You’ve probably seen the adverts for the film Valentine’s Day. Two thoughts:
1. Can we agree that this looks rather like Love Actually, with a shift of location and time of year?
2. Given that the film was released on Friday 12 February in the UK, I hope the studio behind the film aren’t going to be shocked if last weekend’s box office doesn’t equal that of the opening weekend…
And yes, the posters for it do resemble those of He’s Just Not That Into You, but you’d spotted that already, right?
Over on the Guardian website, they’ve recently published a two-part article called ‘Ten rules for writing fiction’, which makes for pretty interesting reading. Part one is here, and part two is here, though reading them in order is probably best.
As I say, I think there’s a lot of useful advice in there, though some of it doesn’t apply to all genres or whatever (I don’t suffer from adverb-phobia, for example), though it’s not without flaws; unfortunately one author seems to have rather forgotten the brief and veered towards details of how he writes, whilst another rather impractically suggests “When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books” – fine advice in itself, but I’d guess most Guardian readers are likely to feel it’s too late to do that if they didn’t at the time.
And for the few children who read the newspaper, it’s preaching to the converted.
Childish and envious snarking aside, it’s nonetheless worth a look, as one of the recurrent messages is the always unwelcome but equally true reminder that you actually have to get on with the writing part, until the story’s finished.
Yes, yes, I know: I was hoping there’d be a magic short-cut revealed as well.
1. Anyone described as being a ‘self-confessed foodie’ is usually a bit of a pain
2. When shopping in your local deli/butcher/fishmonger, be sure to mention that you’re holding a dinner party, and address the person behind the counter by their first name more often than is normal in conversation
3. Not supplying drink for your guests, even if it’s for religious or medical reasons, usually leads to them getting a right arse on
4. Musical entertainment, whether provided by you or hired professionals, is not a good idea if you want to win
5. Any female contestant not in some kind of relationship will be labelled a ‘singleton’ in the commentary
6. Depending on how the group is constituted in terms of gender, a butler (with or without a shirt) may be popular
7. Don’t try out something new on the night of your big event (actually, re haircuts and outfits and the like, this rule applies to much of life)
8. Rare is the person who can lift the silver salver without making the money move in some way. Less rare is being able to see the cameraman reflected in the surface of the salver
9. It’s impossible to stand in the kitchen and talk to the camera about the meal you’re preparing without acting like you’re either Nigella L or Hugh F-W
10. Dave Lamb’s voiceovers for Come Dine With Me are like the commentary for Masterchef, but with an awareness that – ultimately – we are only talking about cooking here.
…Which is probably why I watch the show a bit too much, as the above rather shows.
So, the good folks at BBC Writersroom are holding another one of their Q&A sessions, this time about Continuing Drama, and they’ll also be talking about the BBC Writers Academy. Attending will be John Yorke, whose name you might recognise from the end of the credits for a lot of TV shows.
It’s at the Drill Hall in London (kind of equidistant between Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road tubes), on Thursday 4 March from 6:00pm. It’s free to get in, but you need to send an e-mail asking if they can add you to the guest list, otherwise one of their scary bouncers will throw you out.
I’ve made a vague plan to focus this year on non-visual media (by which idiotic turn of phrase I mean the novel and writing for radio), but this sounds like a good chance to grab an insight into an area which I’d certainly be interested to write for (I’m not ruling TV or films out forever, I just want to prevent myself being the jack-of-all-manuscripts and finisher of none), so I think I might give it a go.
Full details can be founded right here
And in case you think that the accompanying picture is inappropriate, I’d politely disagree; it refers to events in the Queen Vic on most evenings.
Insidious Worm Makes Unauthorized Purchases When Computer User Is Drunk
Once again, The Onion nails it.
No, I haven’t gone all hard-boiled; those are the works which you have to use as a first line if you decide to enter Alibi’s search for a new crime writer competition.
The first line is supplied by Stuart MacBride, and then it’s up to you to complete the story (between 2000 and 5000 words in all) and get it to them by noon on Saturday 16 May.
The prizes are pretty decent, I feel – they’ll pay for you to go to the Crime Writing Festival, and you get 100 crime books (though as one of the other prizes is an e-reader, these might be eBooks, I suppose), and they make your story into a downloadable e-edition. I’ve certainly seen worse prizes, and entry is free.
Full details are available here. I’m planning to give it a go, let me know if you decide to.
Actually, thinking about it, I might go for something a bit hard-boiled, or noirish, might be interesting to try writing in a very different voice from the usual…
Available for the first time on DVD since it was first shown on BBC TV in 2006, Stephen Fry’s two-part documentary series The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive is released tomorrow…
… but if you click here and buy it today, you can get it for 45% off the release price of £15.99.
If you haven’t seen it – and statistically, I’d imagine that’s fairly likely – it’s a very solid documentary, with Fry and people such as Robbie Williams, Tony Slattery, Carrie Fisher and Richard Dreyfus talking about how their life’s been affected by bipolar disoder.
Very much recommended, and a portion of the profits go to a mental health charity, so I politely suggest you click the above link. Trust me, it’s worth every penny.
I’m pleased to be able to point you towards the latest episode of the BBC7 comedy show Newsjack, which features a joke by little ol’ me.
Here be the link to the show’s page, which also includes the iPlayer link and a credits list (rather charmingly alphabetised by forename). My gag is the one about SuperInjunctions in the Corrections segment about two minutes from the end.
There’ll probably be a link for the podcast in the next couple of days, and my rampant egocentricity means I’m very likely to post that too. (EDIT: Crikey, looks like it’s already available here. That was quick.)
Anyway, as you can probably gather, I’m more than a little bit pleased about this (which is why my usual English reserve has been overwhelmed with the desire to self-promote so shamelessly); my first paid work for the BBC, and not, I hope, the last.
Though, as ever, that’s rather up (or indeed down) to me, innit? Back to the writing…
To the left, my only joke about the iPad’s name; the toilet-related ones strike me as a bit weak, really.
Anyway, what of the new Apple device ? I don’t know, I haven’t seen one or tried one or whatever, and anyway we all know that later models will be faster and cheaper and do extra things and so on.
What I do think is interesting, though, is much of the media coverage of the product’s launch; after a fair amount of speculation about its possible existence (and of possible capacities), there’s a lot of coverage of the iPad’s launch, both in traditional media and online (such as in posts like this one).
And I think the reason why the media coverage has probably been disproportionate to the genuine level of interest (aside from the usual thing about filling airtime or column inches or what have you) is less because of what it does, but because of what it could potentially do in the future; because if the capabilities of it were developed to their full extent, this sort of device could have a serious impact on a lot of jobs relating to the media. Because it could, at the far extremes of possibility, replace books and magazines and newspapers in the same way that, for many people, the iPod and iTunes have replaced CDs and music shops.
Print media have been struggling in recent times with falling sales and/or ad revenues, and one of the main expenses for print media is, well, you’ve got to print the thing; if, on the other hand, you can just edit your copy of The Daily Blah and send it wirelessly or what have you to your subscribers, that saves you a sizey chunk of dosh on printing and distribution costs. And of course you could correct or update stuff as the day goes on, add in video stuff, make your ads link directly to the advertiser’s sites, and so on. All of which will involve very different ‘skill sets’ (as the cool kids in HR say nowadays) for people working in print media.
So, for that reason, I rather suspect the press coverage (whether it’s manifesting as Apple Acolyte behaviour or sneery dismissal, or something in between) is, in a large part, born of an awareness that this device, and others with similar capabilities, could have a serious effect on the press, who may need – as the music industry has done – to find themselves a new (or parallel) business model pretty sharpish.
Whilst the unveiling of the iPad is, for the vast majority of people, an item of only marginal concern as they may not be inclined (financially or in terms of interest) to buy one, for anyone working in the print media, it could have a serious effect on their livelihood in their not-necessarily-distant-future.
It’s probably not the greatest innovation since the invention of movable type; but the high-profile launch of a device which enables words which have been typed to be moved through the air and presented in a form akin to print media has to send waves of concern through the fourth estate.
And that, I would suggest, is motivating a lot of the coverage. And in covering the coverage, I am drawn to quote Robert Oppenheimer (allegedly) quoting the Bhagavad Gita. But that’s the kind of pretentious idiot I am.
Or, perhaps, I am become.
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