catch up

OK the blog has gone a bit slow. I blame scribomatic - I mean the idea that up to 300 beady-eyed scribes all over the globe might be reading your hasty prose - within seconds of posting it - is a little intimidating don't you think?

So about the script - it's starting to go out. At this stage I always like to get feedback from 'punters' - people who aren't in any way connected to the industry but who may like to go and see the film. This can be very useful.

Now I didn't set out to do this - but I seem to have written a story which men get excited about but which doesn't exactly get women dancing in the aisles. Hmmm. Women seem to want more of the 'family relationships' aspect of it - which is not really what the story is about. This is odd since, as a writer, I'm not really drawn to 'man films'. I'm not going to queue to see There Will be blood no matter how many plaudits it receives. Oil? - Sorry but no. Well not that kind of oil. Cooking oil possibly. Sun tan oil maybe. But drilled oil - agggghh .

Anyway have you ever found a particular script you've written appeals to certain folks more than others?

What else? - there isn't too much else that I can say right now about script progress* except that things continue to move forward and I've learned not to say 'no' straight away to suggestions (even when I want to - ha!) and that it is better not to have too many encumbrances too early on. Hmm.

Ok for anyone who might be in a writerly quandary right now - there's always the runes. Type in any question you need the answer to.
I was just piffing about and asked about my script and got wunjo (in the critical position). 'Wunjo is a rune of the gods and of perfection, carrying with it the elation that blazes from the creation of a perfect work - perhaps this is the true joy of the gods, that they can create perfection. That aside, this rune does not focus on the struggle for perfection or on our inevitable imperfections, but rather on a job well done and the satisfaction that comes from it.'

Yee haaa!

Laters

Superstition

One inspiring book which I picked up on the Charing Cross Road in 1989 and return to time and again is 'The Fragrance of Guava' ( Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza in conversation with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) My copy has two Freetown addresses scribbled in the back so I must have taken it to Sierra Leone. Anyway it's basically one long conversation with Marquez organised into short chapters. There's one each on his two most famous novels, then one on Origins, Family, His Craft, Education, Readings and Influences, Work, Waiting, Now, Politics, Women, Superstitions Mania and Tastes and (lastly!) Fame and the Famous. It is thought provoking and I took it out again yesterday when I started thinking about superstition.

I'm not that superstitious though I detest Friday 13th. Early this year it fell in the middle of holiday school so I kept my daughter home. In a month there's another - in holiday school again so I'll do the same. That's one of my few concessions. My mother holds this 'reverse superstition' thing where she almost goes out of her way to disprove it. She wore green when she married for the 2nd time on Friday 13th (and no - it didn't last).

Everyone seems superstitious here, in one way or another. One of my hub's female relatives will get up in the middle of the night during an electrical storm to cover all the mirrors with a sheet to prevent bad luck.

© F Jason
In this photo a sangoma (witch doctor) is interviewed by a journalist. Her beliefs don't allow her to look in the face of a white man. Instead he must direct his question to the small circular mirror she is holding.

Last year was sent The Travelers - a book of photographs by Elizabeth Heyert taken at a Harlem undertaker. Macabre and fascinating - it is a series of huge colour photographs of dead black Americans of varying ages - dressed up in their Sunday best for their journey to heaven.
Anyoldhow sometime ago, this book was lying on the sofa when the 'light bulb people' came round. (South Africa is becoming more eco-friendly and so light bulb people were despatched to every house in the land to exchange the old light bulbs for the new two-prong low energy ones - bulb for bulb - totally free. While hub was up the ladder unscrewing bulbs all over the house, the Xhosa light bulb official started looking through this book with great interest. Then she took out a notebook and started writing things down. Of course being a nosy writer, I had to ask what she was writing. She said 'the birth dates and death dates of the people in the photos - to use to play the Lotto!

Dead people have great powers...

Later

Karma

There are a couple of exciting writing things - simmering away - that I'd like to blog about right now - but can't since I'm a convert to the '3 karmic principles of blogging for writers'*

1) Don't blog in detail about anything for which the outcome is yet undecided
2) Don't blog in detail about anything for which you desire a favourable outcome
3) Be vague about specifics and don't mention names.

Laters

* which I just made up

Touch wood

Just realised that getting a blog is a bit like getting another email address - unless you post on other blogs or tell someone - no one is going to know about it. I've had one visitor so far - and that was me! Ha! Ah well anonymity suits me.

The pace of life picked up considerably this week. BTW - this is all to do with a children's educational TV series I've scripted and will direct in a couple of weeks. We've managed to access a local astronomical observatory as our key location and the place is magnificent. Ticks all the boxes. Not only is there a massive telescope housed in an orbic (?) building but it has a floor which rises and the roof cranks open. How great is that? - ok perhaps not so good sound-wise. Maybe I'm a bit excited from the tour. People actually make telescopes there. It feels like a major coup . Touch wood.

There - superstition even creeping into my blog. My granny in Wigan was oh-so superstitious about too many things. When I was little I once made the mistake of giving her a real-life peacock feather for a birthday present. She hissed under her breath as she thanked me, then picked it up wearing rubber gloves and deposited it in the back of her sideboard. I think she threw it away as soon as I left. Never mind.

Feeling flush today, I finally put in my order for '26a' (OK Simone?) so hopefully it'll arrive by the end of the month.

BTW that horoscope for writers hasn't updated this month has it? Hmmm

Laters