I’ll print him a copy and drop it to him tonight.

When we got home I took the camera kit down to a friend who’s looking to borrow it for a donation to LLTGL so he could do a camera test with his Red Rock 35mm lens adapter and we were all impressed with the results. While I was there I also caught up with the guy who was on board to produce my last short before the casting when tits-up and it fell through. We chatted about our respective current projects and got into a great creative groove, which was awesome. I’ve not really got many friends in the same fields as me – particularly filmmaking and writing – so it was really nice to have a chance to sit and bounce some ideas around with people who think on the same wavelength and are happy to brainstorm ideas without thoughts to practicalities and everything else.

When I got back it was into full helpful-boyfriend mode, helping K encode and burn a DVD for one of her Uni coursework pieces to be handed in tomorrow, before bathing, shaving and dressing to go out.

My bro wanted to thank us all as a family for keeping him semi-sane with gifts and letters while he was away, so he took the five of us (him, me, K and the ‘rents) out to Loch Fyne, the seafood and oyster restaurant in Woburn. I say “new” in the title as it’s not a place I’ve been before, but it’s a real family favourite for everyone else.

Unhappily, many of the best things on the menu are on the big list of Forbidden Items for me post-tx, including Oysters and Mussels, the latter being one of my absolute favourites. I did, however, enjoy a fantatic meal of Squid followed by Bream, the latter being served almost plain such was the quality of the fish and the cooking.

We may also have enjoyed the odd tipple or two.

Back home after dinner, I finished shouting at iMovie (piece of rubbish) and wishing I had taught K how to use Final Cut Pro to edit her vid on, then manage to get it burnt and give her essay a quick proof-reader’s once-over before printing, binding, filing and packing for the morning before bed.

I am now officially in recovery following my first full week’s work for, well, ages.

Although I’m frequently busying myself with many different things, most of the are done from home in the study and involve writing, planning or other such creative-type endeavours. This week has been all about graft. If you count workshopping as graft – it’s not building a house or anything, but it’s chuffing tiring.

Over the course of four days I’ve been working alongside my usual Youth Theatre co-conspirator with a group of 6-11 year-olds to teach them a little about the theatre, some performances skills and putting together a short performance with which to entertain their parents this afternoon at the en of thei week’s work.

I have to confess to having been mildly trepitdatious of the project before it began, having had such a hard 10-week term with this age group in my Tuesday sessions, but the week’s been a dream. The group are all fantastic, all keen and eager and willing to learn and absorb things.

We’ve got through so much stuff in the last four days – more, in fact than we got through in an entire term with their contemporaries up to now. They’ve been brilliant fun and really entertained us while we’ve worked with them. Being able to have a laugh with your groups is so important to creating a good working atmosphere in any theatrical workshop setting, whether it be Youth Theatre, short projects or professional rehearsals.

It’s been pretty tiring and a real test of my stamina, but I’ve impressed myself with my ability to stick with it all day. Most of the week, it’s really hit me on the way home and I’ve been a bit of a vegetable when I’ve got in, but I’ve absolutely loved being able to stay the course all day.

This was driven home to me more than ever at Holly’s Donor Drinks on Tuesday (read more about them here) I was chatting to Emily’s mum and pointing out the fact that I’d just done a full day’s work then steamed home to jump on a crappy train to bring myself down to London to spend all evening at a drinks reception, followed by a late train home that got me in just before 11pm for bed and up for work the next morning. That’s something I’d never have dreamed of being able to do.

It’s strange working with a group of young people and looking at them with their whole lives ahead of them thinking that I’m so amazingly blessed just to be in the same room as them. And all thanks to the generosity of my donor and their family for taking the time to talk about their wishes and sign the Organ Donor Register.

Up at 5.45am as per usual again today – it’s been nice to have a little while off early mornings. Got K to the station then despite the early wake-up I was feeling energised and motivated enough to sit and plough through a wapping 26 pages of the new screenplay, bringing me within about 10 pages of hitting my self-imposed 1st April deadline.

I’m really quite pleased with it all, too. It needs going over and refining, but all first drafts do. The crucial part is that a) I’ve got it down on paper how I saw it in my head and b) I’m actually pretty happy with what I’ve written. Just have to see if I can finish it off now.

The rest of the day was spent catching up on the weekend’s emails and other correspondence. I’d managed to keep away from the computer the whole time which was actually really refreshing. Saturday we chilled at home all day – another total and rare blessing – and then spent the evening with Gramps at the ‘rents. Sunday we chilled in the morning before I headed to work, then got dinner and chats with Gramps again before they leave tomorrow, although it wasn’t a late one as we were obviously both up early-doors tomorrow.

After all my brother’s exploits in the Sun last week (see this article and it’s related links. He’s the dude in the goggles in the pic, plus featured in many of the videos), I got a call from him this morning to let us know he’s on his way home this week.

While that sounds like fab news – and for us, it is – it’s actually really gutting for him. It seems he’s torn the ligaments in his ankle playing some post-ops rugby in camp and now can’t stay out there for the week or so of wrap-up session they’ve got and then their wee company/commando jolly to Cyprus on the way home. Instead, he’s trying to resist letting them put a cast on it and eyeing a spot on the AeroMed home this Thursday. Like I say, fab news, but gutting for him.

I’ve been kind of promising myself a day off for quite the little while now, but not until today did I actually give myself one. Acutally, it was entriely unintentional. I looked into my diary last night and realised I had nothing booked in for the day – in itself something really rather exceptional – and when I woke up this morning, perched with laptop on the sofa bed (on which I’m currently residing as K has a virus of some sort that is as-yet undiagnosed and we don’t want to run the risk of passing it on, which sucks big time) I thought to myself that if I didn’t have to be anywhere today and I didn’t have any deadlines today or tomorrow then what I should really do is just enjoy the emptiness for the day.

Which is just what I set about doing. I managed to spend *almost* the entire day sprawled on the sofa bed watching some old Season 2 Episodes of Entourage (my inspiration of choice at the moment), surfing the ‘net, spending way too much time on Facebook and writing 14 pages of my current script, which has taken me up to 59 pages now and just a little behind my target for getting a first draft done by 1 April.

I haven’t spent a day doing practically nothing for a really, really long time and it was actually completely awesome and much, much needed. It’s amazing how much you can relax and recharge with a day of not doing anything at all. That’s really what weekends should be about but is something both K and I seem to be 100% terribly at keeping clear and free to chill out. We keep promising that we’ll be better at marking things out, but it’s a habit we don’t seem to be able to break. People are so nice they keep asking us to do things. And we appear to be incapable of saying, “no”.

But that’s all for another day and another time. Right now, I still can’t sleep because I apparently didn’t do enough today – ironic, huh? – to send me to street straight away. So I’ve got Devil Wears Prada on in the background and trying to work out if that attitude would work for CF Talk. I’m thinking not…

It’s funny because I’ve always laughed off those “Superman” posts from the time of my transplant 16 months ago, but I’m starting to think there might be something in it. I can’t fly, I don’t have X-ray vision and my hair doens’t go all slicked down when I take my glasses off. Most of all, I always wear my underwear beneath my trousers. The operative part of that word being “under”. But he is from Krypton so he may not have realised that yet.

My similarity to Superman merely extends to the fact that I appear to be powered by the sun. I’m very environmentally friendly in that respect – I’m solar-powered, just like Supes.

Last week I had really reached the end of my body’s ability to cope with what I was putting it through. I was sleeping in the daytime for the first time since my CMV set-back in May last year and I couldn’t rouse myself to do anything unless it was fundamentally important to either eating, drinking or earning enough money to eat and drink. I was slow, lethargic and just down-right knackered.

This week, in addition to having a little less to do – certainly less running around – the sun’s been shining and my batteries have been well and truly recharged. It’s such a wonderful feeling. I don’t know if anyone else watched the Comic Relief Kilimanjaro trip, but in it Fearne Cotton hit the nail on the head when she said, “People should never underestimate how good it is to feel normal.” That’s what I’ve go back to this week.

It’s interesting because even when I’ve been running myself ragged over the previous few weeks (or more), I’ve been totally aware of how great it is to be doing it all. I’ve never once taken my ability to do all these things for granted and every day I thank my donor and their family for allowing me to do it. This week has been a reminder, though, that as much as I enjoy what I’ve been doing, I really do need to make sure I leave myself some “me time” – some time just to sit and chill out and enjoy the world around me.

And that’s what the sunshine is great for – it’s 100% guaranteed to make you look out of your window in the morning and smile. At least it is for me. Even waking up at 5.45am, just seeing the first rays of sunlight and walking out to the car at 6.45am in broad daylight makes the day easier. I just feel more happy, more alive, more free when I can see the sunshine out the window.

My energy has returned and I feel like I can conquer the world again. I’ve got work coming in and I’m on target to finish my new screenplay by April Fool’s Day (no joke), which is motivating and energising me any more.

There’s a huge amount to be said for positive mental attitude, which is why the sun and summer help improve life so much. As a good friend of mine is wont to say, “This is my life and I choose to love it”!

This is the first week in a while that I’ve not had things scheduled in my diary for every day of the week. It was a nice change to look in the diary and see some blank spaces.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got much of a break – I’ve been so busy that I’ve left a lot of things neglected and so I’ve been on an enforced desk-bound catch-up mission all week.

That said, I did manage to get to the cinema last night to catch Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s new film, which I completely loved. I don’t know quite what it is about Eastwood that hits me, but all of his recent stuff since Million Dollar Baby has really grabbed me and totally absorbed me. He’s a truly masterful filmmaker and Gran Torino is his best for a while. Changeling was good, but felt a little bloated and over-long to my tastes. GT on the other hand is perfectly weighted, plays out along an arc that’s at once predictable and surprising – not an easy thing to manage in today’s world of more and more savvy film-goers.

Speaking of filmmaking, things may be starting to look interesting from a freelance standpoint. I’ve got a meeting today to discuss a project in Northampton which stems from a networking session last week, plus I’m in talks to shoot a “making-of” doc for a low-budget British movie that’s gearing up for pre-production at the moment, which is very exciting.

I’ve also just started work on a new screenplay which is, I think, my most commercial spec script that I’ve written so far. I’ve set myself a deadline of 1 April to have a finished first draft, after which I’m going to do a polish on an old script and the new one and start to shop them around companies and agents to see if there’s any interest.

And in between all of that, I’ve got my last 2 talks of my marathon session of 4 in 3 weeks coming up this Saturday and next. I promise I’ll try to blog about them to let you know how they go, since the previous talks I seem to have managed to gloss over entirely on here. If I get half a minute I’ll try to pop back on and at least update the entries for last week’s talks so you know to whom and about what I was speaking.

Although I’ve been doing lots of, frankly, really cool stuff, I’ve actually not enjoyed being as busy as I have been. It’s been non-stop for almost a month and I haven’t had chance to do the things I want to do – I’ve always felt like I’m constantly moving from one thing to the next without pausing for breath, which is something I don’t really want to turn into a habit as this new life should be all about enjoying it all.

So here’s hoping I can be more disciplined about saying “yes” and “no” to things and focus more on what I see as the things I most want to pursue. Sooner or later I’m going to have to make a decision on what I most want to do with myself, and the sooner I do that, the better for everyone, I think.

This is about the first time I’ve had to sit and blog for over a week now (well, in fact, since I last updated). What with my bro jetting off to scarier climbs, K going back to Uni after a fitful snow-induced break right after getting back to Uni after an enormous Christmas break and my attempts to get not one but two new companies off the ground, it’s been a pretty busy time.

It’s been a great time, though – although I’ve been busy I’ve also had time to enjoy myself and have a lot of fun. Last weekend, for example, I took my more local Godson to Wendover Woods to do the high-ropes course which will remain nameless for my lack of desire to see them get any random, free, Google-based publicity.

After booking well in advance for one of the only days they’re open during winter, especially as a b’day pressie for li’l R, we hiked a mile up the hill into the woods only to discover that not only were they not open, they’d not even finished putting the course back together after the winter.

Not wanting to be deterred from the idea of a day of fun, we half-walked, half-skated around the woods for a while before drowning our sorrows in a big pile of chocolate at Rumsey’s, the awesome little Chocolaterie in Wendover village itself. In the evening, we carried on the frivolities at the Old Green Man in one of the Brickhills (I never know which one I’m in apart from Bow, but that’s just because a had a friend who lived there).

I’ve also been hard at work preparing a website for the new companies. LLTGL‘s resident IT-guru and website ubermeister Tom (of nowhereland fame) has been full of expertly-helpful ubertips to make it look shiny and cool, although now I have the problem of writing the copy to sell myself to people, which presents more of a challenge.

We also had a hugely successful tranche of Valentine’s Cake Bakes for LLTGL, which has been a great way to see all our supporters get truly energised about helping us out. Plus, let’s face it, everyone loves a bit of cake.

I’m now so tired from the early-starts and busy days that I’m struggling to recall all the things that I’ve done, but suffice it to say it’s been manic. And fun.

Oooh, and I finally – after over a decade of dreaming, hoping and wishing – got hold of my Equity card. I’m now a fully paid-up member of the only union that’s ever appealed to me. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be the pass-card to fame and fortune on the world stage like I used to believe it was, but hey – it’s a life goal realised.