Archives: Writing

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.

My alarm wakes me just after 7am, so I tell it to go away for a while and eventually rouse myself around 7.30ish, where upon I take my Monday morning tablet (the weekly not-so-nice one) and head into work.

The great thing about being a freelancer and working for yourself is that “going back to work” entails turning the computer on and checking emails. It’s a hard life.

I sit at my desk and I rapidly fly through 6 pages of my new script and, today’s quota reached, I put it away for now – silly as it sounds, it’s important not to over-stretch yourself when writing. Meet your quota, whatever you set for yourself, but if it’s not flowing, don’t force it just to get more pages done.

With that out the way, I get on with catching up on the world outside by checking my usual list of industry websites to get the skinny on all the Christmas/New Year deals and rumours.

Once I’m all caught up, I hit my Live Life Then Give Life email account and immediately log in to sad news. Luckily, no one has died (as this is the kind of sad news we get all too often at LLTGL), but I can’t really go into detail about it at the moment as it’s still being resolved.

Once I’m caught up on the not-as-many emails as I’d expected, I set about the rest of my day, although it’s now so long ago, I’m struggling to remember what I did, so suffice it to say I was busy for nearly all of the day on various bits and pieces of work-related gumf.

Today’s been a productive day (alongside yesterday) in getting started on a new writing project whilst polishing an old one.

A previous screenplay of mine on which I’ve been sitting for a while has come back out of the draw for a once-over.  I’m impressed actually with how good it is, but far too aware of it’s limitations.  When K first read it, she gave me some great notes on it, which I’m now about to implement, along with a whole raft of changes I’ve identified for myself in my latest read through.

At the same time, I’ve been hit by one of those rare ideas that comes into your head almost fully-formed.  It’s a complicated story (or rather group of stories) that will take some time to work into a coherent structure, but I’m really pleased with the concept, which I think could be really powerful.  And, without being too pessimistic, cheap to shoot as well.

On top of those, I also wrote a short film script this morning as well, which has been floating around in my head for far too long and finally found itself a place on the hard-drive of my computer.  It’s actually a really simple story and a really easy shoot, so I’m in the process of working out if there’s any way I can fit it in before Christmas.  I guess as a little present to myself or something.  It would be nice, but it does involve finding a cast of one guy and one girl who are free for a day to shoot in MK sometime next week (possibly Thursday 18th), so we’ll see what happens.  I’m not getting over-excited about it yet, but it could be cool if it comes off.

So no one actually explained to me that having your shoulder sliced open actually causes a modicum of pain.  Who’da thought?

Most of this week since Wednesday has thus been a write-off, what with the lack of ability to move around and use the arm in question and the slow-down caused by the Tramadol to eliminate the pain.  Still, I have to say it’s been nice to actually have some enforced down-time and not spend most of the days at my desk.

The time off has actually helped me to develop a new idea I’ve had for a screenplay I want to start work on, which is always welcome.  I’ve actually had the idea running around my head for a while, but it’s just been cementing itself a little more in my brain to the point where I feel I can start shaping it into something that can work.

With regards to anything else in life at the moment, I don’t really have a lot to say after three or four days of doing nothing, so this is – I guess – a fairly pointless blog, but is probably more of an attempt to atone for my lack of blogging over the previous couple of weeks.

Oh, and if you’re a Batman fan and you fancy a giggle, check these guys out.  Very funny.

A couple of weeks agao I started a new writing project with a friend – S of S&S form this blog – launching from an idea written by her other half (erm… S from S&S from this blog…) back in his college days, which is now so long ago we’re all starting to feel a little too old for our liking.

The original script, scribbled out in a school exercise book, has the seeds of a great story in the comedy-horror genre made famous by Shaun of the Dead but plied equally well by recent Brit successes like The Cottage.

We’ve spent the last month or so between the two of us, with input from SB (I suppose the second initial will have to come into it now, since they’re becoming two separate people…) to make sure we weren’t veering too far away from his original intentions, have been hashing out a more detailed and sustainable plot-line and making the characters more rounded to help us create the right level of comedy.

It’s quite a tough project because the premise is pretty ludicrous, but the idea is cracking, which means that it’s really important to get all the “other” elements of the script right so that the audience feels able to buy in to the main idea running through it.  If the comedy is too outlandish, the audience won’t want to go with us, so it’s important that we keep it a close character comedy with just a single, slighty crazy comic element in the middle of the mix.

Today we had our second full-on writing day together.  Both of us had completed short sections of 7-10 pages each and we got our heads together to see how they were working alongside each other and that we were flowing down the same lines according to the plan we’d drawn up.  It’s all looking really good and we spent a bit of time going over the action and dialogue of the sequences we’ve written and seeing if and how it affects the stuff we’re going on to do next.

We’ve come away nicely re-energised for the next stint of writing and have given ourselves another two weeks to get the next pieces written up before we meet again to see how we’re progressing.  If we can keep the pace we’re on at the moment, we should have a completed first draft by the end of November, which would be really, really cool.

Interestingly, just the process of writing with someone else and bouncing ideas around has taught me a huge amount about how to better develop characters and story-arcs, something I think that some of my writing has lacked in the past.  It’s also seemed to click my brain back into “writer’s mode” and set me off thinking about a whole load of other projects I’d like to get cracking on.  I’m not about to try writing two first drafts at the same time, but with ideas fermenting in my head, I think this could be quite a fertile time for my creativity, which is a really nice feeling.