Another writing project has come up, which is making life interesting – if chaotic.
As I plan to be attending the London Screenwriting Festival at the end of October, it only seems right to enter their competition. I’ve got the idea, and I’ve started writing it. I’ve got a month to complete it – which should be enough time, I hope.
Currently I’m about a third of the way through the plan, so it’s on schedule. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
A while back, someone (I can’t now remember who) drew my attention to the “My One Word” screenwriting competition, which really appealed to me.
MY ONE WORD is inspired by the proverb “a picture is worth a thousand words” and we want to inspire you to create fresh, powerful stories using images and just one word.
MY ONE WORD focuses the power of visual storytelling by creating a series of short movies with only one word. If you love to write, this is your chance to show off your talents!
All told, I’ve submitted two pieces to this competition- I don’t know if either one will get anywhere, but it’s worth at least a try.
The first one uses just one word, but used several times. It’s a bit derivative, but the idea’s there and would (I think) work.
The second one uses just one word. That’s it. The rest of the story is visual.
In their own ways I’m pleased with both submissions. They’re very different – which I’m pleased about – and (I hope) different enough to stand out. Of course on that score I could be completely talking out of my backside. We’ll see.
More importantly, it means I’ve completed two short screenplay things. Very short, admittedly – about three mins each – but completed, submitted, and out in the Big Wide World. Should make life interesting.
Despite currently being in the world of the “Properly Employed”, I still frequent some of the forums for freelancers and the like. If nothing else it’s useful for seeing if there’s other small projects etc. coming up that I can also do for a bit of money.
Among other things on these forums, there are sometimes people trying to get started in freelancing, or pimp for more work.
Yesterday had one of these examples, and it just had to be written about.
The entire content of the message was :
Hey pple? I need a article writing job, smbdy help
Now that really is a spectacular example of how not to get any work whatsoever through a freelancer’s forum. Or indeed through any forum.
In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s the single most awesome example I’ve ever seen. If anyone were to give this bell-end a job, they’d entirely deserve what they got.
The next two weeks are – to say the least – pretty damn busy.
Among other things (and not all at the same time, obviously) it will involve :
- Giving (another) statement to police re Emma Ward
- Driving down to Berkshire to put Hound in Kennels
- Driving to Peterborough to collect Herself’s brother
- A big birthday party for Herself’s grandfather
- Driving down to Berkshire to collect Hound from kennels
- Finishing off a couple of short script ideas
- Seeing Pink’s gig in Ipswich
There’s also a number of work-related things in the same timescale, which isn’t helping much.
So all told, a fairly busy couple of weeks…
A while back I wrote about Emma Ward, who’s been missing from the next village for about two months now. The police have now charged her husband (ex-husband? Widower? What’s the term for someone who’s suspected of killing their wife?) with murder, even though as yet they haven’t found her body. I guess there’s enough other evidence for them to know it’s been done, just not where she’s been disposed of.
Anyway, the police are now doing door-to-doors for “correlation”, just to find out if anything else has been seen, who’s visited the house, who knows the Wards etc. etc. We got visited yesterday as part of this, and had (well, we probably could’ve refused, but it would’ve looked even dodgier) to give all our information.
In a way it’s quite interesting really – the sheer amount of information that they take, and particularly information about us. Supposedly it’s all locked into a database just for this case (and when was the last time you trusted anyone who says “Oh, the information’s only accessible to this investigation”?) and is ‘only’ used for correlation – for example if other people said they’d seen someone approximating my description walking past while another suspicious vehicle was toodling along, they’d be able to come back and ask me more about that particular time/incident.
It’s all done through HOLMES (or more technically HOLMES II) which is apparently a very good bit of database and data-mining kit.
I don’t know if anything will come of it all – I doubt we ever will, unless they find Emma Ward’s body – but it’s been an interesting insight into the entire “murder investigation” thing.
It’s now May – and just how the tits did that happen? – and Script Frenzy is over.
I didn’t complete it – in many ways I didn’t expect to – but I did start it, and the idea’s good enough that I want to go on with it, even without the impetus of Script Frenzy.
Indeed I’m hoping to get more of it written while we’re on holiday next week. That’s the plan, anyway.
