Then There Was Fog
I can't believe I forgot to post about the fog. There was fog! Good fog! We've had a bit of a fog deficit this year. I like a good bit of fog. My mum lives out in the country a little way so I get to drive along dark roads not knowing what horrors lurk beyond the rolling grey that surrounds my car. Then there's that little twinge of terror every time I see the twin beams of the car hurtling towards me. Is this going the time they swerve at the last minute clipping my wing and sending me spiralling into the dike? It's only better if there's fog as well as snow, when turning on your beams actually reduces your range of vision and turns the air ahead into a solid wall of billowing yellow.
So yes. We had fog. It was a nice change from the normal wet stuff.
Albums of the Year
Since I don't tend to listen to much new music I'm going to list albums that I discovered this year. I won't try to describe them because I'd suck at that. I'll simply list them. Here... the ten albums that have made the biggest impact on me this year... (in no particular order)
Papa Roach: The Paramour Sessions
Within Temptation: The Silent Force
Avenged Sevenfold: Waking the Fallen
Script Choices
So I'm working on my script. I dunno... It seems a little generic. I play a quick game of spot the cliché and pick up on a few. The next question I ask myself is "are these really clichés or just things common to the environment my script is set in?". The question after that was "does it matter?". I then decided this entire line of questioning (myself) didn't really matter anyway.
So this is what I've got...
- An angry character who is dissatisfied with their job because they don't see the point.
- A shy character who is the target of unwanted romantic advances from their manager.
- A creepy manager disliked by the first two.
- Colleagues who don't want to help either of the first two.
I need to decide what gender each of these characters is going to be. Should I go with the obvious (man, woman, man) clichéd cast? Should I try and reverse the clichés (woman, man, woman)? How would it change if every character was male? What if they were all female? Is it a cliché to have a manager as an antagonist? Would basic plot (#1 and #2 discover weird secret and disrupt the office to escape their jobs) work if the manager is a friend instead of a villain? Is portraying the manager as a monster/villain fair? Is there a way to turn the story around at the end and have the two main characters success be the cause of a catastrophe? Would this remove any redeeming features from the two "good" characters? Would this end up turning the manager into a sort-of anti-hero?
Things To Do…
Currently on the to do list...
- Make my step outline better.
- Turn said step outline into a ten minute script.
- Write other ideas up as scripts.
- Write a short story from random notes.
- Finish other short stories I'm working on.
- Organise more anthology stuff.
- Read more textbooks.
- Read more novels.
- Watch more short films.
In short... Aaaaaaaarrrggh...
New Tricks
It's interesting how the new skills I'm being shown are affecting the way I work. I mean we generally look at something once in a class and then apply it to our next bit of coursework. But when I started working on a new short story this morning I found that I was applying ideas from textbooks, script classes and advice from friends. Writing a step outline, to see how the events fitted together, just felt natural. Considering a characters wants and needs was a question I felt compelled to answer. The things that I "just did" before are now becoming part of a conscious writing process. It's better this way. I have more control. My sub-conscious doesn't really know what it's doing.
Terry Pratchett
It was on the BBC news today. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's disease. He says he'll be able to finish his current commitments (two books) and there should be time for a few more. This has hit me hard. When David Gemmell, the author of my favourite book, died it was more of a fact of life. It may be the idea of a mind as amazing as Pratchett's being eroded slowly but surely. Maybe it's the fact he's seems like such a nice bloke. His books have been a massive, huge, gigantic influence on me as a reader and as a writer. I'm not sure what else to write or if I should even be writing anything at all.
I salute the man. That is all.
A Changing Approach
I'd not edited any of my friend's for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I sat down in a free half hour and picked up where I left off, four chapters into a friend's novel. The red pen had a mind of it's own. The balance of red had shifted from circles and comments to straight lines drawn through the things that didn't work for me. The result was a much cleaner looking document and I had to spend less time trying to write really small. I like the fact that I'm happier to make cuts rather than changes too. I wonder if this is because my own style and voice are changing...
Flying In The Face Of…
...not sure what. But I'm totally buzzing (stress and caffeine). Actually I think stress is the wrong word. Challenge is better word. I like a challenge and the one I volunteered for (kinda pushed myself into) has got me really hyped. It seems I'm now the "production editor" for the MA anthology. What I think this means is I'm a general go-for with the additional secretarial duties. So there we were sitting in the cafe after the lecture. It was a typical situation where everyone is too self-conscious to take the lead. So I did. People milling around without direction really annoy me so I just spoke... and kept speaking. I think I may have been rude or at least blunt at some point but I did my best to keep the meeting on track and we did get a lot done and made a few key decisions. An hour or so later and my head was spinning and I was losing the ability to keep track... I think it may have had more to do with not having eaten anything for the previous 8 hours...
So yeah. More to do... but awesome times! I never realised I'd have the opportunity to get this involved in the MA. Just hope I do a good job.
Right. I'm about to sugar crash. Bye.
I should add that I've not even had chance to feel pleased that I handed my first assignment in tonight... Wheeee!
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Ugh…
I've not written anything for two days now. Even then the few days prior to that were meanderings, snatches of prose, small re-arrangements, nothing of note. Tuesday night I felt drunk without having touched a drop. Last night I fell asleep on the settee. I'm placing blame for this squarely at the feet of my day job, which appears to have descended once again into fixing other people's shitty data. I'm trying to make better use of my time, reading instead of just louging, but I'm not sure how much I'm learning in the interim. I just need to stop for a while, find my centre, get back on track. Here's hoping.