Too Busy Writing to Write

Ever since I started my screenwriting course I have been too busy trying to keep up with it to update you. A few weeks in and we are starting to get to know each other. Emma, in her twenties, has embarked on a feature film about a kidnapped child; Kenny has a hilarious script about a hoodie sent back to 1911 by a computer profficient school mate who hates him. The other scripts are really interesting too.

We read (workshop) each others scripts and comment on them - hugely useful. In the second week I took in my first 10 pages of Granny's Little Helper and they loved it. Great premise they thought and really good visuals. I need to beef up Alex some more to make him even naughtier. I already have some serious plans for that boy!

On top of that I have to write a 10 minute short film and a 60 minute family drama serial that could fill the Saturday night spot currently taken by Doctor Who and Merlin. I managed to write a 10 minute short and workshopped it last Tuesday. It is a revenge story and no-one there could guess the end. However my husband worked out the teacher must have done it. I am still not quite happy with it but the suggestions were very helpful. Then I finally realised what I needed in it when I watched the Review Show and they discussed the Coen brothers latest film - True Grit (it ins't a cowboy though!).

As for the 60 minute script I have finally come up with an idea I like and should have legs. It is about a man from the future who has has his old memories erased and is sent back into the past with new ones to carry out a task he is unaware of. But others realise if he is allowed to perform it he will change the course of history disasterously so they need to prevent him. They send him to the present day, a time he has no knowledge of, but have they hidden him well enough? And what else was he programmed to do?

Manic But Good

Talk about only having spare nanoseconds. This week was wall-to-wall with meetings after school, a lovely anniversary dinner and a trip to Snowdonia.
Yesterday we went to Llyn Ogwen to spy out our new silver/gold practice route for Easter. Gorgeous place but it was cold! The little streams runnning down the mountain were fringed with icicles -all beautifully clear . They looked like exotic glass flowers. Sadly it was too slippery on the rocks to cross over the top of the ridge to the Devil's Kitchen. Let's hope by Easter it will be a little warmer.
I began my Screenwriting course at LJMU on Tuesday and got an immediate pay-off. In my script Granny's Little Helper I had wondered how to show Alex's cheeky character. Margie suggested he might want to impersonate his Dad while he was away. Although I will use a small element of that, it did trigger a great idea for a crazy website he and his friends can create in his Dad's name. Simon Cowell will be sick he didn't think of this one!

Return to Normality

And finally... After the making of such Christmas fayre (horrible word) as Jerusalem artichoke soup with scallops, rabbit and crayfish pie (known as pest pie in our house - it's really good), white chocolate mousse with raspberry and lemon thyme jelly; and the New Year lacquered quails I can resume my writing.
This years big resolution is to get the revised treatment of Granny's Little Helper to the German agent who sounded interested; chase up the short script another producer took during the London Screen Writers Festival and start my scriptwriting course on Tuesday. I wonder what everyone will be like there?