Writing

Life’s been a bit quiet round here of late, what with one thing and another.

One of the bits that’s reduced my writing time here has been the Short Script Competition for the London Screenwriter’s Festival , whose deadline was today. (In a couple of hours, in fact)

I’d had an idea for the project, which I wrote in CeltX (again) and wanted to get finished and submitted. And today I got it all done, dusted and submitted.

I don’t know how it’ll do – no idea at all, to be honest – but regardless, I’m happy with having completed it and got it in for the deadline. Even if nothing at all comes of it, it’s another idea completed, written, and submitted.

That makes it the second script (admittedly, short script) completed and submitted to competitions this year. My writing plan for 2010 was to get at least one – and hopefully more – bits written, and I’ve done that. I’m not going to stop there- there’s still a lot to write and a lot of ideas in my head – but at least I’m doing it now. It’s taken far too long to get to this point.


Writing Project – LSF

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.


One Word

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.


Hectic Fortnight

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…


Giving Details

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.


Writing Plans

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.


Writing, Script Frenzy, Etc

While I don’t look like I’ll be anywhere near completing the Script Frenzy project of 100 pages of script in April, I have at least started off an idea.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on it here, but even being able to have started it is (in some ways at least) more than I actually expected to happen.

I don’t know whether it’s related to the taking of the anti-depressants – I don’t think it has as they’re not really supposed to have built up to a usable/viable level til somewhere in the middle of next week – but equally they may have worked faster, or it may be a psychosomatic thingummywhatsit. Whatever though, I actually did sit down and write the first couple of pages.

It’s a start.

I do plan to continue with it, even once the Script Frenzy thing has closed up shop for another year. What I wanted was an excuse to start – no, not an excuse, a reason to start – writing something.  I don’t know yet whether I’ll complete it – the idea’s a good one, but it might fizzle out, I have to be honest. Still, we’ll see.

And I’d rather have something started than for it all to still be just in my head. So I’m measuring little successes along the way. And for now that’s enough, when combined with all the other stuff that’s going on.