Saturday, September 02, 2006

Here and there


Caught up on past Writers Guild e-bulletins (different info than on their blog) today plus discovered the Scriptwriter's Union here is undergoing massive changes for the better even though - unlike Writer's Guild - it is pretty capital-centric i.e. all the wonderful talks, happenings shenanigans, jobs are based in the 'big city' - faraway from us sea-siders. Of course, there's more to it than that - a huge historical, cultural and social divide between 'us' and 'them'.

My (major) revelation today is: 'thinking time is just as important as doing time'. I'm not one for recklessly attacking the keyboard every morning, empty headed. I find when I've thought a script through (in its entirety) then it's much easier to bang it out on the page. Whereas if I'm struggling obliquely with some facet of the story - then usually it ends up not working well. In fact my 3 best scripts I managed to knock out within 21 days mainly because the 'story had fallen' into place - like an egg.
What about you?

I now have this series I'm mulling over - spanning there and here. I am now going to pad it into 13 eps for submission to a local broadcaster before the end of Sept. Earlier this year another project outline received positive feedback and is something else I must thrash out by the end of the year. Again it spans two worlds. After five years here, its the 'there' bit I'm now having difficulty with. Aside from the one page outline, I beat sheeted the first third and scripted 5 pages - what a crap way of working huh? I now I need to thoroughly think through the whole story before I go any further. It needs to 'drop'.

Now it is 8pm. I've put my daughter to bed. Earlier I delivered 2 lemons from my garden to my mother. I emailed my soon-to-be wed sister asking her to tape ultra controversial drama to be broadcast next week. I did a couple of follow ups on my latest script BM but no actual writing. Hmm..

I was also daydreaming about a derelict Victorian mansion fairly close to where I live now - beautiful huge building - and imagined setting up my various film related businesses there + photographic gallery (husband) plus writers' tearoom (Granny)..

Laters.

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