This is your brain on not having time to do any rewrites
I've not written anything here for ages, which is of course the normal state of the universe, but, I say BUT, the difference is that rather than being too lazy, I've been too busy. (And too lazy.)
Several unconnected people, who I suppose in a holistic Kevin Bacon way are connected, even if only through knowing me, simultaneously recommended that I should enter a scriptwriting competition for kids' TV. In the interests of full disclosure I should say that one of these was my mother, and therefore probably motivated by a faint sense that I should get off my arse and do something, and at least one other was Ix, late of this parish, and thus motivated almost entirely by a desire to do evil. (In many ways we have the same mind, although he'd already entered, the swine.)
I've cleverly thwarted the both of them, though, firstly by remaining on my arse to type (and, it must be said, spending quite a lot of time doing nothing), and secondly by quite enjoying it. By a quirk of calendars I didn't get a chance to start until the 1st of June, and the deadline's the 1st of July, which ought to make for a nice round reality TV month of Taking On The Job Of : A Writer, only the postal system means I'll have to get it done by the 25th or something, plus I don't work weekends (I'm a human being!) or Wednesday or Thursday evenings (who does voluntary work!), or Fridays at all (and works for his parents!), or mornings (... and is a writer), which means it actually boils down to something like six full days and a lot of panicking.
So far I've spent an instructive week plotting - eg, I learnt I can't plot - and a less instructive, more stressful week and a bit actually scripting (and taking valuable time out to swear at the idiot fuckwit who wrote the plot). Ingeniously, I flowed over the course of one seamless evening from my initial stance of "There is no way in hell this will last half an hour" to the subtly distinct "There is no way on god's green earth this will fit into half an hour", with the result that the script lurches on page 15 from a leisurely, incident-free sort of Archers mentality, chatting merrily away while waiting for the plot lorry, to suddenly hurling itself artlessly through a sequence of hastily thrown together set-pieces and inexplicable capitals (Melanie WRENCHES herself out of the DOOR, pausing only to ADJUST her CASSOCK) before sort of imploding its way wetly into what would be a nice clever ending if (a) it was clever, (b) it ended properly, or (c) the scene that the prologue flashed forward to hadn't inadvertently been cut, leaving us with not so much an inevitable-but-surprising resolution as a lumpen space-time paradox and a lot of AWKWARD GLANCES from script-readers.
Anyway, I finished the first draft tonight, which after six days of actual writing isn't bad, at long as you don't do anything stupid like read it, or count the pages. There are 36 of the little blighters, whereas the competition very specifically insists on no more than 30 (as well as a whole host of other tedious details that I've wildly ignored - contests aren't for winning, they're for hating yourself for being blackmailed into taking part), which means I'll have to find a way to cut 20% of it, starting tomorrow. I suppose I could always just cut every fifth word. That'd still make sense, it? I mean it's impacted on this bit all, has it. The thing's seamless, I tells.
Anyway, that's why you haven't heard from me in a while. How're you? Like I care; let's talk about me more. Because actually, despite the somewhat, shall we say, desperate-tending-to-manic-tending-to-not-washing-my-hair-for-a-week tone of the last few paragraphs, I am enjoying it. I may not be writing very well. I'm certainly failing on a few minor points, such as story, character, motivation, entertainment, exposition, consistency, pace, drive and making sense. But. But! I like saying 'but' with an exclamation mark so much I could easily get stuck on this paragraph for a week - but! ...at least I've got a deadline. And that means not only am I intently, ludicrously, unhygenically focused on this script for an entire month, but that as soon as the month is over, I won't be. I can forget it. It'll be done and dusted, or else abandoned and forgotten, or conceivably posted on the internet and mocked, but I won't have to give a shit about it any more.
Hey. Maybe this is like having a job. I hate it, just barely tolerate it, secretly kind of enjoy it, and don't give a shit about it, all at the same time. And best of all, I'm getting paid!
...no, wait. Worst of all, I'm not getting paid.
Like I said: normal state of the universe. Nothing to read here.
Several unconnected people, who I suppose in a holistic Kevin Bacon way are connected, even if only through knowing me, simultaneously recommended that I should enter a scriptwriting competition for kids' TV. In the interests of full disclosure I should say that one of these was my mother, and therefore probably motivated by a faint sense that I should get off my arse and do something, and at least one other was Ix, late of this parish, and thus motivated almost entirely by a desire to do evil. (In many ways we have the same mind, although he'd already entered, the swine.)
I've cleverly thwarted the both of them, though, firstly by remaining on my arse to type (and, it must be said, spending quite a lot of time doing nothing), and secondly by quite enjoying it. By a quirk of calendars I didn't get a chance to start until the 1st of June, and the deadline's the 1st of July, which ought to make for a nice round reality TV month of Taking On The Job Of : A Writer, only the postal system means I'll have to get it done by the 25th or something, plus I don't work weekends (I'm a human being!) or Wednesday or Thursday evenings (who does voluntary work!), or Fridays at all (and works for his parents!), or mornings (... and is a writer), which means it actually boils down to something like six full days and a lot of panicking.
So far I've spent an instructive week plotting - eg, I learnt I can't plot - and a less instructive, more stressful week and a bit actually scripting (and taking valuable time out to swear at the idiot fuckwit who wrote the plot). Ingeniously, I flowed over the course of one seamless evening from my initial stance of "There is no way in hell this will last half an hour" to the subtly distinct "There is no way on god's green earth this will fit into half an hour", with the result that the script lurches on page 15 from a leisurely, incident-free sort of Archers mentality, chatting merrily away while waiting for the plot lorry, to suddenly hurling itself artlessly through a sequence of hastily thrown together set-pieces and inexplicable capitals (Melanie WRENCHES herself out of the DOOR, pausing only to ADJUST her CASSOCK) before sort of imploding its way wetly into what would be a nice clever ending if (a) it was clever, (b) it ended properly, or (c) the scene that the prologue flashed forward to hadn't inadvertently been cut, leaving us with not so much an inevitable-but-surprising resolution as a lumpen space-time paradox and a lot of AWKWARD GLANCES from script-readers.
Anyway, I finished the first draft tonight, which after six days of actual writing isn't bad, at long as you don't do anything stupid like read it, or count the pages. There are 36 of the little blighters, whereas the competition very specifically insists on no more than 30 (as well as a whole host of other tedious details that I've wildly ignored - contests aren't for winning, they're for hating yourself for being blackmailed into taking part), which means I'll have to find a way to cut 20% of it, starting tomorrow. I suppose I could always just cut every fifth word. That'd still make sense, it? I mean it's impacted on this bit all, has it. The thing's seamless, I tells.
Anyway, that's why you haven't heard from me in a while. How're you? Like I care; let's talk about me more. Because actually, despite the somewhat, shall we say, desperate-tending-to-manic-tending-to-not-washing-my-hair-for-a-week tone of the last few paragraphs, I am enjoying it. I may not be writing very well. I'm certainly failing on a few minor points, such as story, character, motivation, entertainment, exposition, consistency, pace, drive and making sense. But. But! I like saying 'but' with an exclamation mark so much I could easily get stuck on this paragraph for a week - but! ...at least I've got a deadline. And that means not only am I intently, ludicrously, unhygenically focused on this script for an entire month, but that as soon as the month is over, I won't be. I can forget it. It'll be done and dusted, or else abandoned and forgotten, or conceivably posted on the internet and mocked, but I won't have to give a shit about it any more.
Hey. Maybe this is like having a job. I hate it, just barely tolerate it, secretly kind of enjoy it, and don't give a shit about it, all at the same time. And best of all, I'm getting paid!
...no, wait. Worst of all, I'm not getting paid.
Like I said: normal state of the universe. Nothing to read here.