Turn off the TV and do something more interesting instead.

Tuesday. August 6th. 2013. 23:55
Today was my nephew's birthday. He is now thirteen. Another teenager in the family. All we need. Considering that the pushed his brother through the (thankfully open) french doors at my sister's house the other day, he's kind of lucky to have made it this far.

The normal 'witty' card, and emailed Amazon voucher as a present. Does this make me a lazy giver ? Well, actually when it was the case that he was getting a bike for his birthday I had bought a new lock and rechargeable bike lights for him. Having changed his mind, and decided that learning to ride a bike was 'too much for him', that became a pointless thing to buy him.

Even though I had purchased them I am sure that I can still make use of them when I finally get round to buying a new bike.

So far this week I've not gotten much writing done. I've kidded myself that my online escaping into 'Second Life' is a valid alternative for spending my time. When I'm away on holiday I won't be able to go on Second Life. So I will miss my virtual world. When I say miss. I don't mean it like that. I don't actually go on it at all that much these days. When I first started it, I was on it for hours and hours every night. Now I probably only go on there for a couple of hours a week. 

I need to stop turning the Television on again. This seems to be the routine when I come in from work.

Get in.
Let cats out.
Turn on TV.
Slump in sofa.
Pointlessly surf the internet / check facebook.

Maybe, just maybe I will start some novel editing, or I will start a blog entry. I've done that a couple of times. But the TV gets in the way of any real focus. Trouble is, Star Trek Enterprise is on at 7pm every night.

As time goes on, it's becoming less and less easy to hide my inner nerd. When I say inner. I mean the inner most 98% of me.

T - 30

Script Frenzy

30 days and counting (down) to Script Frenzy. An email from the Offices of Letters & Light (or organisation that runs the madness) reminded me that 'the frenzy' is fast approaching and I don't have one iota of an idea that I can develop into a 100 page script.

Remembering how crap it felt last year, when I wrote Retro Rocket (and succeeded in the 100 pages written during April target. Yay !) and didn't really have a plan, and how that nearly ended in failure, I wanted to make sure that I avoided that this year. When I'd entered National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I had also neglected to plan, and elected for an organic free form approach to the writing. I just sat at my desk, and let the ideas poor out. Good, bad or downright terrible.

Having not succeeded with NaNoWriMo and only managing something like 17,409 words (when I say something like, that's the exact figure) I don't want to repeat the failure.

Fail to plan. Plan to fail.

So what does this writer do when he doesn't have a plan (can I call myself a writer ? - someone check that one out and get back to me) ? Post-its. Yes post-its. Those non-recyclable yellow gems that turn any flat surface into a 'brain storming wall'. Now that it's my wall I can stick post-its up with gay abandon. (Heterosexual abandon just doesn't work so well). 

This works for me, may not work for others.. but you have to go with what works. I have progressed a little from the initial post-it driven 'floating of ideas' to the developing of one particular idea. I had considered using Frenzy (as it appears to be affectionately shortened) to write the first series of Retro Rocket. I have dismissed this as I have not revisited the idea since last April's Frenzy, so the 'pilot' script will, in itself need lots of editing. An attack of the big red pen (or in my case, the impatient pencil) is required. Also with Retro Rocket, I just haven't actually resolved those issues about show direction that had been the stumbling block. It was not answering those questions that I think made it hard to push on with the script originally. It didn't have a plan (return to previous point about planning).

I also discarded the 'man goes back in time to undo the mistakes that cost him his marriage - only to find out that he erases his daughter from existence' because, well, I just thought it was a crappy idea.

Likewise 'man on bus / train that isn't allowed to get off at his intended destination' is perhaps worthy of a short film (about 5 minutes) but I couldn't for the life of me see how I could get 100 pages out of that idea. It may be possible that the idea I have gone for ends up with elements of that. We'll have to wait and see.

Laptop (alternative titles being :- Feedback or Netbook) is the story of what changes occur in a man's life as a result of him buying a laptop (or netbook) off Ebay. The computer contains information that he is not aware of, and also has automatic sign-on enabled to internet chat sites. This draws or drags him into a world that he is initially intrigued about, but as he discovers more is increasingly scared as he gets more and more deeply involved in the things that were happening in the life of the laptop's previous owner.

What does the machine have on it that makes it so important to so many different groups (big business, criminals, government etc) ?

How did it come to be on Ebay in the first place, if it was so important ? (was the previous owner mugged ? Are they still alive ?)

So our hero, if that's the word is forced to try and convince these people that this was not his laptop before, and he has no way of finding out what's hidden on the hard-drive. He has a hard time convincing these people, a succession of organisations or individuals keep tracking him down to convince him to give them what they want. None of them believe him when he says that he's just brought the laptop on ebay. They believe him even less when it gets stolen.

He then has to try and find the laptop, as giving it to the people that want it so badly is the only way to get them out of his life.

This would be as boring as hell as a stage play, and is definitely suited to filming, even something that could be done on a low budget ,and with a bunch of amateur film-makers. (you see where I'm going here, don't you ?)

Let me know what you think, dear reader. Perhaps as I develop the idea, I post those onto the blog ? Hmmm. All this AS WELL AS , The Fatcat And The Grafter. 

This is good. I like to be busy. When I'm not busy I'm sitting at home watching shit someone else has written on TV.  

Where's the cleaning fairy ?

Ok. So I have no one to blame but myself, but still..... where's a happy cleaning fairy when you need one.

The flat is still a pigsty. Still the mess it was at the start of the week. I have, although managed to motivate myself to actually do some things. Some things.

Went round to Steve's last night, and attended a workshop on how to use the club's cameras. This was handy, because they have lots of buttons and switches and settings and stuff, and I would probably be quite happy to sit and play with them all, but the truth is that I probably shouldn't and Steve probably wouldn't like me to.

I did get some really good ideas about where things were on the equipment they use, and some of the theory behind those strange phrases I keep hearing either Steve or Chris saying 'I need to rebalance the white' or 'you're crossing the line there'. To me 'crossing the line' was something that my parents used to tell me when I was getting far to cheeky.

I think they may have even redefined 'being cheeky' as 'being a little shit', but I guess you'd have to ask them about that.

Anyway. Back to the plot. There's a plot ? Bloody hell, this was news to me. I thought I was just tapping some random stuff into my netbook while I wait for the toast to pop up......

Hmmm... peanut butter on toast, with salad cream. Yum.

I've noticed that in this year, I've not done anywhere near as much writing as I wanted, and also haven't really done as much filming and uploading. I'm quite good at starting blogs, but absolutely terrible at keeping them going. (as you can tell from the updates on his page).

If 2010 is going to be a different year for me, then I am deciding to change that. And I'm going to change that right here, right now. I have found it very easy to update my Facebook and Twitter presence. 140 characters of musings or comment, sent by text. Nothing could be simpler. I'm not trying to blame the technology or sites for the lack of updates.... but of all my character flaws, procrastination is the one that I can put off till tomorrow.

I don't think that it's beyond possible for me to make two updates per week. (There are only so many entries this week because I am on holiday). I have realised that there's no point in leaving that to start on January 1st. Strike while the iron is hot I say. Or at least while it's relatively tepid. Ouch. Careful not to burn my fingers.

Ok. So that's my 'writing promise'. If it's one thing I've learnt recently at work, its that I like to get stuff done. I like to see that there are things being ticked off on my todo list. I might well have a tendency to be a lazy git, but if I lounge around and do nothing, I don't feel very good about it. Don't get me wrong, its not that I want to live my life in a hectic turmoil, being a slave to a never ending list of things to do (god if I wanted to live like that, I could have stayed married). In the end, there's only one way to get things done, and that's to bloody-well do them. It's nice to kick back and relax, but just sitting in front of the computer or TV, getting slowly more and more depressed about how messy everything is, or what else needs doing.

On the subject of roaring with energy and vitality and determination.. and stuff.... I think it's time to put the kettle on....