Day 77

10:24

I woke up at 7am this morning because my worthless new phone (never buy Samsung) started its 'low battery alert'. So I've been up for more than three hours now, pretty bleary-eyed, watching onion news network videos and reading an excellent book I got the other week called Writing the TV Drama Series by Pamela Douglas.

Got a lot more done yesterday than I expected - I think I finally might have cleared some of that intense creative block that's hampered me the last month or so. However, we'll see how that goes by the end of the day.

In a completely informal way, I've been hoping to write and finish something this month as I signed up to this "competition" called ScriptFrenzy.

Check it out if you've got the time. The point of this scheme seems to be to get very impressed with yourself at writing any old 100 pages of shit: I mean, I'm pretty sure that Jack Nicholson's 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy' manuscript in The Shining would qualify as a legitimate piece of work on this competition. The main reason it seems to exist is to be bombarded by incoherent e-mails by a well-meaning lady called Jennifer Artz, whose every missive leaves you irrationally screaming "STOP SMOTHERING ME!" I don't know if I'll finish in time for the competition rules - 30th April. Which is kind of a shame: I hear you get a nice printable certificate by e-mail that you can stick on your wall.

I don't mean to sound snooty about the certificate, either - I really would like one. I could stick it up next to the only things I've received from supposedly legitimate festivals like Cannes, & Berlin, Rotterdam, Toronoto IFFs - tiny little credit-card receipts for hundreds upon hundreds of wasted pounds in competition fees, international postage and other competition bullshit. On reflection, it's amazing how little juice you get out of all of those crushed dreams.

Anyway, it's a stunning, sunny day in Glasgow. And quiet, too. Probably because it's Sunday morning, and all of the locals are still in alcohol-induced comas.

So I really should probably start to get some writing done.


16:31

Did some shopping for vitamins, went off to say goodbye to my sister, who's staying at my parents' place. Amazing how quickly you can squander a whole day.

Decided to check out my twitter thing again. This was something I signed up to last year so that I could let clients get progress reports from my home. Personally, I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. But putting inane little messages that no-one will read on a website, along with writing these inane little paragraphs right here that no-one else will read, is surely a much better way to spend the day than actually doing some writing.

23:51

Spent about three hours on my driving theory test this evening - getting a driving license in the next couple of months is going to be a big part of my future. More about this over the next couple of days - I bet you can't wait.

Apart from that, got about an hour of writing in. So, over all, not a great day's work - but at least the sun shone and I felt happy.

And neither of those things happen every day.

word count: about 400
hours writing: 1