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
Friday 27 February 2009
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
Sunday 1 February 2009
Day 32
13:15
Woke up today with a headache and a sore throat. Motherfucker. Still, it's only a cold.
I'm going to try something new today. In my head, I know that I've started as late as nine in the evening and still done my four hours, so that I've got used to dicking around in the daytime when I'm meant to be working, and then having to work through till about two in the morning before I actually get my hours or word count done.
So, today, I'm going to set myself a time limit. It's nearly one thirty: I'm going to give myself till seven. That's five and a half hours' time.
We'll see how it goes.
19:30
Well, I forced myself to do nothing but write this afternoon. I'm four hundred shy of my word limit, but feel the kind of deep-down satisfaction that you have after doing a long run, or something else that's good for you after you really didn't want to do it.
I'm going out to see a movie - Slumdog Millionaire - in a little bit, then I think I'm going to get back and finish off my word count.
At the same time as being reasonably satisfied - I worked through some really tricky plot points today - I've also had the first intimations of utter despair: there are times when I look at this story and think, I'm utterly overwhelmed, this is hopeless, and I don't have a chance at succeeding in the task I've set myself. Every day seems to get harder than the day before: can I really expect to write 12 screenplays in a year? Will I even finish my second?
But the more I work, the more those voices go away; or at least are abated for a little while.
02:00
Went to see Seven Pounds tonight - missed Slumdog Millionaire by a couple of minutes. The experience of Seven Pounds could be described as thus: waste two hours of your life, then punch yourself in the balls. This is how you'll feel when you leave the cinema.
Came back home and, thoroughly bummed out, watched Bill Maher's Religulous. Now, that's a good movie. The funniest film and the best documentary I've seen for a long time and that's taking into account the fact I saw Sharkwater last week. It makes me wonder what a Stephen Colbert vs Bill Maher talkshow smackdown would be like. I think it would probably blow my mind.
After that four hours of movie engorgement, I did the extra ten minutes of writing I needed to round off my 5 hour's work today.
I'm having to write this plot up very differently from my last script. Because the last plot had been worked out reasonably well in my head, I could move chronologically from beginning to end, really filling in every detail in every scene, and then moving on. I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going, what was growing and why.
This time I've had to go through the whole thing in a sketchy fashion, ask a bunch of questions, then re-do the sketch and gradually add more to each individual idea for a scene. As a result, it's much more difficult to see arcs or momentum, or whether characters are actually gaining individuality - but there's so much that I don't know about the fucker that trying to go from beginning to end has nigh on impossible.
Looking at the huge amount I've got to do before I can start writing the script makes me worry that there's an awful lot left - up to a week, really - before I can start this script and know that it will be good enough.
But that's a thought for another day.
word count: 2,160
hours writing: 5
Woke up today with a headache and a sore throat. Motherfucker. Still, it's only a cold.
I'm going to try something new today. In my head, I know that I've started as late as nine in the evening and still done my four hours, so that I've got used to dicking around in the daytime when I'm meant to be working, and then having to work through till about two in the morning before I actually get my hours or word count done.
So, today, I'm going to set myself a time limit. It's nearly one thirty: I'm going to give myself till seven. That's five and a half hours' time.
We'll see how it goes.
19:30
Well, I forced myself to do nothing but write this afternoon. I'm four hundred shy of my word limit, but feel the kind of deep-down satisfaction that you have after doing a long run, or something else that's good for you after you really didn't want to do it.
I'm going out to see a movie - Slumdog Millionaire - in a little bit, then I think I'm going to get back and finish off my word count.
At the same time as being reasonably satisfied - I worked through some really tricky plot points today - I've also had the first intimations of utter despair: there are times when I look at this story and think, I'm utterly overwhelmed, this is hopeless, and I don't have a chance at succeeding in the task I've set myself. Every day seems to get harder than the day before: can I really expect to write 12 screenplays in a year? Will I even finish my second?
But the more I work, the more those voices go away; or at least are abated for a little while.
02:00
Went to see Seven Pounds tonight - missed Slumdog Millionaire by a couple of minutes. The experience of Seven Pounds could be described as thus: waste two hours of your life, then punch yourself in the balls. This is how you'll feel when you leave the cinema.
Came back home and, thoroughly bummed out, watched Bill Maher's Religulous. Now, that's a good movie. The funniest film and the best documentary I've seen for a long time and that's taking into account the fact I saw Sharkwater last week. It makes me wonder what a Stephen Colbert vs Bill Maher talkshow smackdown would be like. I think it would probably blow my mind.
After that four hours of movie engorgement, I did the extra ten minutes of writing I needed to round off my 5 hour's work today.
I'm having to write this plot up very differently from my last script. Because the last plot had been worked out reasonably well in my head, I could move chronologically from beginning to end, really filling in every detail in every scene, and then moving on. I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going, what was growing and why.
This time I've had to go through the whole thing in a sketchy fashion, ask a bunch of questions, then re-do the sketch and gradually add more to each individual idea for a scene. As a result, it's much more difficult to see arcs or momentum, or whether characters are actually gaining individuality - but there's so much that I don't know about the fucker that trying to go from beginning to end has nigh on impossible.
Looking at the huge amount I've got to do before I can start writing the script makes me worry that there's an awful lot left - up to a week, really - before I can start this script and know that it will be good enough.
But that's a thought for another day.
word count: 2,160
hours writing: 5
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