Monday, July 13, 2009

Heed in a Box


I hunch over the keyboard, trying to discern the keys in the darkness. Not because there's no longer enough money to pay for electricity, but because I can't be bothered to turn the light on. The same lack of discipline has kept me from the manuscript this evening.

Been watching Se7en, that wonderously dark film with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt... ooh, ooh, ooh, and Kevin Spacey (but don't tell anyone, it's a secret).

Hush, my typing's annoying the wife - must type slower, quieter, sneakier.

Watching Se7en for the first time in absolutely ages, I realised that the story isn't about a serial killer murdering people to the tune of the seven deadly sins.

Bare with me here, I did just say I hadn't seen it in a long time (not since school some 10 years ago),

That's our genre, our macguffin (if you can think of it in that kind of macabre way). The story is about the divide between the cynical, soft and experienced cop and the naive, hard and head-strong cop. The play between them is constantly that of wisdom versus wilfulness and cold realisation versus forced optimism.

Which leads me to a point about every aspect of the film: every scene plays on either the forward motion of the macguffin or the wrestling of Mills and Somerset.

Which in turn leads me to pondering the difficulty I'm having with the manuscript - I plotted the main events, I start working at them in the scene and I realise I'm not touching on the themes. I always have trouble writing those extra character bits that expand themes or show characters but don't necessarily progress the plot (I'm talking about minor bits and snippets of scene).

So the question is, when do you fit these scenes into your writing schedule? Are you able to just let it all flow together, or do you write your main plots page by page and then add the character and setting moments afterwards when you've realised your theme, etc, etc?

Yours in grateful mental obscurity.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Hello from Hollywood

So...

I managed to go for over a month without a blog entry - that's bad. Real bad.

In the meantime, I'm now 30 (nervous breakdown which included muchos Guitar Hero Drumming, alci-frol and some ruminating over aforementioned manuscript - aforementioned some months ago that is).

Still not disciplined to just get on with it. Wrote 2800 words yesterday though. So, sporadically trying to attack it from various angles - lots of planning still in the offing, so that's good. Only another 16 and a bit chapters to tackle. Keep it bitesized.

Anyhoo, it's been a hell of a week hasn't it, folks? Last Friday's MJ death coincided with the first live Litopia After Dark podcast recording, with Amanda Lees, Donna Ballman, Eve Harvey and yours truly, meeting up with Agent Pete, and his Producer, BBC Director and great sport, Andrew Gillman.

Which was a crazy affair on a very hot day in London where every shop and bar was playing only Michael Jackson music.

In the meantime, LiToon has been going from strength to strength. If you haven't caught it yet, get on over to Litopia.

Today LiToon really went global after Nia Vardalos (Screenwriter and Actress of My Big Fat Greek Wedding) mistakenly commissioned me to write her a script with guns so that she could jump Hollywood's genre niches.

The result will go live on Friday - you can find the link on Twitter :)

In the meantime, check out what Nia says, and particularly what a Hollywood Actress's Twitter can do for you as advertisement. I'm over the moon.



At time of going to press (SIC) clicks were at 51... They're still going up. I'll have to work with Nia again. She was a pro. ;)