Well, it's been a long time since I last post here.
I've been going through a lot of soul searching recently. The last couple of months have contained a few large-scale rejections, and not many encouraging signs. I've been sick a couple of times and have found it more and more difficult to write.
I don't know what I'm going to do next. I feel utterly disconnected from the words I try to write. From the things I want to make. From the person I want to be.
What I've been trying to do - especially in the short term, that is - to write and make short films and to market myself as a fiction director - has failed. It appears to me with complete clarity that I'll never impress a single person in this world - nor make anything that represents what I think - by trying to calculatedly make a product that tries to hit the buttons of people I don't even know.
I've been trying to second-guess people, schemes, competitions and film festivals for so long, I can't remember the kind of films I want to make any more, I can no long remember what it is I want to say about the world or how I want to say it. I can't even look at the films I've made without wondering who the person is who made them - it surely can't be me? Would I watch or enjoy these things? How did this happen?
At the moment I've got a couple of ideas - and I've been trying to force myself to write more of my Crusader script (barely 3 pages in 2 weeks) - wherever I cast my nets, they come up empty.
I don't know how long I can last out here in this empty place alone, with nothing on the horizon and only my inadequacies for company.
I want to get back to where I was at the beginning of the year, writing steadily, blogging steadily. I just don't know if what I produce is worth the effort - very few people seem to think so - and whether I'm worthy of thinking of myself as a writer.
Sunday 26 July 2009
Thursday 28 May 2009
Day 80
11:50
Well, I'm back. I don't know how long for, I won't be foolish enough to pretend that it will last for long - but for the first time in a month, I've got the time to write this blog and hopefully work on a bit of writing, so damn it, that's what I'm going to do.
Right after I've gone to the post office.
12:18
Sent off my invoice for the last month's work. I've been working pretty much like a dog over the last five weeks since I last blogged - shooting and cutting a TV advert and then shooting, cutting and doing the effects for a corporate video. In the couple of days I had off, I wrote an internet drama series pitch for a company - about Christian teens. That's not really within my sphere of knowledge so we'll have to wait and see how it goes... I'd be surprised if it goes much further.
My projects have been lying in tatters for nearly two months... Pilgrim (the crusader script), Cult (the play), Jack in a Box (the TV pilot), the next two series of the internet drama Paperjail, too...
I don't even know where I'm going to start. Since it's for a pal of mine, and it's reasonably well structured, I'll probably start with Jack in a Box, and move on from there.
Wish me luck.
15:37
This is what I hate about writing. Half of every fucking day I write, I end up staring into space, trying to work out what the word is for something you have seen a million times but don't know the word for.
You know how in bars, libraries and police stations, or anywhere that necessitates working behind a long desk, there's a hinged bit - like a gate - you flip over to get in or out of it? What the fuck do you call that? Why have I been working fruitlessly on finding this one word for about half an hour?
I hate this shit.
01:15
Ashamed to say I cashed out kind of early today - I tried banging my head against the computer until about 8pm but then had to go out food shopping, cook, and now it's late.
So, pretty much a bust today. I went over the plans for the screenplay, then hashed out about a scene and a half. It's one of those endlessly crisscrossing scenes that spools mismatched jigsaw bits out of your head and you spend hours trying to fit them together with some semblance of order and pace. I'll see if it goes any better tomorrow.
word count: about 500
hours writing: 1.5
Well, I'm back. I don't know how long for, I won't be foolish enough to pretend that it will last for long - but for the first time in a month, I've got the time to write this blog and hopefully work on a bit of writing, so damn it, that's what I'm going to do.
Right after I've gone to the post office.
12:18
Sent off my invoice for the last month's work. I've been working pretty much like a dog over the last five weeks since I last blogged - shooting and cutting a TV advert and then shooting, cutting and doing the effects for a corporate video. In the couple of days I had off, I wrote an internet drama series pitch for a company - about Christian teens. That's not really within my sphere of knowledge so we'll have to wait and see how it goes... I'd be surprised if it goes much further.
My projects have been lying in tatters for nearly two months... Pilgrim (the crusader script), Cult (the play), Jack in a Box (the TV pilot), the next two series of the internet drama Paperjail, too...
I don't even know where I'm going to start. Since it's for a pal of mine, and it's reasonably well structured, I'll probably start with Jack in a Box, and move on from there.
Wish me luck.
15:37
This is what I hate about writing. Half of every fucking day I write, I end up staring into space, trying to work out what the word is for something you have seen a million times but don't know the word for.
You know how in bars, libraries and police stations, or anywhere that necessitates working behind a long desk, there's a hinged bit - like a gate - you flip over to get in or out of it? What the fuck do you call that? Why have I been working fruitlessly on finding this one word for about half an hour?
I hate this shit.
01:15
Ashamed to say I cashed out kind of early today - I tried banging my head against the computer until about 8pm but then had to go out food shopping, cook, and now it's late.
So, pretty much a bust today. I went over the plans for the screenplay, then hashed out about a scene and a half. It's one of those endlessly crisscrossing scenes that spools mismatched jigsaw bits out of your head and you spend hours trying to fit them together with some semblance of order and pace. I'll see if it goes any better tomorrow.
word count: about 500
hours writing: 1.5
Saturday 25 April 2009
Day 79
04:00
A dispiriting week in a few ways, but after a lot of moping, doing shit I didn't really want to, and other stuff, I finally got off my ass, and wrote 2,000 words over 4 hours for, I think, the first time this month. And that feels great.
Also, my good friend Will Herbert sent me this awesome link today, which for anyone who ever wants to write a TV pilot or series bible - or is just a huge The Wire or BattleStar Galactica fan, will completely love. Thanks for that, man.
So, my word quota and hours finally done for at least one day of the month, I'm going to go to bed now, extremely tired, but feeling a little bit better about myself.
word count: 2,141
hours writing: 4
A dispiriting week in a few ways, but after a lot of moping, doing shit I didn't really want to, and other stuff, I finally got off my ass, and wrote 2,000 words over 4 hours for, I think, the first time this month. And that feels great.
Also, my good friend Will Herbert sent me this awesome link today, which for anyone who ever wants to write a TV pilot or series bible - or is just a huge The Wire or BattleStar Galactica fan, will completely love. Thanks for that, man.
So, my word quota and hours finally done for at least one day of the month, I'm going to go to bed now, extremely tired, but feeling a little bit better about myself.
word count: 2,141
hours writing: 4
Monday 20 April 2009
Day 78
17:48
Had a day talking about the future, helping my sister go off on her train back to Oxford. Since the wait was a few hours, I took her to see Monsters Vs Aliens in 3D. It pretty much sucked, except for the 3D bits and Seth Rogen.
I keep wondering why so many movies can be so admirably proficient in technique and yet so lacking in any kind of merit. I think it might be due to the fact that large audiences are so stupid, and small ones are so fragmented. Blockbusters are treated like they're cheeseburgers by the studios who control them. And indie films are created in such a hothouse of preciousness, their unchecked egos result in as many drossy movies as the studios' unchecked commercialism.
I wonder if in our desperate hunger for something to see, that us as audiences, in big groups or small, are discerning enough for the kind of films that used to be made in Hollywood, by studios and featuring big actors, and could also be considered - in any way - to be an art form.
Nowadays there aren't many studio (or indie) films that aren't put together exquisitely - which anyone will recognize who's tried to make a film themselves. But beyond their beautifully constructed parts, a lot of these movies have no actual worth.
Like I said - in the end, I think it comes down to us - the audience. If we don't deserve good films to watch, and if we don't go to see them when they miraculously show up, then they won't be repeated, and we simply won't get them any more.
23:07
Watched the new Mitchell Hurwitz animation Sit Down, Shut Up. It was pretty much slated in the U.S. press but I thought it was funny. Heard the weirdest and coolest song on youtube - a freaky little tune and music video called Little Wings by a Florida singer-songwriter called Mark Gormley, which would be perfect for the end and credits to my long-running project Evil Dude. So I'm getting excited and distracted by that. I wonder if he's the kind of guy who would let me use it?
02:38
Wrote for about an hour and a half, and did the first pass of 12 shots for Evil Dude. My outline has gone from very long passages describing a single scene to a list of HUGE PLOT POINTS IN CAPITALS, but this seems like progress - my biggest problem is nearly always breaking the wall between my idea for the beginning or first half of the story and the rest of it.
Apart from that, it's late and I'm tired. See you tomorrow. Maybe in the morning.
word count: 500
hours writing: 1.5
Had a day talking about the future, helping my sister go off on her train back to Oxford. Since the wait was a few hours, I took her to see Monsters Vs Aliens in 3D. It pretty much sucked, except for the 3D bits and Seth Rogen.
I keep wondering why so many movies can be so admirably proficient in technique and yet so lacking in any kind of merit. I think it might be due to the fact that large audiences are so stupid, and small ones are so fragmented. Blockbusters are treated like they're cheeseburgers by the studios who control them. And indie films are created in such a hothouse of preciousness, their unchecked egos result in as many drossy movies as the studios' unchecked commercialism.
I wonder if in our desperate hunger for something to see, that us as audiences, in big groups or small, are discerning enough for the kind of films that used to be made in Hollywood, by studios and featuring big actors, and could also be considered - in any way - to be an art form.
Nowadays there aren't many studio (or indie) films that aren't put together exquisitely - which anyone will recognize who's tried to make a film themselves. But beyond their beautifully constructed parts, a lot of these movies have no actual worth.
Like I said - in the end, I think it comes down to us - the audience. If we don't deserve good films to watch, and if we don't go to see them when they miraculously show up, then they won't be repeated, and we simply won't get them any more.
23:07
Watched the new Mitchell Hurwitz animation Sit Down, Shut Up. It was pretty much slated in the U.S. press but I thought it was funny. Heard the weirdest and coolest song on youtube - a freaky little tune and music video called Little Wings by a Florida singer-songwriter called Mark Gormley, which would be perfect for the end and credits to my long-running project Evil Dude. So I'm getting excited and distracted by that. I wonder if he's the kind of guy who would let me use it?
02:38
Wrote for about an hour and a half, and did the first pass of 12 shots for Evil Dude. My outline has gone from very long passages describing a single scene to a list of HUGE PLOT POINTS IN CAPITALS, but this seems like progress - my biggest problem is nearly always breaking the wall between my idea for the beginning or first half of the story and the rest of it.
Apart from that, it's late and I'm tired. See you tomorrow. Maybe in the morning.
word count: 500
hours writing: 1.5
Saturday 18 April 2009
Day 77
10:24
I woke up at 7am this morning because my worthless new phone (never buy Samsung) started its 'low battery alert'. So I've been up for more than three hours now, pretty bleary-eyed, watching onion news network videos and reading an excellent book I got the other week called Writing the TV Drama Series by Pamela Douglas.
Got a lot more done yesterday than I expected - I think I finally might have cleared some of that intense creative block that's hampered me the last month or so. However, we'll see how that goes by the end of the day.
In a completely informal way, I've been hoping to write and finish something this month as I signed up to this "competition" called ScriptFrenzy.
Check it out if you've got the time. The point of this scheme seems to be to get very impressed with yourself at writing any old 100 pages of shit: I mean, I'm pretty sure that Jack Nicholson's 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy' manuscript in The Shining would qualify as a legitimate piece of work on this competition. The main reason it seems to exist is to be bombarded by incoherent e-mails by a well-meaning lady called Jennifer Artz, whose every missive leaves you irrationally screaming "STOP SMOTHERING ME!" I don't know if I'll finish in time for the competition rules - 30th April. Which is kind of a shame: I hear you get a nice printable certificate by e-mail that you can stick on your wall.
I don't mean to sound snooty about the certificate, either - I really would like one. I could stick it up next to the only things I've received from supposedly legitimate festivals like Cannes, & Berlin, Rotterdam, Toronoto IFFs - tiny little credit-card receipts for hundreds upon hundreds of wasted pounds in competition fees, international postage and other competition bullshit. On reflection, it's amazing how little juice you get out of all of those crushed dreams.
Anyway, it's a stunning, sunny day in Glasgow. And quiet, too. Probably because it's Sunday morning, and all of the locals are still in alcohol-induced comas.
So I really should probably start to get some writing done.
16:31
Did some shopping for vitamins, went off to say goodbye to my sister, who's staying at my parents' place. Amazing how quickly you can squander a whole day.
Decided to check out my twitter thing again. This was something I signed up to last year so that I could let clients get progress reports from my home. Personally, I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. But putting inane little messages that no-one will read on a website, along with writing these inane little paragraphs right here that no-one else will read, is surely a much better way to spend the day than actually doing some writing.
23:51
Spent about three hours on my driving theory test this evening - getting a driving license in the next couple of months is going to be a big part of my future. More about this over the next couple of days - I bet you can't wait.
Apart from that, got about an hour of writing in. So, over all, not a great day's work - but at least the sun shone and I felt happy.
And neither of those things happen every day.
word count: about 400
hours writing: 1
I woke up at 7am this morning because my worthless new phone (never buy Samsung) started its 'low battery alert'. So I've been up for more than three hours now, pretty bleary-eyed, watching onion news network videos and reading an excellent book I got the other week called Writing the TV Drama Series by Pamela Douglas.
Got a lot more done yesterday than I expected - I think I finally might have cleared some of that intense creative block that's hampered me the last month or so. However, we'll see how that goes by the end of the day.
In a completely informal way, I've been hoping to write and finish something this month as I signed up to this "competition" called ScriptFrenzy.
Check it out if you've got the time. The point of this scheme seems to be to get very impressed with yourself at writing any old 100 pages of shit: I mean, I'm pretty sure that Jack Nicholson's 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy' manuscript in The Shining would qualify as a legitimate piece of work on this competition. The main reason it seems to exist is to be bombarded by incoherent e-mails by a well-meaning lady called Jennifer Artz, whose every missive leaves you irrationally screaming "STOP SMOTHERING ME!" I don't know if I'll finish in time for the competition rules - 30th April. Which is kind of a shame: I hear you get a nice printable certificate by e-mail that you can stick on your wall.
I don't mean to sound snooty about the certificate, either - I really would like one. I could stick it up next to the only things I've received from supposedly legitimate festivals like Cannes, & Berlin, Rotterdam, Toronoto IFFs - tiny little credit-card receipts for hundreds upon hundreds of wasted pounds in competition fees, international postage and other competition bullshit. On reflection, it's amazing how little juice you get out of all of those crushed dreams.
Anyway, it's a stunning, sunny day in Glasgow. And quiet, too. Probably because it's Sunday morning, and all of the locals are still in alcohol-induced comas.
So I really should probably start to get some writing done.
16:31
Did some shopping for vitamins, went off to say goodbye to my sister, who's staying at my parents' place. Amazing how quickly you can squander a whole day.
Decided to check out my twitter thing again. This was something I signed up to last year so that I could let clients get progress reports from my home. Personally, I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. But putting inane little messages that no-one will read on a website, along with writing these inane little paragraphs right here that no-one else will read, is surely a much better way to spend the day than actually doing some writing.
23:51
Spent about three hours on my driving theory test this evening - getting a driving license in the next couple of months is going to be a big part of my future. More about this over the next couple of days - I bet you can't wait.
Apart from that, got about an hour of writing in. So, over all, not a great day's work - but at least the sun shone and I felt happy.
And neither of those things happen every day.
word count: about 400
hours writing: 1
Day 76
17:10
Just got back from a week in the Isle of Skye, celebrating my Dad's 60th Birthday. It's absolutely beautiful there - the weather was fantastic, and the South of the Island - where we stayed - is as close to paradise as you can get in the Highlands.
Since I blogged last, my idea was that this weeks was going to be a bit of a working holiday: time for me to recuperate and start to get my routine and my edge back. But this is never the way it works. Instead, me and my beautiful girlfriend spent a week with virtually no sleep, sandwiched between various yelling family members that the lovely timber cottage we were staying in amplified to the level I would expect if you tried to fall asleep in a washer-dryer filled with pennies on full cycle, and then I spent the last four days with a pretty head-crushing case of the flu. So, as so many of us do, I get back home from holiday with the wish that I could have an actual holiday starting now.
But anyone else would think that was being pretty spoiled whining about this: it was still a week in Skye. It was pretty magical, as the Scottish Islands always are. And, on the first day that I'm starting to feel better, I do feel a sense that I'm ready to get back to work after a long time of really not having the impetus or the desire. So, tomorrow, I'm going to try to start with the four hours again. And we'll see what happens.
But now I'm going to go and brave Argyll Street for some painkillers. After a week of contemplation in an untouched wilderness, Glasgow looks a lot more like Sodom and Gomorrah than it normally does.
00:01
Feel unusually inspired tonight. Have potentially made a big decision with my beautiful girlfriend about the future, which could be very exciting and lead to a lot more writing, too! If I feel this inspired for very long, I might actually finish this TV pilot outline within a reasonable frame of time.
I've made a new 'resolution', too - which is to put a lot more information about the projects here on the blog. Because I think this might be a lot more interesting than just me bitching on about how bad everything is going.
Anyway, it's midnight, and I feel like I could stay up for longer, but considering I was more or less delirious this time yesterday, it's probably a good time to go to bed.
word count: 743
hours writing: 1.75
Just got back from a week in the Isle of Skye, celebrating my Dad's 60th Birthday. It's absolutely beautiful there - the weather was fantastic, and the South of the Island - where we stayed - is as close to paradise as you can get in the Highlands.
Since I blogged last, my idea was that this weeks was going to be a bit of a working holiday: time for me to recuperate and start to get my routine and my edge back. But this is never the way it works. Instead, me and my beautiful girlfriend spent a week with virtually no sleep, sandwiched between various yelling family members that the lovely timber cottage we were staying in amplified to the level I would expect if you tried to fall asleep in a washer-dryer filled with pennies on full cycle, and then I spent the last four days with a pretty head-crushing case of the flu. So, as so many of us do, I get back home from holiday with the wish that I could have an actual holiday starting now.
But anyone else would think that was being pretty spoiled whining about this: it was still a week in Skye. It was pretty magical, as the Scottish Islands always are. And, on the first day that I'm starting to feel better, I do feel a sense that I'm ready to get back to work after a long time of really not having the impetus or the desire. So, tomorrow, I'm going to try to start with the four hours again. And we'll see what happens.
But now I'm going to go and brave Argyll Street for some painkillers. After a week of contemplation in an untouched wilderness, Glasgow looks a lot more like Sodom and Gomorrah than it normally does.
00:01
Feel unusually inspired tonight. Have potentially made a big decision with my beautiful girlfriend about the future, which could be very exciting and lead to a lot more writing, too! If I feel this inspired for very long, I might actually finish this TV pilot outline within a reasonable frame of time.
I've made a new 'resolution', too - which is to put a lot more information about the projects here on the blog. Because I think this might be a lot more interesting than just me bitching on about how bad everything is going.
Anyway, it's midnight, and I feel like I could stay up for longer, but considering I was more or less delirious this time yesterday, it's probably a good time to go to bed.
word count: 743
hours writing: 1.75
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Day 75
Hey! Guess who it is?
I had a pretty tough month. Apart from working in Chester, spending a week down in Oxford attending my Grandfather's funeral and doing one of the eulogies, I've also been without internet for at least half of the last two to three weeks, making this blog more or less impossible to do.
Sometimes life comes along and fucks your plans. Sometimes life comes along and does a lot more than fuck with your plans. All part of the glorious circle of life.
I haven't done much writing since my last post: a few thousand words here and there, but not much real, not much solid.
So I could tot up the few words and minutes that I've done and put them down in a big spreadsheet and beat the shit out of myself for not achieving anything between March and April, how it's impossible to fulfill my plan on the timeline, and all that self-hating rubbish.
But here's the thing. I'm going to write 12 screenplays. I'm going to work for 4 hours and 2000 words a day for twelve months. If I miss a day, if I can't do it, if life gets in the way, if I just don't damned well feel like it, then I'm not numbering that day. If it takes me more than twelve months to write these screenplays, then fuck it. I'll work this way until they're done. I'm not giving up just because life makes it difficult to achieve.
I've got a lot of stuff started that I haven't finished. I've got my Crusader script. I've got my play project. I've got a TV pilot I've been working on with my very good friend Will Herbert. I've got a new short I'd like to write. And I don't want it to take eight damned years to get around to finishing them.
So here goes.
02:00
Working on the plan for the TV script. It's coming together alright, if a bit slow. Going to bed now and will try to get some more done tomorrow.
word count: about 500
hours writing: about 2
I had a pretty tough month. Apart from working in Chester, spending a week down in Oxford attending my Grandfather's funeral and doing one of the eulogies, I've also been without internet for at least half of the last two to three weeks, making this blog more or less impossible to do.
Sometimes life comes along and fucks your plans. Sometimes life comes along and does a lot more than fuck with your plans. All part of the glorious circle of life.
I haven't done much writing since my last post: a few thousand words here and there, but not much real, not much solid.
So I could tot up the few words and minutes that I've done and put them down in a big spreadsheet and beat the shit out of myself for not achieving anything between March and April, how it's impossible to fulfill my plan on the timeline, and all that self-hating rubbish.
But here's the thing. I'm going to write 12 screenplays. I'm going to work for 4 hours and 2000 words a day for twelve months. If I miss a day, if I can't do it, if life gets in the way, if I just don't damned well feel like it, then I'm not numbering that day. If it takes me more than twelve months to write these screenplays, then fuck it. I'll work this way until they're done. I'm not giving up just because life makes it difficult to achieve.
I've got a lot of stuff started that I haven't finished. I've got my Crusader script. I've got my play project. I've got a TV pilot I've been working on with my very good friend Will Herbert. I've got a new short I'd like to write. And I don't want it to take eight damned years to get around to finishing them.
So here goes.
02:00
Working on the plan for the TV script. It's coming together alright, if a bit slow. Going to bed now and will try to get some more done tomorrow.
word count: about 500
hours writing: about 2
Saturday 14 March 2009
Days 73 and 74
23:00
Worked most of the night yesterday, rendering and making everything good for the short, then went to bed, having written virtually nothing, and got up this morning to do the sound with a couple of really talented post-graduate students at the RSAMD.
My beautiful girlfriend went away with her Mum to Ullapool this morning - something I was going to be able to do with them until work came along, so we had a lovely drink of ginger ale amongst the morning Glasgow drunks (we saw one staggering around, screaming and slamming into walls, about to be collared by community policemen - at literally 10:30am. And he wasn't the only one).
Got to the place to do the sound and then received a very sad phone call. Someone who I loved very much died today. My Grandfather. He was a kind, interesting and generous man. I mentioned him once before here - he wrote a great little autobiography, and I wanted to turn it into a proper book for him. I wish it had been finished in time, and that I'd been able to give something back to him. I wonder if any of the people we care about know just how much we love them.
The rest of the day has pretty much come and gone. It looks like I'll probably go down to Oxford next week, after my day's filming, and stay there until there's a funeral. So, we'll have to see about what happens in the next little while.
Worked most of the night yesterday, rendering and making everything good for the short, then went to bed, having written virtually nothing, and got up this morning to do the sound with a couple of really talented post-graduate students at the RSAMD.
My beautiful girlfriend went away with her Mum to Ullapool this morning - something I was going to be able to do with them until work came along, so we had a lovely drink of ginger ale amongst the morning Glasgow drunks (we saw one staggering around, screaming and slamming into walls, about to be collared by community policemen - at literally 10:30am. And he wasn't the only one).
Got to the place to do the sound and then received a very sad phone call. Someone who I loved very much died today. My Grandfather. He was a kind, interesting and generous man. I mentioned him once before here - he wrote a great little autobiography, and I wanted to turn it into a proper book for him. I wish it had been finished in time, and that I'd been able to give something back to him. I wonder if any of the people we care about know just how much we love them.
The rest of the day has pretty much come and gone. It looks like I'll probably go down to Oxford next week, after my day's filming, and stay there until there's a funeral. So, we'll have to see about what happens in the next little while.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Days 70, 71 and 72
23:21
Hey. It's me. You remember me? Your ol' buddy Cosmo. You know, the one who said he was going to write a screenplay every month, and blog every day? The complete fantasist? Yeah, him.
It's been pretty damned hectic over the last few days. A round-trip Glasgow to London on Tuesday. A day syncing audio and doing effects on Wednesday. Another audio session and more grading today. And within all of it, virtually no time dedicated to writing.
I feel like a total shit-heel.
The momentum for this latest project has been gradually unwinding as I've been concentrating from 18-20 hours a day on the short, which really worries me: I don't want to turn this new project into the kind of fizzled-out hulk that my crusades script is turning into. But I know that, by hook or by crook, on Monday, a version of this damned film will be winging its way to France, and so I should be able to get some respite to concentrate on some writing after that.
Except that I won't, because on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm filming down South, and then cutting what I've filmed.
But in a week's time, I should be rocking the pen again. So my plan is this: work out the rest of the plot to a point I'm genuinely happy with, keep on playing the situations over and over in my head until they're the most interesting, explosive and dramatically richest I can imagine, and then sit down and start writing the weekend after next.
Hey. It's me. You remember me? Your ol' buddy Cosmo. You know, the one who said he was going to write a screenplay every month, and blog every day? The complete fantasist? Yeah, him.
It's been pretty damned hectic over the last few days. A round-trip Glasgow to London on Tuesday. A day syncing audio and doing effects on Wednesday. Another audio session and more grading today. And within all of it, virtually no time dedicated to writing.
I feel like a total shit-heel.
The momentum for this latest project has been gradually unwinding as I've been concentrating from 18-20 hours a day on the short, which really worries me: I don't want to turn this new project into the kind of fizzled-out hulk that my crusades script is turning into. But I know that, by hook or by crook, on Monday, a version of this damned film will be winging its way to France, and so I should be able to get some respite to concentrate on some writing after that.
Except that I won't, because on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm filming down South, and then cutting what I've filmed.
But in a week's time, I should be rocking the pen again. So my plan is this: work out the rest of the plot to a point I'm genuinely happy with, keep on playing the situations over and over in my head until they're the most interesting, explosive and dramatically richest I can imagine, and then sit down and start writing the weekend after next.
Monday 9 March 2009
Day 70
11:15
Woke up and made calls for the last hour - and have the exciting news that we'll be doing the ADR for the film down in London in a proper studio - which means the £115, twelve-hour round trip I'll be doing tomorrow might actually be worth it.
Now I've got to calm myself down and start writing.
17:15
Another studio booked for Glasgow, to do the other ADR work, on Thursday. This is pretty fucking awesome, right here. Big thanks have to go to the gate films, who have very generously arranged all of this - especially Simon Lewis, Sarah Jarvis, and Olivia Clark.
Went to see the two RSAMD students who are helping me with the sound design, and they've done some pretty exciting electro-accoustic work that might mesh really well with the film. We'll be meeting on Wednesday to see a rough version of their sound for the film, and I'm looking forwards to it a lot.
Unfortunately, because of all the meeting and phoning, I haven't had much opportunity to write, but I'm going to get on that in a little while.
00:00
Got to go to bed now: up in five hours. Got virtually no writing done again today, but have hopefully sorted out a massive amount about the short film, which is all good news.
Really tired. Will have over ten hours on the train tommorrow to write. Hopefully I can do some catching up!
word count: 82
hours writing: 0.25
Woke up and made calls for the last hour - and have the exciting news that we'll be doing the ADR for the film down in London in a proper studio - which means the £115, twelve-hour round trip I'll be doing tomorrow might actually be worth it.
Now I've got to calm myself down and start writing.
17:15
Another studio booked for Glasgow, to do the other ADR work, on Thursday. This is pretty fucking awesome, right here. Big thanks have to go to the gate films, who have very generously arranged all of this - especially Simon Lewis, Sarah Jarvis, and Olivia Clark.
Went to see the two RSAMD students who are helping me with the sound design, and they've done some pretty exciting electro-accoustic work that might mesh really well with the film. We'll be meeting on Wednesday to see a rough version of their sound for the film, and I'm looking forwards to it a lot.
Unfortunately, because of all the meeting and phoning, I haven't had much opportunity to write, but I'm going to get on that in a little while.
00:00
Got to go to bed now: up in five hours. Got virtually no writing done again today, but have hopefully sorted out a massive amount about the short film, which is all good news.
Really tired. Will have over ten hours on the train tommorrow to write. Hopefully I can do some catching up!
word count: 82
hours writing: 0.25
Sunday 8 March 2009
Day 68
19:15
Spoiled a perfectly promising day by sitting down with the playstation while having lunch, and then not getting away from it for another five hours. Got to work out a way to become less of a loser. It's going to be hard. Feel very frustrated with myself, however. I can't seem to force myself to work, but I feel unhappy about not working. It's a bit weird, really.
Looks like I'll be making a whistle-stop tour of London on Tuesday, to record ADR for my short with my friend Ioan Waight. So that'll be an interesting 12 hour, 800 mile round trip. But I tend to get a lot done on trains, when I'm boxed in and don't have any other choices. So it's not a bad thing at all.
03:45
Did a couple of hours writing - acceptable, but not great. Managed to come up with another idea towards the end that will make everything a lot smarter: these little insights really make me think it's worth holding off a few days before you start working to ensure you squeeze everything conceptual you can out of your brain before you start writing the whole thing.
Worked for a hell of a long time on the short, and it looks like it's finally coming together. Actually feeling a little bit excited. Going to bed now.
word count: 806
hours writing: 2.5
Spoiled a perfectly promising day by sitting down with the playstation while having lunch, and then not getting away from it for another five hours. Got to work out a way to become less of a loser. It's going to be hard. Feel very frustrated with myself, however. I can't seem to force myself to work, but I feel unhappy about not working. It's a bit weird, really.
Looks like I'll be making a whistle-stop tour of London on Tuesday, to record ADR for my short with my friend Ioan Waight. So that'll be an interesting 12 hour, 800 mile round trip. But I tend to get a lot done on trains, when I'm boxed in and don't have any other choices. So it's not a bad thing at all.
03:45
Did a couple of hours writing - acceptable, but not great. Managed to come up with another idea towards the end that will make everything a lot smarter: these little insights really make me think it's worth holding off a few days before you start working to ensure you squeeze everything conceptual you can out of your brain before you start writing the whole thing.
Worked for a hell of a long time on the short, and it looks like it's finally coming together. Actually feeling a little bit excited. Going to bed now.
word count: 806
hours writing: 2.5
Saturday 7 March 2009
Day 67
17:30
Okay, now we're being more honest. Have a lot more work to do on the short, and at the same time, feel the itching sensation to know what happens next to Nico Bellic, my favourite alter-ego.
But no-one ever improved their writing by playing computer games.
02:00
Did marginally better than yesterday: a thousand words, more or less, a couple of hours. Muddling my way through the second half of this new project. I don't want to start too early, like I did with the crusader project, and stump myself by writing a reasonable first act that sets up a middle and end I haven't fully worked out yet.
But it means a lot of staring at the paper and making squiggly diagrams with a sharpie.
We'll see if it pays off. But for now, I'm going to bed.
word count: 1,291
hours writing: 2.25
Okay, now we're being more honest. Have a lot more work to do on the short, and at the same time, feel the itching sensation to know what happens next to Nico Bellic, my favourite alter-ego.
But no-one ever improved their writing by playing computer games.
02:00
Did marginally better than yesterday: a thousand words, more or less, a couple of hours. Muddling my way through the second half of this new project. I don't want to start too early, like I did with the crusader project, and stump myself by writing a reasonable first act that sets up a middle and end I haven't fully worked out yet.
But it means a lot of staring at the paper and making squiggly diagrams with a sharpie.
We'll see if it pays off. But for now, I'm going to bed.
word count: 1,291
hours writing: 2.25
Friday 6 March 2009
Day 66
23:00
Okay, I've got an admission to make. I'm not writing this on Friday at all. I'm writing this half-way through Saturday. Because I'm a no-good asshole who fired up his blog yesterday, wrote down the time and then spent the whole of the day changing and rendering new shots for my short film. And I spent the time waiting for things to finish - when I could have been scribbling notes down for my project - playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Like a complete loser.
I worked on the short until about 3:30am. And it's still no good.
But I'm going to stop pretending I'm writing a blog post from yesterday and admit which day it is.
word count: 49
hours writing: 0.25
Okay, I've got an admission to make. I'm not writing this on Friday at all. I'm writing this half-way through Saturday. Because I'm a no-good asshole who fired up his blog yesterday, wrote down the time and then spent the whole of the day changing and rendering new shots for my short film. And I spent the time waiting for things to finish - when I could have been scribbling notes down for my project - playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Like a complete loser.
I worked on the short until about 3:30am. And it's still no good.
But I'm going to stop pretending I'm writing a blog post from yesterday and admit which day it is.
word count: 49
hours writing: 0.25
Thursday 5 March 2009
Day 65
13:00
Got up, made some calls and did half an hour's exercise at the gymn.
Having achieved so much, thinking about going back to bed.
01:30
Finished off the revisions, spent an hour back on the new project. It's going okay - the writing's a little poorer than I thought, but then it always is.
On a mad whim submitted my short film to Cannes. This means I have a week to finish it off before the deadline. But what the hell - I had no idea you could apply so late - it's a one in a thousand shot, but why not?
Will be back to the play tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to do some more play. I'll also have to spend time on the short - and possibly organizing a trip down to London for next week to dub the bloody thing. Oh well. Living on a pipe dream is a hell of a lot better than living in a depressive funk.
word count: 445
hours writing: 4.5
Got up, made some calls and did half an hour's exercise at the gymn.
Having achieved so much, thinking about going back to bed.
01:30
Finished off the revisions, spent an hour back on the new project. It's going okay - the writing's a little poorer than I thought, but then it always is.
On a mad whim submitted my short film to Cannes. This means I have a week to finish it off before the deadline. But what the hell - I had no idea you could apply so late - it's a one in a thousand shot, but why not?
Will be back to the play tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to do some more play. I'll also have to spend time on the short - and possibly organizing a trip down to London for next week to dub the bloody thing. Oh well. Living on a pipe dream is a hell of a lot better than living in a depressive funk.
word count: 445
hours writing: 4.5
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Day 64
13:15
Got up today a little later - about 11am. Went off to the gymn, and nearly killed myself by cycling gently for twenty minutes.
Came home to discover the fantastic news that my beautiful girlfriend is getting published! The first ever story she's sent off is to be published in the annual Association of Scottish Literary Studies volume, New Scottish Writing.
Booyaaaah!
02:30
Inspired by my girlfriend's achievements, I decided to polish over the screenplay I finished in January and send it off to the London Independent Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, whose deadline is Friday.
So I worked pretty hard - have managed to trim it down from 133 to 125 pages, and shore up a couple of the scenes - though I've still got another fifty pages to finish off.
The only problem with having done these revisions is that, word-count-wise, in five hours I've only written twenty words.
But if I can get my screenplay up to scratch by tomorrow, that'll be worth the word-count hit.
Going to bed now - have to get up at a reasonable time tomorrow.
word count: 20
hours writing: 5.25
Got up today a little later - about 11am. Went off to the gymn, and nearly killed myself by cycling gently for twenty minutes.
Came home to discover the fantastic news that my beautiful girlfriend is getting published! The first ever story she's sent off is to be published in the annual Association of Scottish Literary Studies volume, New Scottish Writing.
Booyaaaah!
02:30
Inspired by my girlfriend's achievements, I decided to polish over the screenplay I finished in January and send it off to the London Independent Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, whose deadline is Friday.
So I worked pretty hard - have managed to trim it down from 133 to 125 pages, and shore up a couple of the scenes - though I've still got another fifty pages to finish off.
The only problem with having done these revisions is that, word-count-wise, in five hours I've only written twenty words.
But if I can get my screenplay up to scratch by tomorrow, that'll be worth the word-count hit.
Going to bed now - have to get up at a reasonable time tomorrow.
word count: 20
hours writing: 5.25
Tuesday 3 March 2009
Day 63
13:30
Managed to get up at 9:30 this morning. Have been talking with someone about doing a job next week - probably 10 days' work, but it'll pay the rent for a few months. So my writing is probably about to take another hit.
I'll have to see what I can do in the next few days: I really, really want to work on this play and make it good. I don't want to have to stretch it out forever.
02:15
Well, decided to take a night off (at 10pm) and watched Fincher's Zodiac on blu-ray. It was - as in the cinema - an unnerving, disturbing experience. It was really interesting too, in that for the first time on a first-rate film I noticed a keying job on one of the shots: the distinctive 'drawn around hair' on Mark Rufalo on a shot when he stands at 'Washington and Cherry' after the taxi-cab murder, and in the special features, they used that shot as an example, so that I saw that my initial reaction was correct.
This made me think that sometimes, no matter how good a team is, I guess, they won't be able to polish up one shot as well as another - nor make every shot as beautiful as the one before, nor every scene as uniformly excellent. And as mean as that is, it gives me hope with my own work - where I see nothing but patchiness.
Also today I joined the gymn with my beautiful girlfriend and intend to fit about a half hour of jogging or similar exercise in every day from now on. Got to get healthy again!
On the writing front, I had a pretty promising day - fleshed out three scenes of the new project, but didn't quite make my hours - having not worked out that by starting a 3 hour film at 10:30pm, I wouldn't be starting my final hour of writing till past 2am - and I'm trying very, very hard to get up at more sensible hours.
So I'm going to bed now and will work hard on catching up first thing in the morning.
word count: 2,002
hours writing: 3
Managed to get up at 9:30 this morning. Have been talking with someone about doing a job next week - probably 10 days' work, but it'll pay the rent for a few months. So my writing is probably about to take another hit.
I'll have to see what I can do in the next few days: I really, really want to work on this play and make it good. I don't want to have to stretch it out forever.
02:15
Well, decided to take a night off (at 10pm) and watched Fincher's Zodiac on blu-ray. It was - as in the cinema - an unnerving, disturbing experience. It was really interesting too, in that for the first time on a first-rate film I noticed a keying job on one of the shots: the distinctive 'drawn around hair' on Mark Rufalo on a shot when he stands at 'Washington and Cherry' after the taxi-cab murder, and in the special features, they used that shot as an example, so that I saw that my initial reaction was correct.
This made me think that sometimes, no matter how good a team is, I guess, they won't be able to polish up one shot as well as another - nor make every shot as beautiful as the one before, nor every scene as uniformly excellent. And as mean as that is, it gives me hope with my own work - where I see nothing but patchiness.
Also today I joined the gymn with my beautiful girlfriend and intend to fit about a half hour of jogging or similar exercise in every day from now on. Got to get healthy again!
On the writing front, I had a pretty promising day - fleshed out three scenes of the new project, but didn't quite make my hours - having not worked out that by starting a 3 hour film at 10:30pm, I wouldn't be starting my final hour of writing till past 2am - and I'm trying very, very hard to get up at more sensible hours.
So I'm going to bed now and will work hard on catching up first thing in the morning.
word count: 2,002
hours writing: 3
Monday 2 March 2009
Day 61
10:30
That's right! I've been up for an hour and a half already. Kicking ass and taking names. Or... staring dopily at my computer. Pretty much the same thing.
Going to sit down and plan out this whole project, right now.
Will not rest until my four hours are done. Will not rest until my 2,000 words are written.
Onwards and upwards!
01:30
Wrote for four hours today, which is good - only wrote half my words, though. I'm trying very hard to plan everything out in advance, rather than force myself too far onwards too quickly.
As I read in my grandfather's autobiography: thinking is also research. This is difficult to reconcile with any tangible sense of success. But I'll keep on working on shaping the first couple of scenes tomorrow, and then see what happens.
But now, I'm going to bed, hopefully to get up at a sensible time tomorrow.
word count: 1,050
hours writing:4
That's right! I've been up for an hour and a half already. Kicking ass and taking names. Or... staring dopily at my computer. Pretty much the same thing.
Going to sit down and plan out this whole project, right now.
Will not rest until my four hours are done. Will not rest until my 2,000 words are written.
Onwards and upwards!
01:30
Wrote for four hours today, which is good - only wrote half my words, though. I'm trying very hard to plan everything out in advance, rather than force myself too far onwards too quickly.
As I read in my grandfather's autobiography: thinking is also research. This is difficult to reconcile with any tangible sense of success. But I'll keep on working on shaping the first couple of scenes tomorrow, and then see what happens.
But now, I'm going to bed, hopefully to get up at a sensible time tomorrow.
word count: 1,050
hours writing:4
Sunday 1 March 2009
Day 60
23:45
Have spent the last hour or so being ponderous on my thoughts for the end of last month.
Haven't done any short film today - have spent the day reading up on my next project, taking notes. The reading and note-taking takes a damned long time - in future years, I'll include this in my 4 hours a day timeframe - because to try to do enough research to write a screenplay and write a screenplay at the same time is nigh on impossible - for me, anyway.
Going to try to finish off this very interesting book, then will write some more plans.
03:00
Going to bed now. On first look, I haven't acheived much today - having only 'written' for the last quarter of an hour and only producing a hundred or so words.
But I have managed to fit in more than six hours of primary reading today - with six pages of notes today, too.
So I start tomorrow on this new project, determined to plan it out to the fullest extent before I go barging in to write it.
We will see what happens. My other goal is to get up at a reasonable time tomorrow: which is why I'm going to go to bed right now.
word count: 152
hours writing: 0.25
Have spent the last hour or so being ponderous on my thoughts for the end of last month.
Haven't done any short film today - have spent the day reading up on my next project, taking notes. The reading and note-taking takes a damned long time - in future years, I'll include this in my 4 hours a day timeframe - because to try to do enough research to write a screenplay and write a screenplay at the same time is nigh on impossible - for me, anyway.
Going to try to finish off this very interesting book, then will write some more plans.
03:00
Going to bed now. On first look, I haven't acheived much today - having only 'written' for the last quarter of an hour and only producing a hundred or so words.
But I have managed to fit in more than six hours of primary reading today - with six pages of notes today, too.
So I start tomorrow on this new project, determined to plan it out to the fullest extent before I go barging in to write it.
We will see what happens. My other goal is to get up at a reasonable time tomorrow: which is why I'm going to go to bed right now.
word count: 152
hours writing: 0.25
End of February Round-Up
As promised yesterday, here are a few thoughts on my writing experience in February.
I've had a real struggle this month, and haven't come out of top a lot of times.
I've had some bleak moods this month. Other times I've been pretty happy. It seems neither a positive nor a negative mental attitude need help or hinder your writing. When depressed, the quality of my writing and the effort it takes definitely makes me feel miserable - but I've discovered that feeling bad it isn't really a valid excuse for not writing. If anything, a good mood is more likely to encourage you to play hooky or get caught up in distractions than a bad one.
Which leads us to...
I've discovered this month that just one other interest - in my case, trying to finish this fucking short film - can wreak havoc on your writing hours and output.
This seems especially true if this other interest is time-consuming in a more rigid and structural way than the free-f0r-all of writing - the fact that, after a certain amount of time you will have achieved x (as opposed to writing, where after a certain amount of time you might have achieved dick) can easily nudge out all the other concerns, and swallow up your day, night, and early morning.
In this situation, I've just have to sit down and decide what's more important to me. Over the last couple of weeks it's been the short film - because it cost me money, because it was a lot of effort, because I'd like to see one of my projects properly finished - but nonetheless, it cost me the targets that I desperately wanted to achieve by the end of the month.
This month I didn't make 100 hours, I didn't write 50,000 words, I didn't finish my second screenplay. Because I got distracted with finishing this film.
And so now I come into March with the feeling that I've fallen far, far behind.
This month I've learned that, until I'm consciously and subconsciously ready to start writing - when I know that I don't have to bullshit my characters' responses or muddle through a scene not knowing what i want to say or where to go next - then I shouldn't start writing at all.
Writing without a solid plan of where I'm going is miserable. I don't mean that to me, writing is an uninspired painting by numbers. If I don't have a clear map of where I'm going, I don't know how the characters are going to react, I don't know what I'm looking out for, and what's worse: I quickly get bored and depressed - because I don't have that map, I can't improvise a new route on the fly, because I already have no idea where I am.
With my crusaders script, I've created so many problems for myself that I've tailed off at page 66, unable to continue due to the huge numbers of inconsistencies in character, plot and pacing that are in the first half preclude any way of creating a believable, interesting and entertaining second half. The only way I'll finish it off satisfactorily will be to start again - go back to the plan, flesh it out, and get its proportions right (I'm only a third of the way through the movie's plot, but nearly 70 pages into the script) - then use what I can of what I've written so far and hopefully, find a way to finish it from that.
So my absolute dedication to forcing myself to write this script too early didn't help me at all - in fact, it set me back. And that's something that I'm going to make sure I don't do next time.
Because I was working on the short so hard, and have not made my hours or word-count at all in the last few days, I totted the totals up on my blog but didn't feed them into the spreadsheet I use each day to chart my progress.
This was a big mistake. If I saw how close I was to making 100 hours a couple of days earlier, I would have made sure I made that target.
Something like a spreadsheet is pretty dorky, but it concentrates my mind on what I want to do each day. It's become part of my writing process and helps me focus. By avoiding it, I have been avoiding one of the main tools that has been encouraging me to write.
Anyway, that's more that enough pondering for this month. Let's hope the next one is a little more successful.
month summary:
words written: 40,256
total hours writing: 91.25
average words a day: 1,437
average hours writing: 3.25
I've had a real struggle this month, and haven't come out of top a lot of times.
Moods
I've had some bleak moods this month. Other times I've been pretty happy. It seems neither a positive nor a negative mental attitude need help or hinder your writing. When depressed, the quality of my writing and the effort it takes definitely makes me feel miserable - but I've discovered that feeling bad it isn't really a valid excuse for not writing. If anything, a good mood is more likely to encourage you to play hooky or get caught up in distractions than a bad one.
Which leads us to...
Other Interests
I've discovered this month that just one other interest - in my case, trying to finish this fucking short film - can wreak havoc on your writing hours and output.
This seems especially true if this other interest is time-consuming in a more rigid and structural way than the free-f0r-all of writing - the fact that, after a certain amount of time you will have achieved x (as opposed to writing, where after a certain amount of time you might have achieved dick) can easily nudge out all the other concerns, and swallow up your day, night, and early morning.
In this situation, I've just have to sit down and decide what's more important to me. Over the last couple of weeks it's been the short film - because it cost me money, because it was a lot of effort, because I'd like to see one of my projects properly finished - but nonetheless, it cost me the targets that I desperately wanted to achieve by the end of the month.
This month I didn't make 100 hours, I didn't write 50,000 words, I didn't finish my second screenplay. Because I got distracted with finishing this film.
And so now I come into March with the feeling that I've fallen far, far behind.
Forced Writing
This month I've learned that, until I'm consciously and subconsciously ready to start writing - when I know that I don't have to bullshit my characters' responses or muddle through a scene not knowing what i want to say or where to go next - then I shouldn't start writing at all.
Writing without a solid plan of where I'm going is miserable. I don't mean that to me, writing is an uninspired painting by numbers. If I don't have a clear map of where I'm going, I don't know how the characters are going to react, I don't know what I'm looking out for, and what's worse: I quickly get bored and depressed - because I don't have that map, I can't improvise a new route on the fly, because I already have no idea where I am.
With my crusaders script, I've created so many problems for myself that I've tailed off at page 66, unable to continue due to the huge numbers of inconsistencies in character, plot and pacing that are in the first half preclude any way of creating a believable, interesting and entertaining second half. The only way I'll finish it off satisfactorily will be to start again - go back to the plan, flesh it out, and get its proportions right (I'm only a third of the way through the movie's plot, but nearly 70 pages into the script) - then use what I can of what I've written so far and hopefully, find a way to finish it from that.
So my absolute dedication to forcing myself to write this script too early didn't help me at all - in fact, it set me back. And that's something that I'm going to make sure I don't do next time.
Keeping Track
Because I was working on the short so hard, and have not made my hours or word-count at all in the last few days, I totted the totals up on my blog but didn't feed them into the spreadsheet I use each day to chart my progress.
This was a big mistake. If I saw how close I was to making 100 hours a couple of days earlier, I would have made sure I made that target.
Something like a spreadsheet is pretty dorky, but it concentrates my mind on what I want to do each day. It's become part of my writing process and helps me focus. By avoiding it, I have been avoiding one of the main tools that has been encouraging me to write.
Anyway, that's more that enough pondering for this month. Let's hope the next one is a little more successful.
month summary:
words written: 40,256
total hours writing: 91.25
average words a day: 1,437
average hours writing: 3.25
Day 59
01:00
Forgot to post during today - which means that 28th Feb is the first day I've officially 'skipped' on my blog. God damn it.
04:45
For the first day, I've reached the early hours of the morning, and I haven't done any god-damned writing whatsoever. I spent the afternoon around at my parents, helping them clear some shit out of their garage. (Mostly my shit, to be honest). Then I got back and started working on the short film some more.
I rendered out a grade of everything I'd done in hd and watched it on the playstation. I was quite heartened. The film has gone from being a real shit sandwich to something that I feel quite happy with, for all its flaws.
I recorded a little voice-over 'preface' to the film a month ago when I was working down in Leeds, and so I started trying to animate some photos to go with that. And now it's coming of five in the fucking morning, yet again.
This is my goal: to finish off my short film: to finish it off really, really well: to add value to the whole thing and turn it into a package. Then go straight into the writing and work on that tirelessly until I've caught up. Because I'm totally letting myself down on that front at the moment, and it's bullshit.
Will do a little summary on this pathetic month tomorrow. But for now, I'm going to spend fifteen minutes writing, then I'm going to bed.
word count: 132
hours writing: 0.25
Forgot to post during today - which means that 28th Feb is the first day I've officially 'skipped' on my blog. God damn it.
04:45
For the first day, I've reached the early hours of the morning, and I haven't done any god-damned writing whatsoever. I spent the afternoon around at my parents, helping them clear some shit out of their garage. (Mostly my shit, to be honest). Then I got back and started working on the short film some more.
I rendered out a grade of everything I'd done in hd and watched it on the playstation. I was quite heartened. The film has gone from being a real shit sandwich to something that I feel quite happy with, for all its flaws.
I recorded a little voice-over 'preface' to the film a month ago when I was working down in Leeds, and so I started trying to animate some photos to go with that. And now it's coming of five in the fucking morning, yet again.
This is my goal: to finish off my short film: to finish it off really, really well: to add value to the whole thing and turn it into a package. Then go straight into the writing and work on that tirelessly until I've caught up. Because I'm totally letting myself down on that front at the moment, and it's bullshit.
Will do a little summary on this pathetic month tomorrow. But for now, I'm going to spend fifteen minutes writing, then I'm going to bed.
word count: 132
hours writing: 0.25
Friday 27 February 2009
Day 58
05:00
Not going to blog long now - really have to go to bed.
Worked on the short film again today - am rendering out a test to watch on the new HD monitor tomorrow. Exciting stuff!
Read lots of stuff to research my next project, but wrote a pitiful amount. I'm resigned to writing less until the short is done. But that's okay - so long as the film turns out to be worth it.
I'm not going to finish my screenplay this month, but I think I've put enough groundwork in to be able to finish them both off next month, and so keep to my quota.
Also watched 'The Shining' today - my first entire film seen in Blu-Ray. It's one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've ever had. Amazing: so many things I've never seen before. Blu ray is like being able to see through the eyes of the director for the first time. I suppose this was what it felt like when Jacobeans were finally treated to the folios of Jonson and Shakespeare after years of shoddy quarto knock-offs. Seeing a complete version of something - not to discount the many flaws that it might have, or the fact that there are other versions - but to see something complete and beautiful, for the first time. Just phenomenal.
But now I'm going to bed.
word count: 74
hours writing: 1
Not going to blog long now - really have to go to bed.
Worked on the short film again today - am rendering out a test to watch on the new HD monitor tomorrow. Exciting stuff!
Read lots of stuff to research my next project, but wrote a pitiful amount. I'm resigned to writing less until the short is done. But that's okay - so long as the film turns out to be worth it.
I'm not going to finish my screenplay this month, but I think I've put enough groundwork in to be able to finish them both off next month, and so keep to my quota.
Also watched 'The Shining' today - my first entire film seen in Blu-Ray. It's one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've ever had. Amazing: so many things I've never seen before. Blu ray is like being able to see through the eyes of the director for the first time. I suppose this was what it felt like when Jacobeans were finally treated to the folios of Jonson and Shakespeare after years of shoddy quarto knock-offs. Seeing a complete version of something - not to discount the many flaws that it might have, or the fact that there are other versions - but to see something complete and beautiful, for the first time. Just phenomenal.
But now I'm going to bed.
word count: 74
hours writing: 1
Thursday 26 February 2009
Day 57
03:00
Got up at 9am, after about four hours sleep. Am fucked now.
Spent day doing lots of short film stuff, and a couple of hours writing and taking notes. Pathetic word count, nonetheless.
Also - to my absolute delight, my kick-ass new HD monitor arrived today. This means I finally have something to plug my new Playstation into (I got it on a deal with a new phone contract, I'm not sure how, but have been staring at it wistfully for months without having the moolah to connect it to anything...)
I put the untouched blu-ray of 'Bladerunner' that my beautiful girlfriend gave me for Christmas, and was absolutely amazed. For the first time in the history of the movies, it is possible to see film in better quality at home than at the cinema. I only watched a few minutes of Bladerunner - because I have shit to do - but I was astounded how little things that Ridley Scott obviously intended us to experience, from tiny moments of camera movement, to the brief shadow of red in the back of the replicant Leon's eye, that I never knew were there. I think this is going to be the most phenomenal tool to study movies. It finally allows the nuance of the cinematic experience into our homes.
But I'm fucking exhausted now, so I'm going to go to bed.
word count: 479
hours writing: 2
Got up at 9am, after about four hours sleep. Am fucked now.
Spent day doing lots of short film stuff, and a couple of hours writing and taking notes. Pathetic word count, nonetheless.
Also - to my absolute delight, my kick-ass new HD monitor arrived today. This means I finally have something to plug my new Playstation into (I got it on a deal with a new phone contract, I'm not sure how, but have been staring at it wistfully for months without having the moolah to connect it to anything...)
I put the untouched blu-ray of 'Bladerunner' that my beautiful girlfriend gave me for Christmas, and was absolutely amazed. For the first time in the history of the movies, it is possible to see film in better quality at home than at the cinema. I only watched a few minutes of Bladerunner - because I have shit to do - but I was astounded how little things that Ridley Scott obviously intended us to experience, from tiny moments of camera movement, to the brief shadow of red in the back of the replicant Leon's eye, that I never knew were there. I think this is going to be the most phenomenal tool to study movies. It finally allows the nuance of the cinematic experience into our homes.
But I'm fucking exhausted now, so I'm going to go to bed.
word count: 479
hours writing: 2
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Day 56
00:30
Got up at midday today, feeling awful. Spent a while working on re-rendering the bits of the short footage that didn't work out the first time, then went out with my beautiful girlfriend and had a look at a gym. I think I'm going to have to join it, as I've never been so unhealthy as in 2008: nowadays about the most exercise I get is when I eat a particularly large pie.
Have felt really sleepy all day, but I've spent at least an hour on my plan for the next project. I've been avoiding the crusader script like crazy, which makes me a giant fucking wimp - but I am making progress with the other one, and anything to avoid the misery of the last week's attempts at writing is a good thing. Also, I literally can't write a screenplay at the moment, because I can't use my script writing software at the same time as After Effects renders, unless I want wait ten seconds between each letter popping onto the screen. So planning on a notebook is a good thing to do while everything else renders.
Still, will continue working... now.
04:45
Knackered. Spent a little longer working on the plan, and a lot longer working on the movie...
Going to bed now.
word count: 450
hours writing: 1.5
Got up at midday today, feeling awful. Spent a while working on re-rendering the bits of the short footage that didn't work out the first time, then went out with my beautiful girlfriend and had a look at a gym. I think I'm going to have to join it, as I've never been so unhealthy as in 2008: nowadays about the most exercise I get is when I eat a particularly large pie.
Have felt really sleepy all day, but I've spent at least an hour on my plan for the next project. I've been avoiding the crusader script like crazy, which makes me a giant fucking wimp - but I am making progress with the other one, and anything to avoid the misery of the last week's attempts at writing is a good thing. Also, I literally can't write a screenplay at the moment, because I can't use my script writing software at the same time as After Effects renders, unless I want wait ten seconds between each letter popping onto the screen. So planning on a notebook is a good thing to do while everything else renders.
Still, will continue working... now.
04:45
Knackered. Spent a little longer working on the plan, and a lot longer working on the movie...
Going to bed now.
word count: 450
hours writing: 1.5
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Day 55
23:30
Well, I've been remiss at blogging today: I've spent the last twelve hours grading out the rest of my film and I've really had a good bash at it: in fact I'm rendering out 123 shots of my short, which make up the whole of the second half.
There will be a lot more work to do for this, but I feel much more positive for getting this much done - just 2 days ago I had less than 20 of the shots done - now I've got all of them (except for a couple of tricky ones) in some stage of readiness. So that's pretty damned good news.
As a result, I haven't managed to do any writing yet, which is really bad. So I'm going to sit down now and force myself to do a couple of hours.
Moods are funny things. A few days ago, I was writing 2,000 words a day, for six hours, but was feeling dreadful about myself. Today I've written zero, but feel like a rock star.
01:30
Not doing so well. Have been pondering things and writing snippets for an hour now - but almost certainly the poorest show of a poor month. I think tomorrow, before I get obsessed with the film again, I'll force myself to do a couple of hours straight away.
04:45
Haven't succeeded with writing at all today: but at least I've worked hard on the film. Will have to do a lot more writing tomorrow to catch up. I'm almost certain not to make my 50,000 word word quota this month. That's very disappointing.
word count: 600
hours writing: 1.5
Well, I've been remiss at blogging today: I've spent the last twelve hours grading out the rest of my film and I've really had a good bash at it: in fact I'm rendering out 123 shots of my short, which make up the whole of the second half.
There will be a lot more work to do for this, but I feel much more positive for getting this much done - just 2 days ago I had less than 20 of the shots done - now I've got all of them (except for a couple of tricky ones) in some stage of readiness. So that's pretty damned good news.
As a result, I haven't managed to do any writing yet, which is really bad. So I'm going to sit down now and force myself to do a couple of hours.
Moods are funny things. A few days ago, I was writing 2,000 words a day, for six hours, but was feeling dreadful about myself. Today I've written zero, but feel like a rock star.
01:30
Not doing so well. Have been pondering things and writing snippets for an hour now - but almost certainly the poorest show of a poor month. I think tomorrow, before I get obsessed with the film again, I'll force myself to do a couple of hours straight away.
04:45
Haven't succeeded with writing at all today: but at least I've worked hard on the film. Will have to do a lot more writing tomorrow to catch up. I'm almost certain not to make my 50,000 word word quota this month. That's very disappointing.
word count: 600
hours writing: 1.5
Monday 23 February 2009
Day 54
18:00
Up at midday today, after having dreams about continually taking twenty pound notes out of the cashpoint and loosing them.
Trying to be more pro-active today. Instead of going over the same old broken shots on my short film, or staring at my screenplay and hating it, I decided to do a first grade over the next fifty shots of the short, and to work for a while on the next idea before coming back to this one.
Also, looking on my screenplay I've come upon what I think is the most depressing adjective is in the English Language:
'half-finished'.
Try to name one thing this adjective applies to that it doesn't render depressing.
'Incomplete' can be okay - a lot of brilliant works aren't entirely complete - Mozart's Mass in C minor, Raphael's Cartoons, the final series of Arrested Development: similarly, 'Fragment' is normally pretty awesome: from Fragments of Pyramid Hymns to 'Kublah Khan: A Vision' - it suggests a part of a lost whole that still reflects the entire piece's magnificence.
But 'half-finished' is always a kick in the balls. I mean, even the food on the Marie Celeste was meant to be half-finished. Something I've noticed about writing more is that no matter what you do, everything creative seems to feel half-finished. I wonder if it ever feels more complete.
01:00
Well, it's 1am and I've hardly done any writing again. I've scribbled out a couple of pages of notes on the next project idea, but nothing on the damned crusades piece. But I have managed to do a rough grade on over 50 shots of my short film, and I'm rendering out the rest - another 200 shots, roughly - right now. So that's really positive.
Will try working for another hour, probably, then go to bed, try to get up at a sensible time tomorrow.
03:00
I finished rendering all those shots, so that I can grade them in bunches, hopefully tomorrow and on wednesday. As a result of doing this mammoth task since about 4pm this afternoon, I haven't got much writing done, but have sketched out plans for the next project - and this feels good. I look at my spread sheet, at my diminishing hours and word counts and feel really pretty bad about it. But I'm doing only positive stuff right now, there's no point getting pissy about arbitrary goals when you're still doing good stuff.
Going to go to bed now, and hopefully get up a couple of hours earlier tomorrow.
word count: 692
hours writing: 2
Up at midday today, after having dreams about continually taking twenty pound notes out of the cashpoint and loosing them.
Trying to be more pro-active today. Instead of going over the same old broken shots on my short film, or staring at my screenplay and hating it, I decided to do a first grade over the next fifty shots of the short, and to work for a while on the next idea before coming back to this one.
Also, looking on my screenplay I've come upon what I think is the most depressing adjective is in the English Language:
'half-finished'.
Try to name one thing this adjective applies to that it doesn't render depressing.
'Incomplete' can be okay - a lot of brilliant works aren't entirely complete - Mozart's Mass in C minor, Raphael's Cartoons, the final series of Arrested Development: similarly, 'Fragment' is normally pretty awesome: from Fragments of Pyramid Hymns to 'Kublah Khan: A Vision' - it suggests a part of a lost whole that still reflects the entire piece's magnificence.
But 'half-finished' is always a kick in the balls. I mean, even the food on the Marie Celeste was meant to be half-finished. Something I've noticed about writing more is that no matter what you do, everything creative seems to feel half-finished. I wonder if it ever feels more complete.
01:00
Well, it's 1am and I've hardly done any writing again. I've scribbled out a couple of pages of notes on the next project idea, but nothing on the damned crusades piece. But I have managed to do a rough grade on over 50 shots of my short film, and I'm rendering out the rest - another 200 shots, roughly - right now. So that's really positive.
Will try working for another hour, probably, then go to bed, try to get up at a sensible time tomorrow.
03:00
I finished rendering all those shots, so that I can grade them in bunches, hopefully tomorrow and on wednesday. As a result of doing this mammoth task since about 4pm this afternoon, I haven't got much writing done, but have sketched out plans for the next project - and this feels good. I look at my spread sheet, at my diminishing hours and word counts and feel really pretty bad about it. But I'm doing only positive stuff right now, there's no point getting pissy about arbitrary goals when you're still doing good stuff.
Going to go to bed now, and hopefully get up a couple of hours earlier tomorrow.
word count: 692
hours writing: 2
Sunday 22 February 2009
Day 53
14:30
Well, I set my alarm, but I have no idea what happened to it. Getting up earlier than 1pm for more than a couple of days at a time is turning out to be extremely difficult.
Feel slightly less miserable and sorry for myself today. I guess there are peaks and troughs: I guess I'm finally coming out of the worst part of the trough.
For the first time last night, I thought maybe that this unhappiness and inability to move forwards - or the inability to feel I was moving forwards - might be my first conscious experience of what they call "writer's block".
I always thought "writer's block" was a bunch of bullshit: because I've never experienced anything like it; and because the only time you ever hear the phrase is on movies and T.V. when someone like Billy Crystal stares can't think of anything to write - not even a single word - because his heart had been broken by some bitch and he normally expresses his inability to write by throwing his typewriter out of the window. Then someone teaches him to love again: suddenly he's a best-selling novelist and the movie ends. "Writer's block" always sounded like an excuse for moping and being lazy, which are two things I've never needed any excuse to participate in.
But - what if "writer's block" or whatever you want to call it, can be a mental state that affects you rather than your ability to work? What if, rather than a complete stop in writing output - it's a sudden lack of joy with what you're doing, and an unshakeable feeling that your writing - which is of exactly the same quality as what you've been doing before - is suddenly so worthless and inconsequential that your whole project - and your dreams along with them - should be abandoned?
That's how it's been feeling to me the last week - I haven't written nearly as much as I have been - but I've still managed about thirty pages of screenplay, plus the beginnings of ideas for a new project. It's not very much - but it's more than the absolute zero I feel I've been writing and struggling through. We all have our different inspirations and obstacles - but I think that my own sometimes-depressive nature has found its own version of this "writer's block" which sours the creative process, giving me the illusion that nothing I do can ever be good enough, or can be completed.
It's good to think that this new experience might just be part of a cycle - that it's just another obstacle that will come and go. We'll see what happens today: whether I'm able to get the smallest bit back on track.
02:30
Only done a couple of hours writing: been watching the Oscars streaming on the internet. After all, it only happens once a year. Bummed for Claudio Miranda - he deserved the cinematography award more than Slumdog Millionaire guy. As did Eric Roth over Simon Beaufoy. Why do all British people who win awards at the Oscars sound like such smug twats?
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Hugh Jackman has started singing and dancing with Beyonce. I just puked in my mouth. Then I broke seven toes from over-curling them. Your career is never going to recover from this. 'The Musical is Back!' Hugh Jackman shouts, in an attempt to make half a billion men around the world have their penises involuntarily retract into their bodies.
I'd rather Ben Stiller did the whole of the show in his Joaquin Phoenix persona than this dude. It's like they spliced together the Oscars with the sheer, untamed horrors of Mama Mia.
05:00
Saw the rest of the Oscars. Thought Danny Boyle and Sean Penn's speeches were actually really good, even though I wasn't rooting for them.
Now it's very late and I haven't achieved what I set out to, yet again.
No point crying over spilt milk. Will do another 15 minutes to round off my writing to a pitiful 2 hours, then go to bed.
word count: 1,018
hours writing: 2.5
Well, I set my alarm, but I have no idea what happened to it. Getting up earlier than 1pm for more than a couple of days at a time is turning out to be extremely difficult.
Feel slightly less miserable and sorry for myself today. I guess there are peaks and troughs: I guess I'm finally coming out of the worst part of the trough.
For the first time last night, I thought maybe that this unhappiness and inability to move forwards - or the inability to feel I was moving forwards - might be my first conscious experience of what they call "writer's block".
I always thought "writer's block" was a bunch of bullshit: because I've never experienced anything like it; and because the only time you ever hear the phrase is on movies and T.V. when someone like Billy Crystal stares can't think of anything to write - not even a single word - because his heart had been broken by some bitch and he normally expresses his inability to write by throwing his typewriter out of the window. Then someone teaches him to love again: suddenly he's a best-selling novelist and the movie ends. "Writer's block" always sounded like an excuse for moping and being lazy, which are two things I've never needed any excuse to participate in.
But - what if "writer's block" or whatever you want to call it, can be a mental state that affects you rather than your ability to work? What if, rather than a complete stop in writing output - it's a sudden lack of joy with what you're doing, and an unshakeable feeling that your writing - which is of exactly the same quality as what you've been doing before - is suddenly so worthless and inconsequential that your whole project - and your dreams along with them - should be abandoned?
That's how it's been feeling to me the last week - I haven't written nearly as much as I have been - but I've still managed about thirty pages of screenplay, plus the beginnings of ideas for a new project. It's not very much - but it's more than the absolute zero I feel I've been writing and struggling through. We all have our different inspirations and obstacles - but I think that my own sometimes-depressive nature has found its own version of this "writer's block" which sours the creative process, giving me the illusion that nothing I do can ever be good enough, or can be completed.
It's good to think that this new experience might just be part of a cycle - that it's just another obstacle that will come and go. We'll see what happens today: whether I'm able to get the smallest bit back on track.
02:30
Only done a couple of hours writing: been watching the Oscars streaming on the internet. After all, it only happens once a year. Bummed for Claudio Miranda - he deserved the cinematography award more than Slumdog Millionaire guy. As did Eric Roth over Simon Beaufoy. Why do all British people who win awards at the Oscars sound like such smug twats?
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Hugh Jackman has started singing and dancing with Beyonce. I just puked in my mouth. Then I broke seven toes from over-curling them. Your career is never going to recover from this. 'The Musical is Back!' Hugh Jackman shouts, in an attempt to make half a billion men around the world have their penises involuntarily retract into their bodies.
I'd rather Ben Stiller did the whole of the show in his Joaquin Phoenix persona than this dude. It's like they spliced together the Oscars with the sheer, untamed horrors of Mama Mia.
05:00
Saw the rest of the Oscars. Thought Danny Boyle and Sean Penn's speeches were actually really good, even though I wasn't rooting for them.
Now it's very late and I haven't achieved what I set out to, yet again.
No point crying over spilt milk. Will do another 15 minutes to round off my writing to a pitiful 2 hours, then go to bed.
word count: 1,018
hours writing: 2.5
Saturday 21 February 2009
Day 52
23:45
I haven't done very much in the last twenty-four hours.
I spent a long time working on the short film, but it just wouldn't work. I've worked on one shot for something like ten hours now: this shot lasts for eight fucking seconds. There doesn't seem to be any way around it: either you spend eight hours to make your tiny pissy shot look barely acceptable, or you don't, and it looks terrible. The fucker is really becoming the bane of my existence. I have to find a way to speed this up: I just have to.
I can't help but feel disappointed in myself at the moment. I'm really finding it impossible to achieve anything, no matter how many hours I put in.
I'll sit down now and try to write something out.
04:00
Well, it's been a tough three hours. I'm finding it very difficult to write this screenplay: I know I've put down 'difficult' here many times already in just 50 days. What I mean to say is that, for some reason, I feel absolutely no inspiration - in fact, a constant kind of boredom - trying to pound this script out. It's a deeply depressing feeling that's almost impossible to shake off: the feeling that, with less than half of this script written, it's just not any good. I can either prolong the agony by looking back through it and spending weeks trying to improve the first half, or I can force myself through it so at least I can say, 'I finished a draft'.
It's difficult to work out what to do. All I can say that it feels really bad.
Well, I knew it wasn't going to be easy when I started this. I just didn't know how perpetually disappointed I would feel with myself and my abilities.
Still, there's always tomorrow.
word count: 1,086
hours writing: 3
I haven't done very much in the last twenty-four hours.
I spent a long time working on the short film, but it just wouldn't work. I've worked on one shot for something like ten hours now: this shot lasts for eight fucking seconds. There doesn't seem to be any way around it: either you spend eight hours to make your tiny pissy shot look barely acceptable, or you don't, and it looks terrible. The fucker is really becoming the bane of my existence. I have to find a way to speed this up: I just have to.
I can't help but feel disappointed in myself at the moment. I'm really finding it impossible to achieve anything, no matter how many hours I put in.
I'll sit down now and try to write something out.
04:00
Well, it's been a tough three hours. I'm finding it very difficult to write this screenplay: I know I've put down 'difficult' here many times already in just 50 days. What I mean to say is that, for some reason, I feel absolutely no inspiration - in fact, a constant kind of boredom - trying to pound this script out. It's a deeply depressing feeling that's almost impossible to shake off: the feeling that, with less than half of this script written, it's just not any good. I can either prolong the agony by looking back through it and spending weeks trying to improve the first half, or I can force myself through it so at least I can say, 'I finished a draft'.
It's difficult to work out what to do. All I can say that it feels really bad.
Well, I knew it wasn't going to be easy when I started this. I just didn't know how perpetually disappointed I would feel with myself and my abilities.
Still, there's always tomorrow.
word count: 1,086
hours writing: 3
Friday 20 February 2009
Day 51
11:00
Up at 10:30 today. Wow, it's a weird time to get up.
One of the things I've learnt this week is the disorientating nature of generally waking up mid-afternoon, in that you exist between days and dates in a way that's difficult to reconcile with calendars. If you get up at 3pm and go to bed at 7am, you've spent as much time on the next day as you have on the one you got up on. When you decide to do things becomes much more conceptual - I generally decide if I get up on Thursday, then it's Thursday till I go to bed, even if we're already a third of the way through Friday.
16:15
Right. Sitting down and about to get started. Found an interesting thing to try for next month (actually, my beautiful girlfriend found it), maybe write a stage play instead of a screenplay.
For some reason it seems, in my head, like a play might be easier to write than a screenplay. I don't know why: maybe because I'm having such trouble writing this bastard screenplay at the moment that anything else in my egotistical little head seems like it would be child's play in comparison. Or maybe because the few contemporary stage plays I've seen have sucked considerably more donkey balls than the films I've seen.
Anyway. On to the boring stuff.
05:00
Just couldn't write today. Couldn't bring myself to do in. In a complete rut. Spend the last four hours doing the short film - one damned shot. We'll see how it works out.
Going to bed now.
word count: 507
hours writing: 0.5
Up at 10:30 today. Wow, it's a weird time to get up.
One of the things I've learnt this week is the disorientating nature of generally waking up mid-afternoon, in that you exist between days and dates in a way that's difficult to reconcile with calendars. If you get up at 3pm and go to bed at 7am, you've spent as much time on the next day as you have on the one you got up on. When you decide to do things becomes much more conceptual - I generally decide if I get up on Thursday, then it's Thursday till I go to bed, even if we're already a third of the way through Friday.
16:15
Right. Sitting down and about to get started. Found an interesting thing to try for next month (actually, my beautiful girlfriend found it), maybe write a stage play instead of a screenplay.
For some reason it seems, in my head, like a play might be easier to write than a screenplay. I don't know why: maybe because I'm having such trouble writing this bastard screenplay at the moment that anything else in my egotistical little head seems like it would be child's play in comparison. Or maybe because the few contemporary stage plays I've seen have sucked considerably more donkey balls than the films I've seen.
Anyway. On to the boring stuff.
05:00
Just couldn't write today. Couldn't bring myself to do in. In a complete rut. Spend the last four hours doing the short film - one damned shot. We'll see how it works out.
Going to bed now.
word count: 507
hours writing: 0.5
Thursday 19 February 2009
Day 50
13:30
I've reached day 50! Woo-hoo!
Got to re-find my mojo: lost it over the last seven days. Got a few things to do, but determined to put my four hours in today, and to make my word limit.
00:00
Well, I've got two hours in so far, but not much else.
You might have noticed through my shorter blog-posts and less effusive writing style that I'm finding it pretty difficult at the moment. I'm not enjoying this story: I don't feel like I know the characters well enough, or that anything is moving forwards for any other reason than I wrote out a plot list and am now trying to follow it. It takes so God-damned long to write, too: 3-5 pages a day, endless time spent over each and every line of mealy-mouthed dialogue.
I can look back on this week and, honestly, the biggest break I've had creatively all week was when I worked out a new way to defrost our refrigerator.
I have to finish this screenplay: not finishing it is making me miserable. But after finishing this - however long that takes - I'm going to have to re-evaluate what I do next.
I'm going to continue writing, just as hard, the same number of words every day: but I might have to stretch out the length of time I take to research and then write the screenplays, or pepper them with shorter projects. I really don't want to: but I'm finding it incredibly depressing trying to force myself to write something that just isn't good enough, because it hasn't been mulled over, because each situation hasn't been fully investigated before it's written.
Man, if only I'd been born an inimitable genius. That was the only flaw in the whole of my otherwise reasonable plan for 2009: that you'd have to be a fucking genius or a complete moron to be able to pull off twelve feature screenplays a year.
Maybe next year my resolution should be along the lines of, 'I want to create nuclear fusion using items I've bought from the supermarket', 'a Symphony a week', or 'I'll write a Novel a day!'
Come to think of it, I shouldn't call this blog, 'Resolution': I should call it, 'Cosmo Wallace: Over-reaching Douchebag Extraordinaire'.
But I could spend another hour writing sorry-for-myself shit on here. I've still got two hours of writing to do on this horrible, horrible script.
I've started talking to my script when I sit down to write it. Almost always, what I say is:
"Come on then, you fucker."
Writing this script is like having a knife-fight with your own mind.
03:30
Okay, made my lousy word count for the day. And wrote about eleven pages, including an interminable fight sequence that goes on for about nine pages.
Still, for only the second time in a week, I wrote over 2,000 words, which is good - since that's what I'm trying to do every day.
Got to get up earlier tomorrow because I'm meeting someone before midday. Before midday! Ridiculous.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to knock another ten pages of this son of a bitch on the head. We'll see.
word count: 2,676
hours writing: 4.5
I've reached day 50! Woo-hoo!
Got to re-find my mojo: lost it over the last seven days. Got a few things to do, but determined to put my four hours in today, and to make my word limit.
00:00
Well, I've got two hours in so far, but not much else.
You might have noticed through my shorter blog-posts and less effusive writing style that I'm finding it pretty difficult at the moment. I'm not enjoying this story: I don't feel like I know the characters well enough, or that anything is moving forwards for any other reason than I wrote out a plot list and am now trying to follow it. It takes so God-damned long to write, too: 3-5 pages a day, endless time spent over each and every line of mealy-mouthed dialogue.
I can look back on this week and, honestly, the biggest break I've had creatively all week was when I worked out a new way to defrost our refrigerator.
I have to finish this screenplay: not finishing it is making me miserable. But after finishing this - however long that takes - I'm going to have to re-evaluate what I do next.
I'm going to continue writing, just as hard, the same number of words every day: but I might have to stretch out the length of time I take to research and then write the screenplays, or pepper them with shorter projects. I really don't want to: but I'm finding it incredibly depressing trying to force myself to write something that just isn't good enough, because it hasn't been mulled over, because each situation hasn't been fully investigated before it's written.
Man, if only I'd been born an inimitable genius. That was the only flaw in the whole of my otherwise reasonable plan for 2009: that you'd have to be a fucking genius or a complete moron to be able to pull off twelve feature screenplays a year.
Maybe next year my resolution should be along the lines of, 'I want to create nuclear fusion using items I've bought from the supermarket', 'a Symphony a week', or 'I'll write a Novel a day!'
Come to think of it, I shouldn't call this blog, 'Resolution': I should call it, 'Cosmo Wallace: Over-reaching Douchebag Extraordinaire'.
But I could spend another hour writing sorry-for-myself shit on here. I've still got two hours of writing to do on this horrible, horrible script.
I've started talking to my script when I sit down to write it. Almost always, what I say is:
"Come on then, you fucker."
Writing this script is like having a knife-fight with your own mind.
03:30
Okay, made my lousy word count for the day. And wrote about eleven pages, including an interminable fight sequence that goes on for about nine pages.
Still, for only the second time in a week, I wrote over 2,000 words, which is good - since that's what I'm trying to do every day.
Got to get up earlier tomorrow because I'm meeting someone before midday. Before midday! Ridiculous.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to knock another ten pages of this son of a bitch on the head. We'll see.
word count: 2,676
hours writing: 4.5
Wednesday 18 February 2009
Day 49
15:15
I woke up at three o'clock in the afternoon, feeling like shit. Wow, this really isn't working at the moment.
I think maybe I should just sit down and write the rest of this script over the next couple of days - really work until it's just done. Because it's starting to depress me a little bit at the moment..
05:15
Going to bed now. Will write more tomorrow. Tired and a little bummed.
word count: 1,045
hours writing: 2
I woke up at three o'clock in the afternoon, feeling like shit. Wow, this really isn't working at the moment.
I think maybe I should just sit down and write the rest of this script over the next couple of days - really work until it's just done. Because it's starting to depress me a little bit at the moment..
05:15
Going to bed now. Will write more tomorrow. Tired and a little bummed.
word count: 1,045
hours writing: 2
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Day 48
22:00
So guess what? I got up at 10am this morning. That's right - 10am. I got less than three hours sleep all told - but was determined to get back into a more regular routine.
So I got up, enthused about the movie I saw last night, and decided to look over my short film and start working on it.
And it fucked me over, again and again and again.
And now, it's 10pm, and I have spent literally twelve hours working on aftereffects, or as I like to call it, afteritfucks (up your life). I've got the rubbishy first versions of twenty shots - most only a second or two - for a total of over thirty hours' work.
So now I'm shattered, grumpy, and have achieved nothing. Actually, come to think of it, it sounds like a pretty normal day.
Better do some writing.
23:00
Man, I've had this feeling before: the, 'I'm too tired from working on motion graphics bullshit to be able to keep my eyes open, let alone write' feeling.
I think I fucked up today.
00:45
Going to bed. I don't feel very happy with my success-rate recently. In fact, all told, I feel pretty disappointed with myself. Why am I finding it so difficult to write this script? Why is the completion of my short film becoming so impossible to realise?
I just don't know. I guess this is the first real 'low point' in my year - it's come pretty early on, too. Hopefully I will bounce back tomorrow.
word count: 243
hours writing: 0.5
So guess what? I got up at 10am this morning. That's right - 10am. I got less than three hours sleep all told - but was determined to get back into a more regular routine.
So I got up, enthused about the movie I saw last night, and decided to look over my short film and start working on it.
And it fucked me over, again and again and again.
And now, it's 10pm, and I have spent literally twelve hours working on aftereffects, or as I like to call it, afteritfucks (up your life). I've got the rubbishy first versions of twenty shots - most only a second or two - for a total of over thirty hours' work.
So now I'm shattered, grumpy, and have achieved nothing. Actually, come to think of it, it sounds like a pretty normal day.
Better do some writing.
23:00
Man, I've had this feeling before: the, 'I'm too tired from working on motion graphics bullshit to be able to keep my eyes open, let alone write' feeling.
I think I fucked up today.
00:45
Going to bed. I don't feel very happy with my success-rate recently. In fact, all told, I feel pretty disappointed with myself. Why am I finding it so difficult to write this script? Why is the completion of my short film becoming so impossible to realise?
I just don't know. I guess this is the first real 'low point' in my year - it's come pretty early on, too. Hopefully I will bounce back tomorrow.
word count: 243
hours writing: 0.5
Monday 16 February 2009
Day 47
14:15
Wow. I've never woken up this late before in my life. And I'm a lazy motherfucker.
Got to start writing sooner.
05:45
Yep, I'm fucking my body clock pretty good.
Went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight (or more like last night, now...)
Absolutely fucking awesome. If I could make, or just write - one thing as good as this in my whole life, I won't have been a waste of time.
Everything about this film is fantastic: Go and see it. Particularly impressive was the photography. Apparently the DP, Claudio Miranda, used to be a gaffer on Fincher's sets - I think this is his first gig as credited Cinematographer.
I've never sees digital cinematography so vibrant, so elastic in tone and feeling, so beautiful. It was used for all the fantastic stuff that it's good for: characters illuminated by candle-light, silhouettes against the dawn. Whilst richer, the camera was more subtle in placement and framing than Fincher's other films - an admirable stepping away from visual gloss towards a more honest visual meaning.
Also beautiful was the score by Alexandre Desplat: sombre and warm, it added poignancy without turning it into schmaltz.
Click on the link above for the official site, that includes a very impressive overview of the special effects processes of the film, presented in a beautiful book-like structure.
Anyway, I did some writing when I got back. It felt pretty poor after what I'd just seen, but I managed to get ten pages out.
Now I'm going to go to bed, and dream of a day when I'll be able to direct as well as David Fincher.
word count: 2,210
hours writing: 4
Wow. I've never woken up this late before in my life. And I'm a lazy motherfucker.
Got to start writing sooner.
05:45
Yep, I'm fucking my body clock pretty good.
Went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight (or more like last night, now...)
Absolutely fucking awesome. If I could make, or just write - one thing as good as this in my whole life, I won't have been a waste of time.
Everything about this film is fantastic: Go and see it. Particularly impressive was the photography. Apparently the DP, Claudio Miranda, used to be a gaffer on Fincher's sets - I think this is his first gig as credited Cinematographer.
I've never sees digital cinematography so vibrant, so elastic in tone and feeling, so beautiful. It was used for all the fantastic stuff that it's good for: characters illuminated by candle-light, silhouettes against the dawn. Whilst richer, the camera was more subtle in placement and framing than Fincher's other films - an admirable stepping away from visual gloss towards a more honest visual meaning.
Also beautiful was the score by Alexandre Desplat: sombre and warm, it added poignancy without turning it into schmaltz.
Click on the link above for the official site, that includes a very impressive overview of the special effects processes of the film, presented in a beautiful book-like structure.
Anyway, I did some writing when I got back. It felt pretty poor after what I'd just seen, but I managed to get ten pages out.
Now I'm going to go to bed, and dream of a day when I'll be able to direct as well as David Fincher.
word count: 2,210
hours writing: 4
Sunday 15 February 2009
Day 46
17:45
I am starting writing late today: I got a book the other day called 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' and started reading it obsessively this afternoon until it was finished.
I don't want to be a curmudgeon, but I found it a massive let-down: frustrating, inconclusive and really padded out. Apart from conjuring up a vaguely nostalgic sense of 1860's England it has few real merits, and I don't understand the praise heaped on it.
I read a book years ago called 'The Riddle of Birdhirst Rise', mainly because it referred to a famous murder case that took place a few roads away from where I grew up in Croydon. This book is out of print now, and was never anything but a slightly salacious book in the 'true crime' section of Dillons. However, it was much better than this widely awarded new book. A comparison might be in order.
In this first part of 'The Riddle of Birdhirst Rise', the author sets the scene for the murders (three poisonings in the same family house in the 1920's), describes each of the deaths in turn, then outlines the remaining family members.
In the second part of the book, he goes through the possible motives for each person to have committed the crime: covers the press hysteria and the police investigation to catch the killer, and shows how almost impossible it would be for any of the suspects to have committed the murders.
And then, in the final few chapters, with the skill of a great detective novelist, he shows us who the murderer almost certainly was, using the previously unpublished suspicions of the head detective, newly revealed facts, and a simple timeline and setting out of motives that makes the murder, so obscure earlier, suddenly seem perfectly clear.
It is elegant, thought-provoking, and well-paced. Now let's look at the consistently brown-nosed 'Mr Whicher'. You are basically told who the murderer is in the opening pages of the book.
Then you are given all the contradictory evidence, already knowing who fucking did it. Then we are made to feel sorry for the brilliant police detective who's conclusions are regarded as so horrible by Victorian society that he is made an outcast (cue a hundred-page digression on his interest in flowers and a plot-spoiling overview of Victorian Sensationalist literature).
After 200 pages, the person we've been told who was the murderer from the start comes out and tells everyone that they are (most of whom - even in the fucking story - already knew) and the person is convicted, serves time, and is released to live a good long life while everyone else dies from syphilis or obstructed bowels. Then there are about a hundred pages of 'what happens next' to every stovepipe hat- and bonnet-wearing fucking character we've been introduced to in the whole book. It's like the monologue you might get sitting next to an old person with a photo album.
But wait - three pages from the back cover, without any new evidence, and without attempting to resolve the remaining contradictions of the murder, the author butts herself into the narrative and tells us she thinks someone else helped. How? Fuck you, that's how: you've reached the end of the book.
Awesome, Kate Summerscale. Thanks for wasting my time. Here's a tip: if you want to write a thinly-veiled survey of an event's impact on contemporaneous literature, and your thesis for the event is basically that no event nor human being, despite our best efforts, can ever be truly known or unravelled, don't write your book like a detective story, you fucking cock-tease.
I don't need to buy a book and read it to be told I can't really ever be sure about something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. I kind of already already knew that.
And writing a detective story from a post-modern vantage that raises questions of what you can or can't know isn't new: Paul Auster has been writing books that bore everyone to tears for decades using that particularly crappy chestnut. When I see all the stickers and acolades on the front of this book, I think two things:
1) that maybe they shouldn't hand out literary prizes every year - maybe (and this is my theory for the Nobel Peace Prize, too) they should only be handed out occasionally on merit.
2) who the fuck are Richard and Judy to tell me what to read? It says something really bad about the age you live in when two functionally retarded TV mannequins become the most influential literary critics in Britain.
Man, I should have spent the last four hours writing instead of getting caught up in this bullshit.
06:00
This is getting ridiculous. I've been working for quite a while now, my eyes are fucking bleeding, and I still haven't made my word count.
This is really, really hard.
I'll blog more tomorrow. When I'm not so tired I hurt myself typing.
word count: 1,712
hours writing: 5.5
I am starting writing late today: I got a book the other day called 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' and started reading it obsessively this afternoon until it was finished.
I don't want to be a curmudgeon, but I found it a massive let-down: frustrating, inconclusive and really padded out. Apart from conjuring up a vaguely nostalgic sense of 1860's England it has few real merits, and I don't understand the praise heaped on it.
I read a book years ago called 'The Riddle of Birdhirst Rise', mainly because it referred to a famous murder case that took place a few roads away from where I grew up in Croydon. This book is out of print now, and was never anything but a slightly salacious book in the 'true crime' section of Dillons. However, it was much better than this widely awarded new book. A comparison might be in order.
In this first part of 'The Riddle of Birdhirst Rise', the author sets the scene for the murders (three poisonings in the same family house in the 1920's), describes each of the deaths in turn, then outlines the remaining family members.
In the second part of the book, he goes through the possible motives for each person to have committed the crime: covers the press hysteria and the police investigation to catch the killer, and shows how almost impossible it would be for any of the suspects to have committed the murders.
And then, in the final few chapters, with the skill of a great detective novelist, he shows us who the murderer almost certainly was, using the previously unpublished suspicions of the head detective, newly revealed facts, and a simple timeline and setting out of motives that makes the murder, so obscure earlier, suddenly seem perfectly clear.
It is elegant, thought-provoking, and well-paced. Now let's look at the consistently brown-nosed 'Mr Whicher'. You are basically told who the murderer is in the opening pages of the book.
Then you are given all the contradictory evidence, already knowing who fucking did it. Then we are made to feel sorry for the brilliant police detective who's conclusions are regarded as so horrible by Victorian society that he is made an outcast (cue a hundred-page digression on his interest in flowers and a plot-spoiling overview of Victorian Sensationalist literature).
After 200 pages, the person we've been told who was the murderer from the start comes out and tells everyone that they are (most of whom - even in the fucking story - already knew) and the person is convicted, serves time, and is released to live a good long life while everyone else dies from syphilis or obstructed bowels. Then there are about a hundred pages of 'what happens next' to every stovepipe hat- and bonnet-wearing fucking character we've been introduced to in the whole book. It's like the monologue you might get sitting next to an old person with a photo album.
But wait - three pages from the back cover, without any new evidence, and without attempting to resolve the remaining contradictions of the murder, the author butts herself into the narrative and tells us she thinks someone else helped. How? Fuck you, that's how: you've reached the end of the book.
Awesome, Kate Summerscale. Thanks for wasting my time. Here's a tip: if you want to write a thinly-veiled survey of an event's impact on contemporaneous literature, and your thesis for the event is basically that no event nor human being, despite our best efforts, can ever be truly known or unravelled, don't write your book like a detective story, you fucking cock-tease.
I don't need to buy a book and read it to be told I can't really ever be sure about something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. I kind of already already knew that.
And writing a detective story from a post-modern vantage that raises questions of what you can or can't know isn't new: Paul Auster has been writing books that bore everyone to tears for decades using that particularly crappy chestnut. When I see all the stickers and acolades on the front of this book, I think two things:
1) that maybe they shouldn't hand out literary prizes every year - maybe (and this is my theory for the Nobel Peace Prize, too) they should only be handed out occasionally on merit.
2) who the fuck are Richard and Judy to tell me what to read? It says something really bad about the age you live in when two functionally retarded TV mannequins become the most influential literary critics in Britain.
Man, I should have spent the last four hours writing instead of getting caught up in this bullshit.
06:00
This is getting ridiculous. I've been working for quite a while now, my eyes are fucking bleeding, and I still haven't made my word count.
This is really, really hard.
I'll blog more tomorrow. When I'm not so tired I hurt myself typing.
word count: 1,712
hours writing: 5.5
Saturday 14 February 2009
Day 45
23:45
Had a lovely day with my beautiful girlfriend. I booked her a lesson to go ski-ing for the first time on a dry slope in Bellahouston Park, and she persuaded me to try it too.
This adventure reminded me of a question I ask myself the more I experience different things: why are the activities rich people do so much fucking fun? All you're doing, in this case, is sliding down a small incline with your feet attached to two glorified planks. Why does it make you feel the king of the world?
I don't know. It would be nice to work out a way to make it more affordable.
Oh, and I had another revelation, too. No matter what they do, snowboarders always look like complete tools.
I was so tired half an hour ago I actually went to bed, feeling really terrible at myself that I hadn't written anything today. But I'm up now and fresh as a daisy, and I'm going to try to do as much work as I can right now before I pass out again.
04:30
My word count is taking a serious hit at the moment. Four hours' writing: barely a thousand words. I'm going to have to start as soon as I get up tomorrow and work for as long as it takes to get ten pages done.
Still, I had such a lovely day. I'm pleased to have had such fun.
word count: 1,046
hours writing: 4
Had a lovely day with my beautiful girlfriend. I booked her a lesson to go ski-ing for the first time on a dry slope in Bellahouston Park, and she persuaded me to try it too.
This adventure reminded me of a question I ask myself the more I experience different things: why are the activities rich people do so much fucking fun? All you're doing, in this case, is sliding down a small incline with your feet attached to two glorified planks. Why does it make you feel the king of the world?
I don't know. It would be nice to work out a way to make it more affordable.
Oh, and I had another revelation, too. No matter what they do, snowboarders always look like complete tools.
I was so tired half an hour ago I actually went to bed, feeling really terrible at myself that I hadn't written anything today. But I'm up now and fresh as a daisy, and I'm going to try to do as much work as I can right now before I pass out again.
04:30
My word count is taking a serious hit at the moment. Four hours' writing: barely a thousand words. I'm going to have to start as soon as I get up tomorrow and work for as long as it takes to get ten pages done.
Still, I had such a lovely day. I'm pleased to have had such fun.
word count: 1,046
hours writing: 4
Friday 13 February 2009
Day 44
12:30
Couldn't sleep last night: so incredibly relieved that I had gotten away from that terrible feeling of yesterday afternoon.
That was really a rut: not knowing not to write, what to focus on, which character to look at, a nasty feeling over every single word choice... I guess it was a good, old-fashioned panic attack, really.
Feeling much more chipper today. We'll see if that translates into easier writing.
23:30
I don't know about you, but Friday 13th has been a fucking rubbish day for me.
On days like this, I feels like giving up entirely.
04:15
Not a particularly successful day, on a number of different levels. Had to spend hours fucking around with a phone contract that won't work and seeing a personal project getting wrestled away from me. Still, nothing that can't be sorted, in some way, towards a more positive solution. I only managed to write four pages of script today. That's really not good - not where I thought I'd be at the beginning of the day.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. A break may be required. We shall see.
word count: 1,389
hours writing: 5.5
Couldn't sleep last night: so incredibly relieved that I had gotten away from that terrible feeling of yesterday afternoon.
That was really a rut: not knowing not to write, what to focus on, which character to look at, a nasty feeling over every single word choice... I guess it was a good, old-fashioned panic attack, really.
Feeling much more chipper today. We'll see if that translates into easier writing.
23:30
I don't know about you, but Friday 13th has been a fucking rubbish day for me.
On days like this, I feels like giving up entirely.
04:15
Not a particularly successful day, on a number of different levels. Had to spend hours fucking around with a phone contract that won't work and seeing a personal project getting wrestled away from me. Still, nothing that can't be sorted, in some way, towards a more positive solution. I only managed to write four pages of script today. That's really not good - not where I thought I'd be at the beginning of the day.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. A break may be required. We shall see.
word count: 1,389
hours writing: 5.5
Thursday 12 February 2009
Day 43
14:30
Okay. I've been up for about two hours. I'm sitting down at the keyboard, feeling pretty apprehensive.
I better start writing now.
04:00
That was a hard motherfucking day. The first three hours were really quite scary: I had written less than three pages: they were very difficult to achieve. Then somehow, it started to flow.
But then, it always seems to get easier after two in the morning - just at that point that you know you're going to be fucked the next morning.
Anyway, it's a ridiculous time of the night, I'm extremely relieved to have gotten this first day out of the way. I'll be a better blogger tomorrow.
And I sincerely hope tomorrow is a little easier!
word count: 2,392
hours writing: 6
Okay. I've been up for about two hours. I'm sitting down at the keyboard, feeling pretty apprehensive.
I better start writing now.
04:00
That was a hard motherfucking day. The first three hours were really quite scary: I had written less than three pages: they were very difficult to achieve. Then somehow, it started to flow.
But then, it always seems to get easier after two in the morning - just at that point that you know you're going to be fucked the next morning.
Anyway, it's a ridiculous time of the night, I'm extremely relieved to have gotten this first day out of the way. I'll be a better blogger tomorrow.
And I sincerely hope tomorrow is a little easier!
word count: 2,392
hours writing: 6
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Day 42
15:00
Okay. Today I'm going to finish this motherfucking plot off. And I'm going to start my screenplay. I just decided. And I'm the sheriff of screenplay town.
02:00
Got my four hours in, written my two thousand words, finally finished this reworking off.
My total 'plans' (plot runthrough and secondary character runthrough) for this screenplay total forty A4 pages, single spaced: nearly 24,000 words. There's a further 19 A4 pages of handwritten notes. There's so much shit here, I don't know how it's ballooned into so much. Is it a form of active procrastination? I certainly feel like I need it all, but even with all this stuff, I don't have anything like a firm idea of the way forward.
So, I feel very apprehensive about tomorrow. I've become lazy, hazy and unfocussed over the last few weeks - since I got back home, really. This has to change while I'm writing.
I found an interesting note I wrote in one of the pages of a notebook I found today. I think I'll put it up near me tomorrow. It reads:
I think that will do me for tonight.
Maybe if I go to bed early (2:30am), I'll be able to get up bright and ear... well, before midday.
word count: 2,047
hours writing: 4
Okay. Today I'm going to finish this motherfucking plot off. And I'm going to start my screenplay. I just decided. And I'm the sheriff of screenplay town.
02:00
Got my four hours in, written my two thousand words, finally finished this reworking off.
My total 'plans' (plot runthrough and secondary character runthrough) for this screenplay total forty A4 pages, single spaced: nearly 24,000 words. There's a further 19 A4 pages of handwritten notes. There's so much shit here, I don't know how it's ballooned into so much. Is it a form of active procrastination? I certainly feel like I need it all, but even with all this stuff, I don't have anything like a firm idea of the way forward.
So, I feel very apprehensive about tomorrow. I've become lazy, hazy and unfocussed over the last few weeks - since I got back home, really. This has to change while I'm writing.
I found an interesting note I wrote in one of the pages of a notebook I found today. I think I'll put it up near me tomorrow. It reads:
ASK YOURSELF IN EACH SCENE:
"WHAT IS THE MOST INTERESTING OUTCOME?
WHY AM I AVOIDING IT?"
"WHAT IS THE MOST INTERESTING OUTCOME?
WHY AM I AVOIDING IT?"
I think that will do me for tonight.
Maybe if I go to bed early (2:30am), I'll be able to get up bright and ear... well, before midday.
word count: 2,047
hours writing: 4
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Day 41
13:15
Woke up rearing to go, had a look at my e-mails, and now I'm already pissed off.
There are a lot of jack-asses in this line of work. People who will cold-contact you and call themselves producers because they made a three minute short with a couple of their rich friends. They invariably have a better upbringing than you, and let you know it. They tell you 'I'm going to a big film festival, (one that you would like to go to but can't afford) I want to take projects from people like you...'
So like a fucking moron, you send them some of your work. You fall into the trap. These people are never going to help you. All they really want is to feel important - that their voices were important to a bunch of different 'little people' writers and directors. And you realise this with oh-so-cold clarity when, out of the blue, you get a bunch of facetious fucking notes from them about something you've written, telling you 'I don't think you format quite right', you should 'concentrate on characters' and 'try checking out the kind of thing they do on Channel 4'.
And you think to yourself, 'When did I become a first-time writer again? When did this jackass become Scott Rudin?' But before you have a chance to respond, they've swanned off to that fucking film festival you couldn't afford to go to.
I'm not a, 'Do you know who I am? Do you know what I've done?' kind of guy, but seriously. A lecture on writing by a man who's produced one three-minute film?
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Networking is for cunts.
21:15
Ah, the circle of fortune. One day your having snowball fights and eating cupcakes, the next your ankle-deep in broken dvd drives and computers that won't do what they're fucking told for nine continuous hours.
How much writing have I been able to achieve so far? A measly hour. This month has not been good for achieving things over a reasonable timeframe in daylight hours. In fact, so far, this month has not been very good for achieving anything at all. But this is going to change right now.
Back to the word processor.
03:45
My finishing times are just getting later and later. Still haven't quite finished the new plot outline: plotted out 74 scenes now, and just reaching the third act (which means each of these scenes is going to have to be short.)
I found out an interesting little tidbit today: St Expeditus is the Catholic Saint invoked against procrastination. I wonder if there's a saint invoked against problematic screenplays.
Eyelids hurt. Going to bed now. The birds have started to sing outside. I hope tomorrow sucks a few less gopher balls.
word count: 2,023
hours writing: 4.5
suck-o-meter counter: 8.5
Woke up rearing to go, had a look at my e-mails, and now I'm already pissed off.
There are a lot of jack-asses in this line of work. People who will cold-contact you and call themselves producers because they made a three minute short with a couple of their rich friends. They invariably have a better upbringing than you, and let you know it. They tell you 'I'm going to a big film festival, (one that you would like to go to but can't afford) I want to take projects from people like you...'
So like a fucking moron, you send them some of your work. You fall into the trap. These people are never going to help you. All they really want is to feel important - that their voices were important to a bunch of different 'little people' writers and directors. And you realise this with oh-so-cold clarity when, out of the blue, you get a bunch of facetious fucking notes from them about something you've written, telling you 'I don't think you format quite right', you should 'concentrate on characters' and 'try checking out the kind of thing they do on Channel 4'.
And you think to yourself, 'When did I become a first-time writer again? When did this jackass become Scott Rudin?' But before you have a chance to respond, they've swanned off to that fucking film festival you couldn't afford to go to.
I'm not a, 'Do you know who I am? Do you know what I've done?' kind of guy, but seriously. A lecture on writing by a man who's produced one three-minute film?
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Networking is for cunts.
21:15
Ah, the circle of fortune. One day your having snowball fights and eating cupcakes, the next your ankle-deep in broken dvd drives and computers that won't do what they're fucking told for nine continuous hours.
How much writing have I been able to achieve so far? A measly hour. This month has not been good for achieving things over a reasonable timeframe in daylight hours. In fact, so far, this month has not been very good for achieving anything at all. But this is going to change right now.
Back to the word processor.
03:45
My finishing times are just getting later and later. Still haven't quite finished the new plot outline: plotted out 74 scenes now, and just reaching the third act (which means each of these scenes is going to have to be short.)
I found out an interesting little tidbit today: St Expeditus is the Catholic Saint invoked against procrastination. I wonder if there's a saint invoked against problematic screenplays.
Eyelids hurt. Going to bed now. The birds have started to sing outside. I hope tomorrow sucks a few less gopher balls.
word count: 2,023
hours writing: 4.5
suck-o-meter counter: 8.5
Monday 9 February 2009
Day 40
20:00
My fortieth day on this crazy scheme. It's been pretty damned good, though there hasn't been much work in it.
I woke up to find that the book I'd ordered from amazon, Swearing: A Social History, had arrived. There was still snow on the ground, so we decided to walk out to the West End, through Kelvin Park. The Victorian part of the city looked really beautiful: white roofs, snow-blanketed lawns. We stopped into a fantastic cafe in the heart of the West End called Heart Buchanan. Due to having experienced an economic downturn several months, if not years, before everybody else, this was the first time I'd got a slice of cake out in a long time (actually, I had a fairy cake - though I prefer to think of it as a 'frosted muffin') and it was damned good.
We picked up some takeaway for later from our favourite Indian place, called The Banana Leaf, on Old Dumbarton Road, and headed for home. When we got back, we found out that a picture that my beautiful girlfriend took last night of Rabbie Burns in the snow is BBC Scotland's Big Picture of the Day!
So I've been reading my book on swearing for the last hour, noting down some choice words my medieval characters might exclaim. I'm going to have to start writing soon, however.
But I've had a lot of fun today.
03:15
Well, got three and a half hours writing in. Under the word limit, and more of this endless fucking plot writing still to go, but this is all I can really do today. I'm tired. I feel a lot more positive about this project now, though: it's really starting to make sense. I've completely changed one of the characters, turned another character into a different person altogether with a new name, and introduced another character. What's good is that, finally, after all of this work, I'm finally starting to see a pattern for the film, a way to fit in the bits I want, a way of seeing how all the bits of communication and desire between these different characters can fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
On that cliche, I'm going to bed.
word count: 1,308
hours writing: 3.5
My fortieth day on this crazy scheme. It's been pretty damned good, though there hasn't been much work in it.
I woke up to find that the book I'd ordered from amazon, Swearing: A Social History, had arrived. There was still snow on the ground, so we decided to walk out to the West End, through Kelvin Park. The Victorian part of the city looked really beautiful: white roofs, snow-blanketed lawns. We stopped into a fantastic cafe in the heart of the West End called Heart Buchanan. Due to having experienced an economic downturn several months, if not years, before everybody else, this was the first time I'd got a slice of cake out in a long time (actually, I had a fairy cake - though I prefer to think of it as a 'frosted muffin') and it was damned good.
We picked up some takeaway for later from our favourite Indian place, called The Banana Leaf, on Old Dumbarton Road, and headed for home. When we got back, we found out that a picture that my beautiful girlfriend took last night of Rabbie Burns in the snow is BBC Scotland's Big Picture of the Day!
So I've been reading my book on swearing for the last hour, noting down some choice words my medieval characters might exclaim. I'm going to have to start writing soon, however.
But I've had a lot of fun today.
03:15
Well, got three and a half hours writing in. Under the word limit, and more of this endless fucking plot writing still to go, but this is all I can really do today. I'm tired. I feel a lot more positive about this project now, though: it's really starting to make sense. I've completely changed one of the characters, turned another character into a different person altogether with a new name, and introduced another character. What's good is that, finally, after all of this work, I'm finally starting to see a pattern for the film, a way to fit in the bits I want, a way of seeing how all the bits of communication and desire between these different characters can fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
On that cliche, I'm going to bed.
word count: 1,308
hours writing: 3.5
Sunday 8 February 2009
Day 39
13:45
Up for the last hour and a half. Still feeling a little groggy, but determined to do better than yesterday.
20:00
Written for a couple of hours, got a couple of hours left to go. It's been snowing today - it might actually settle, which is exciting. Maybe a winter wonderland will await Glasgow tomorrow morning.
02:15
Well, I didn't finish any god damned earlier today. But I've fleshed out another twenty scenes. I'm really hoping that if I work hard, I'll finish this fucker off tomorrow, and then be able to start writing proper on tuesday.
Went out for a while in the snow with my girlfriend. It was late and there was no-one about, so the snow in the centre of town - especially around the sixties architecture of Strathclyde University, was pristine. For the first time in three years, we managed to gallumph through untrodden snow. It was a lot of fun: the most fun I've had in a few days.
Not much to say at the moment about the writing. I'm kind of pissed off at myself for taking so long to achieve so little. We'll see what happens tomorrow.
word count: 2,179
hours writing: 4.5
Up for the last hour and a half. Still feeling a little groggy, but determined to do better than yesterday.
20:00
Written for a couple of hours, got a couple of hours left to go. It's been snowing today - it might actually settle, which is exciting. Maybe a winter wonderland will await Glasgow tomorrow morning.
02:15
Well, I didn't finish any god damned earlier today. But I've fleshed out another twenty scenes. I'm really hoping that if I work hard, I'll finish this fucker off tomorrow, and then be able to start writing proper on tuesday.
Went out for a while in the snow with my girlfriend. It was late and there was no-one about, so the snow in the centre of town - especially around the sixties architecture of Strathclyde University, was pristine. For the first time in three years, we managed to gallumph through untrodden snow. It was a lot of fun: the most fun I've had in a few days.
Not much to say at the moment about the writing. I'm kind of pissed off at myself for taking so long to achieve so little. We'll see what happens tomorrow.
word count: 2,179
hours writing: 4.5
Saturday 7 February 2009
Day 38
23:00
Well, I haven't managed to get much blogging in today. I haven't managed to get much writing in, either. In fact, I just plain ol' suck.
I'm in a rut at the moment. It's partly because I've got a cold, and so I'm finding it difficult to concentrate. But I'm finding the daily writing - and this crusader project in particular - to feel more and more like a daily grind. I don't know why.
I'm going to have force myself to get back into gear. I'm too obsessed with finishing the project within the month, instead of just writing for a certain amount of time every day. I think this might be the problem I'm going to have: I've set myself three goals that each take up a different toll on my everyday life: to write for a good chunk of my waking hours, to produce a pretty large number of words every day, and to complete a large project a month. Always two of these seem to edge the other one out. On good days, it all seems easy. But on difficult days, it starts to feel impossible.
I should stop whinging. I'll start writing now and we'll just have to see what happens.
02:45
Just about made my word count. About half-way through this revisiting of the characters and plot. Feel less discouraged now for my effort.
It's made me realise, sometimes the end of a project isn't nearly as near as you'd like it to be. This is a very dangerous time in terms of how you feel about yourself. I think maybe the remedy is to concentrate on the process itself - that is, just writing. Writing every day. And making that time as enjoyable and productive as it can be, without making 'productive' in your head stand for 'completely unreal expectation of what you're going to achieve today'.
When I concentrate on these projects with a 'day to day' frame of mind, I feel happy about it. When I think of each project as so far from being completed, nothing I can do in one day feels like progress.
Maybe this is what I'm learning this month: how to be philosophical about the long term progress of what I'm doing, while exerting myself and seeing very little gain in the short term. And how to accept the frustration, the nagging sense of inachievement that is already such a familiar aspect to my life, in a new and more positive light.
It's certainly the hardest lesson so far.
word count: 2,332
hours writing: 4
Well, I haven't managed to get much blogging in today. I haven't managed to get much writing in, either. In fact, I just plain ol' suck.
I'm in a rut at the moment. It's partly because I've got a cold, and so I'm finding it difficult to concentrate. But I'm finding the daily writing - and this crusader project in particular - to feel more and more like a daily grind. I don't know why.
I'm going to have force myself to get back into gear. I'm too obsessed with finishing the project within the month, instead of just writing for a certain amount of time every day. I think this might be the problem I'm going to have: I've set myself three goals that each take up a different toll on my everyday life: to write for a good chunk of my waking hours, to produce a pretty large number of words every day, and to complete a large project a month. Always two of these seem to edge the other one out. On good days, it all seems easy. But on difficult days, it starts to feel impossible.
I should stop whinging. I'll start writing now and we'll just have to see what happens.
02:45
Just about made my word count. About half-way through this revisiting of the characters and plot. Feel less discouraged now for my effort.
It's made me realise, sometimes the end of a project isn't nearly as near as you'd like it to be. This is a very dangerous time in terms of how you feel about yourself. I think maybe the remedy is to concentrate on the process itself - that is, just writing. Writing every day. And making that time as enjoyable and productive as it can be, without making 'productive' in your head stand for 'completely unreal expectation of what you're going to achieve today'.
When I concentrate on these projects with a 'day to day' frame of mind, I feel happy about it. When I think of each project as so far from being completed, nothing I can do in one day feels like progress.
Maybe this is what I'm learning this month: how to be philosophical about the long term progress of what I'm doing, while exerting myself and seeing very little gain in the short term. And how to accept the frustration, the nagging sense of inachievement that is already such a familiar aspect to my life, in a new and more positive light.
It's certainly the hardest lesson so far.
word count: 2,332
hours writing: 4
Friday 6 February 2009
Day 37
16:00
Had a few chores to do today before I could sit down and start writing. I've been working on one shot of my short film for the last couple of hours - a really important one - but one that is taking a really, really long time to get right.
I'm aware that I've really got to start getting my ass moving on this script. It's really difficult to see the woods from the trees on this one. I think I'm going to spend the day on my new, bare-bones outline, see if the thing makes sense and has a shape, then maybe add a little more flesh to it tomorrow, then start writing proper on Sunday. But we'll see.
00:15
This is now the least productive day of my year so far. I mean, it's really sucked. I've got nothing done, I can't get my screenplay plan to work, and then I spent ages trying to get just one of the shots from my short film sorted out, and that didn't work either. And now it's past midnight, and I've achieved nothing.
I guess we all have these days. I think I'll work for an hour and then have a reasonably early night - and try getting something done tomorrow. The plan I made earlier seems remarkably optimistic.
But tomorrow can only be better than today.
02:15
Going to bed now. Tired and cranky. Have worked out a tiny bit more of the way the characters feel and actually respond to things during the machinations of the plot - but I'm a maximum of 15% into the outline so far, with three main characters still to enter the story. There's a long, long way to go. I hope I can be more productive tomorrow.
I'm going to have to stop working on the short film for a couple of days,. It's taking away all my writing time, and is bumming me out. I think once I've started on the screenplay proper, I'll dip back into the short - maybe only doing the easier shots that don't require my heart, soul, and all my time, to get completed.
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.
word count: 1,024
hours writing: 2
Had a few chores to do today before I could sit down and start writing. I've been working on one shot of my short film for the last couple of hours - a really important one - but one that is taking a really, really long time to get right.
I'm aware that I've really got to start getting my ass moving on this script. It's really difficult to see the woods from the trees on this one. I think I'm going to spend the day on my new, bare-bones outline, see if the thing makes sense and has a shape, then maybe add a little more flesh to it tomorrow, then start writing proper on Sunday. But we'll see.
00:15
This is now the least productive day of my year so far. I mean, it's really sucked. I've got nothing done, I can't get my screenplay plan to work, and then I spent ages trying to get just one of the shots from my short film sorted out, and that didn't work either. And now it's past midnight, and I've achieved nothing.
I guess we all have these days. I think I'll work for an hour and then have a reasonably early night - and try getting something done tomorrow. The plan I made earlier seems remarkably optimistic.
But tomorrow can only be better than today.
02:15
Going to bed now. Tired and cranky. Have worked out a tiny bit more of the way the characters feel and actually respond to things during the machinations of the plot - but I'm a maximum of 15% into the outline so far, with three main characters still to enter the story. There's a long, long way to go. I hope I can be more productive tomorrow.
I'm going to have to stop working on the short film for a couple of days,. It's taking away all my writing time, and is bumming me out. I think once I've started on the screenplay proper, I'll dip back into the short - maybe only doing the easier shots that don't require my heart, soul, and all my time, to get completed.
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.
word count: 1,024
hours writing: 2
Thursday 5 February 2009
Day 36
13:00
Feel totally wrecked today. Didn't go to bed too late, but couldn't sleep. Finished off Rockstar's Bully last night, which is good: I don't have anything trivial to obsess over. I should actually get some work done now.
I spent a lot of time last night thinking about the short film I made last October. It isn't finished yet, because of sound and other post-production issues. So I've been working on grading it this morning: it's a black and white film, but I'm trying to give the footage a "lith print" feel: grainy, deep blacks, sepia tints in the mids, and crisp, silvery highlights. I think it will look different to other black and white films, but it also takes about half an hour per shot. So I'm going to try to work out a way to set up one shot, then write while it renders out, then set up another shot, and so on. We'll see how it works.
18:00
Not cool. Not fucking cool. I had to go out to work out a small mobile phone issue, and it took two hours. And after all that, I have to go back tomorrow. And thanks to AfterEffects, I've spent another three hours today without having achieved anything. So I haven't done any writing today, and I haven't achieved anything else, either.
It seems to take an awful lot of time and stress to get this much not done.
22:30
Okay, it's taken me this long to get those fucking AfterEffects shots out of the way. I've done less than an hour's work, and I don't think I'm going to be able to do four hours today, or 2,000 words. But I'll start now and see what happens.
01:45
Well, miraculously, I did get my four hours in, though I didn't quite make my word count. I've gone through the messy, unshapely plot outline today - all 22 pages of it, and tried to pare it back and start to make it work. I'm starting a new outline which simply follows the most important aspects of each character as I work out what they are.
This hits upon my greatest difficulty with this story: it has five or six main characters, who are with one another through the whole film. I find this very difficult to work with - maybe it just takes more patience and time - but when you follow one - or at maximum, two - main characters through a plot, it's very easy to make sure the emotional experience runs parallel to the plot, and you can see instantly when you should test that character more, and add what you need. When you've got six different people bumbling from place to place, it's much more difficult to work out what character trait or mini-arc is important enough, where it should go in the story. It might simply be the fact that there are so many possible outcomes with all these characters rubbing off against each other, that it's more difficult to find the ones that are perfect for the characters, story and plotting.
But I'm going to have to get better at it, unless I want to write nothing but existentialist road movies and noirish detective stories.
Actually, that doesn't sound so bad.
Might go to bed now, will probably stay up and work on my short bastard film a little longer.
word count: 1,606
hours writing: 4
Feel totally wrecked today. Didn't go to bed too late, but couldn't sleep. Finished off Rockstar's Bully last night, which is good: I don't have anything trivial to obsess over. I should actually get some work done now.
I spent a lot of time last night thinking about the short film I made last October. It isn't finished yet, because of sound and other post-production issues. So I've been working on grading it this morning: it's a black and white film, but I'm trying to give the footage a "lith print" feel: grainy, deep blacks, sepia tints in the mids, and crisp, silvery highlights. I think it will look different to other black and white films, but it also takes about half an hour per shot. So I'm going to try to work out a way to set up one shot, then write while it renders out, then set up another shot, and so on. We'll see how it works.
18:00
Not cool. Not fucking cool. I had to go out to work out a small mobile phone issue, and it took two hours. And after all that, I have to go back tomorrow. And thanks to AfterEffects, I've spent another three hours today without having achieved anything. So I haven't done any writing today, and I haven't achieved anything else, either.
It seems to take an awful lot of time and stress to get this much not done.
22:30
Okay, it's taken me this long to get those fucking AfterEffects shots out of the way. I've done less than an hour's work, and I don't think I'm going to be able to do four hours today, or 2,000 words. But I'll start now and see what happens.
01:45
Well, miraculously, I did get my four hours in, though I didn't quite make my word count. I've gone through the messy, unshapely plot outline today - all 22 pages of it, and tried to pare it back and start to make it work. I'm starting a new outline which simply follows the most important aspects of each character as I work out what they are.
This hits upon my greatest difficulty with this story: it has five or six main characters, who are with one another through the whole film. I find this very difficult to work with - maybe it just takes more patience and time - but when you follow one - or at maximum, two - main characters through a plot, it's very easy to make sure the emotional experience runs parallel to the plot, and you can see instantly when you should test that character more, and add what you need. When you've got six different people bumbling from place to place, it's much more difficult to work out what character trait or mini-arc is important enough, where it should go in the story. It might simply be the fact that there are so many possible outcomes with all these characters rubbing off against each other, that it's more difficult to find the ones that are perfect for the characters, story and plotting.
But I'm going to have to get better at it, unless I want to write nothing but existentialist road movies and noirish detective stories.
Actually, that doesn't sound so bad.
Might go to bed now, will probably stay up and work on my short bastard film a little longer.
word count: 1,606
hours writing: 4
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Day 35
12:15
Wow. Fucked up on that one. I compulsively played Rockstar's Bully from nine last night until three o'clock in the morning, effectively turning a treat into an punishment.
If I was this obsessive with my scripts, I would have written about eight this year, I honestly would have. I woke up feeling bad. I'm going to leave how bad to another time.
Anyway, it's time to get to work.
16:45
Okay, today is really not going very successfully. So I'm going to do what all successful writers do when they hit a bump in the road. I'm going to go out to see a 3D animated children's movie.
23:00
Finished for the day. I've finished the first complete runthrough of the plot: running at about twelve thousand words, that's more than half the length of a screenplay.
Looking through it all is pretty painful. About 25% of the plot outline is pretty good. Another 20% (if we're being charitable) is okay. The rest is complete hairy balls. I can't start a screenplay with such a poor outline: even if it takes me another week to work through it, I'm going to have to put that in, and risk going behind, rather than torment myself by writing a screenplay I know is going to be poor from the beginning.
So, a lot more pain to go on this one. On an unrelated matter, I've decided on a way I can post my work in this blog.
At the start of the year, I said I'd post the scripts here as part of my resolution. I've come up with a better idea: at the end of every month, I'll post up the treatment for the script I've been writing. That way, you can actually see a tiny bit of what I'm actually spending my time on, without me posting my embarrasing, 130-page first drafts online.
Also, couldn't see Bolt at the cinema. The clerk gave us some bullshit reason about it "not having been released yet". So we got to see Slumdog Millionaire instead. The first half is fantastic in every level. The second half isn't. But it's still definitely worth seeing. I don't understand the charge of 'poverty porn' some critics leveled at it, either. I've been to Mumbai. It's really like that. Maybe these critics mean 'porn' as in, 'an unadorned representation of something'; the film is really about poor people, just as porn is really about people fucking. I don't remember anyone saying any of these things about City of God when it came out.
Anyway, the first half is absolutely fantastic. And now I'm going to compulsive-obsessively play some more video games.
word count: 2,225
hours writing: 4
Wow. Fucked up on that one. I compulsively played Rockstar's Bully from nine last night until three o'clock in the morning, effectively turning a treat into an punishment.
If I was this obsessive with my scripts, I would have written about eight this year, I honestly would have. I woke up feeling bad. I'm going to leave how bad to another time.
Anyway, it's time to get to work.
16:45
Okay, today is really not going very successfully. So I'm going to do what all successful writers do when they hit a bump in the road. I'm going to go out to see a 3D animated children's movie.
23:00
Finished for the day. I've finished the first complete runthrough of the plot: running at about twelve thousand words, that's more than half the length of a screenplay.
Looking through it all is pretty painful. About 25% of the plot outline is pretty good. Another 20% (if we're being charitable) is okay. The rest is complete hairy balls. I can't start a screenplay with such a poor outline: even if it takes me another week to work through it, I'm going to have to put that in, and risk going behind, rather than torment myself by writing a screenplay I know is going to be poor from the beginning.
So, a lot more pain to go on this one. On an unrelated matter, I've decided on a way I can post my work in this blog.
At the start of the year, I said I'd post the scripts here as part of my resolution. I've come up with a better idea: at the end of every month, I'll post up the treatment for the script I've been writing. That way, you can actually see a tiny bit of what I'm actually spending my time on, without me posting my embarrasing, 130-page first drafts online.
Also, couldn't see Bolt at the cinema. The clerk gave us some bullshit reason about it "not having been released yet". So we got to see Slumdog Millionaire instead. The first half is fantastic in every level. The second half isn't. But it's still definitely worth seeing. I don't understand the charge of 'poverty porn' some critics leveled at it, either. I've been to Mumbai. It's really like that. Maybe these critics mean 'porn' as in, 'an unadorned representation of something'; the film is really about poor people, just as porn is really about people fucking. I don't remember anyone saying any of these things about City of God when it came out.
Anyway, the first half is absolutely fantastic. And now I'm going to compulsive-obsessively play some more video games.
word count: 2,225
hours writing: 4
Tuesday 3 February 2009
Day 34
11:45
Yes, that's right, folks. I'm up before midday.
Going to shave an hour off my expectancy time today.
18:00
You're not going to believe this, but by lunch time today, (albeit, lunch for me is some time between 3 and 5) I had already made my word count. That's a first. This thing is really turning itself around.
So I had a break to walk down to the big supermarket and get the week's food. This set me back a couple of hours, but hey - I've made my word count!
There's a lot of problems with the story as a whole, however, so I'm going to work on that over my remaining time.
20:00
Check this out! I've finished for the day!
I've finally started to make some progress with this story, which feels really great inside, even if it doesn't read fantastically on the page yet.
I think what I'm going to go is flesh out the whole of the story, print it out, and then, instead of painfully trying to alter it fraction by fraction - or worse still, start writing a screenplay from this horrific plan - I'm going to start a new document, a second plan, and this time write it entirely chronologically, using what I've written so far as a guide but really shaping the story and characters in a way that's been impossible so far. And while I do that, I'll feed it into my excel spreadsheet, try to keep track of the characters and things, the way I did with the last script.
As a reward for work well done, I think I'm going to have a bath, and maybe watch an episode of Dexter.
21:15
I got in the bath, and cued up Dexter, and it was one I had already seen. So I'm going to play computer games in retaliation. For at least an hour. Then maybe write a little more.
word count: 3,377
hours writing: 4
Yes, that's right, folks. I'm up before midday.
Going to shave an hour off my expectancy time today.
18:00
You're not going to believe this, but by lunch time today, (albeit, lunch for me is some time between 3 and 5) I had already made my word count. That's a first. This thing is really turning itself around.
So I had a break to walk down to the big supermarket and get the week's food. This set me back a couple of hours, but hey - I've made my word count!
There's a lot of problems with the story as a whole, however, so I'm going to work on that over my remaining time.
20:00
Check this out! I've finished for the day!
I've finally started to make some progress with this story, which feels really great inside, even if it doesn't read fantastically on the page yet.
I think what I'm going to go is flesh out the whole of the story, print it out, and then, instead of painfully trying to alter it fraction by fraction - or worse still, start writing a screenplay from this horrific plan - I'm going to start a new document, a second plan, and this time write it entirely chronologically, using what I've written so far as a guide but really shaping the story and characters in a way that's been impossible so far. And while I do that, I'll feed it into my excel spreadsheet, try to keep track of the characters and things, the way I did with the last script.
As a reward for work well done, I think I'm going to have a bath, and maybe watch an episode of Dexter.
21:15
I got in the bath, and cued up Dexter, and it was one I had already seen. So I'm going to play computer games in retaliation. For at least an hour. Then maybe write a little more.
word count: 3,377
hours writing: 4
Monday 2 February 2009
Day 33
14:15
Got up at midday but had some things to do, which means I'm starting a little later than yesterday.
Also, it's the heaviest snowfall for 18 years across Britain... except in Scotland.
I've been living here more than three years now, and you know how many times I've seen snow? Once. For one day.
I think this might be one of the reasons Scottish kids look so depressed. If you're going to live in a permanently wet and dark island surrounded by alcoholics, the least you could get in return would be a day off school to throw snowballs around once every couple of years.
But that's not going to happen, children of Scotland. London gets snow, but not fucking Glasgow.
I'm going to give myself till eight to do my four hours today. Let's see how it goes.
18:45
The day hasn't exactly gone as planned so far, but it has been pretty cool. It started snowing for about an hour - we live in the centre of town, so it didn't even settle around us, but my beautiful girlfriend and I thought we should go for a walk and see what was going on nearby. In George's Square, where there are little sections of turf, the snow had settled and we made a fantastic snow-girl with a couple of other people, and then had a snowball fight with literally the only settled snow in Glasgow. It's like freaking gold dust: you could sell it.
Then, not wanting to go home, we went to one of my favourite places in Glasgow, a bar/restaurant called Stereo, and had, I kid you not, one of the tastiest meals I've ever eaten. On Mondays, they do 5 tapas dishes for a tenner - the best deal anywhere in Britain. If you're reading this blog (doubtful), live in Glasgow (extremely doubtful), and are a vegetarian or vegan (statistically mind-blowing), you have to check it out. Actually, if you live in Glasgow, don't be an asshole about vegetarian food and go there anyway.
I've only done an hour's worth of work. I'm feeling a bit frisky today, but will try to get back to it now.
01:45
Finally done for the day. It's been really tough, but I've come through a rough patch and actually just really enjoyed myself, for the first time, plotting out a scene for this script. If you've got a bunch of Crusaders and Turks shooting arrows at one another, it always seems to make what you're trying to write more interesting.
Wow. Finally feel good about this. Maybe it isn't such a collosal miscalculation after all.
Hell of a long way still to go: printed out my 'plot outline' so far, and there's a lot of really weak shit in there. Still, this is the time to fix it.
Going to bed now. Will write a better blog post tomorrow.
word count: 2,215
hours writing: 5
Got up at midday but had some things to do, which means I'm starting a little later than yesterday.
Also, it's the heaviest snowfall for 18 years across Britain... except in Scotland.
I've been living here more than three years now, and you know how many times I've seen snow? Once. For one day.
I think this might be one of the reasons Scottish kids look so depressed. If you're going to live in a permanently wet and dark island surrounded by alcoholics, the least you could get in return would be a day off school to throw snowballs around once every couple of years.
But that's not going to happen, children of Scotland. London gets snow, but not fucking Glasgow.
I'm going to give myself till eight to do my four hours today. Let's see how it goes.
18:45
The day hasn't exactly gone as planned so far, but it has been pretty cool. It started snowing for about an hour - we live in the centre of town, so it didn't even settle around us, but my beautiful girlfriend and I thought we should go for a walk and see what was going on nearby. In George's Square, where there are little sections of turf, the snow had settled and we made a fantastic snow-girl with a couple of other people, and then had a snowball fight with literally the only settled snow in Glasgow. It's like freaking gold dust: you could sell it.
Then, not wanting to go home, we went to one of my favourite places in Glasgow, a bar/restaurant called Stereo, and had, I kid you not, one of the tastiest meals I've ever eaten. On Mondays, they do 5 tapas dishes for a tenner - the best deal anywhere in Britain. If you're reading this blog (doubtful), live in Glasgow (extremely doubtful), and are a vegetarian or vegan (statistically mind-blowing), you have to check it out. Actually, if you live in Glasgow, don't be an asshole about vegetarian food and go there anyway.
I've only done an hour's worth of work. I'm feeling a bit frisky today, but will try to get back to it now.
01:45
Finally done for the day. It's been really tough, but I've come through a rough patch and actually just really enjoyed myself, for the first time, plotting out a scene for this script. If you've got a bunch of Crusaders and Turks shooting arrows at one another, it always seems to make what you're trying to write more interesting.
Wow. Finally feel good about this. Maybe it isn't such a collosal miscalculation after all.
Hell of a long way still to go: printed out my 'plot outline' so far, and there's a lot of really weak shit in there. Still, this is the time to fix it.
Going to bed now. Will write a better blog post tomorrow.
word count: 2,215
hours writing: 5
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