WOW. Long time no blog, I’d apologise but I doubt anyone’s reading an abandoned blog. Just in case someone does stumble over this post in a moment of mis-googling madness… I’m sorry.
Can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I last blogged. Last time I added a post it was with blistered post-NaNoWriMo scarred fingers. I’d just finished a 50,000 novella version of my TV comedy drama – ‘Those Dreaming Spires’. Well it’s been eleven months and not much has happened with it as I’ve been working on a few other projects, which I’m very excited about, but which must remain confidential, sadly, for the foreseeable future.
I’ve just returned from the London Screenwriters’ Festival, which ran Fri-Sun at Regent’s College, London. Must admit, I’m sat in a bit of a daze today, trying to come to terms with the mix of screenwriting craft lectures, awe-inspiring industry panels and networking opportunities crammed into the three days.
Every session pointed towards areas that I need to improve on and I came away with a long ‘to do’ list of projects, in short must rebuild my website, must re-write EVERYTHING, must actually send things out (as Doug Naylor said “nothing’s ever finished”) and must must must blog…
But there were new areas that it opened up as well – projects I’ve often considered but not had the time to approach, I think I need to dive in and just have a go at them now. They might be a distraction away from screenwriting, but as Craig Batty and Zara Waldeback (authors of The Creative Screenwriter) said – you need to test your creativity, push it different directions. Zara likened this to a pianist practicing scales, you can’t spend all of your time working on one project or you block up and motivation leaves you.
I know I need to be careful not to allow too many distractions in, but I think a new direction to try would be:
- Animate a short sketch I wrote a few years ago, as Peter Thornton, Creative Head of Comedy at the BBC said he might struggle to read a script, but would always click on a link to a short film or animation)
- Turn the eight episodes I planned for Those Dreaming Spires into a series of short ebooks to try to build an audience for the series before taking it to production companies.
Neither of these new directions are going to be easy, but I think they’ll be a great leap forward, just need to get on with them and stop procrastinating!
I promise the next post will be sooner than next September! (and hopefully this year…)
Adam Brown, Screenwriter 