As I haven’t written anything about writing for a while, that’s what I’m doing, right here right now.
I like to think I’ve been fairly productive recently – I’ve submitted pieces to the following:
– The Quickreads Work Tales competition : not heard yet about this one, but I think an announcement is due around the end of March
– The Tate Modern TH.2058 competition : Didn’t get into the final six, but it was fun to write (you can see my short story here).
– Along with something like 700 other people, I sent some sketches in for the forthcoming BBC 7 on 7 radio show. I didn’t make in into the group who were invited to a workshop on Monday (9 March), but the notification I received said that they’d be getting back to me about submitting more stuff when they’re gearing up for the actual series; I gather that they also said less hope-inspiring e-mails, so this was quite positive.
– And over the weekend, I sent in some vox pops to the BBC Talking And Not Talking radio show. I was quite pleased with some of the lines I sent, so I’m fingers-crossed about this one (not heard anything yet, but it’s only been about 48h since the deadline, after all).
I’ve also managed to rework the structure for my novel The Body Orchard, which I’m happier with now – it should make it more clear to the reader why there’s pre-existing bad blood between the detective and the villain of the piece.
And in my head, I’m working on a really-rather-low-budget UK-based horror film screenplay; I know how it starts, and how it ends, and a lot of the stuff in between, but I’m just working on some of the character stuff, and trying to decide whether I could merge it with another idea which I’ve had knocking around in my head for a while, though that might mean changing the tone a bit.
Oh, and I’ve having to entirely revamp my far-too-long-on-the-hard-drive radio play to send to the BBC Writersroom, as I’ve recently discovered that one of the main characters not only has the same name as someone who actually exists, but that real person is also a noted expert on a subject which is one of the themes of the play; anyway, I don’t think it’ll hurt for me to do another pass through the script generally.
Finally, I’m feeling the urge to send some material in to 2000AD again; I appear to have a semi-tradition of getting stuff published in the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic about once a decade (though I’m not fooling myself that the [in]frequency is due to my delicate creative sensitivities requiring some kind of planetary alignment), and I’ve had a couple of ideas recently which might well be Tooth-appropriate, as it were.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something – or some things – but I just, y’know, wanted to make it clear that this blog isn’t the sole extent of my recent writing… oh, hang on, I forgot to mention my modernisation of Cyrano de Bergerac and my far-too-late-to-be-a-spec-script-but-I-wanna-write-it-anyway Frasier episode, didn’t I ? Ah well, I’ll just have to bring those up some other time.
Overall, it’s not so scarily productive as to make you all wonder just when I sleep, I know, but on the other hand, I’m feeling suitably fired up both about the ideas and the actual act of putting words on the screen (or page), and so I can feel things gearing up in a way that I find pretty satisfying (not quite as satisfying as typing ‘FADE TO BLACK’ or ‘THE END’, granted, but let’s face it, very few things are as good as that).
