Reading & Writing Fiction

I appear to have been out of action for a few days because I was busy reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I finally managed to get a copy from my local library on Friday evening and had finished it by Tuesday evening. This says something about the book. It was definitely a page turner once I got past the first 30-50 pages as it has quite a long set up and introduces the main character quite a way in. I really enjoyed reading it even though it deals with some horrific tortures and murders which I would rather not have read. The Swedish title for the book is translated into English as “Men Who Hate Women” which is a kind of theme running throughout the book. This book is the first in a trilogy – the subsequent books being The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. Even though murder mysteries are not really my cup of tea where reading is concerned, I am kind of intrigued by the main character Lisbeth Salander and may end up reading the next two books but having said that life is short and I have plot planning and writing to get on with.

Darling Husband has gone off to Africa for work for about 11 days which gives me a little time to get cracking with my planning for my feature film script and then he returns just in time to help me by looking after Gorgeous Baby while I write my 100 page script during the month of April as part of the Script Frenzy. I can’t imagine my first script will be much good, writing wise but if I don’t do it then I will never know will I. Plus I would rather be positive and think “Hey, I have a great idea, let’s have a go”. I’ve actually got more ideas than I can find time to properly develop but I need to work on developing myself as a writer and become accomplished at actualizing these ideas that I have. It may be that some ideas would work better as novels, some as short stories and some as features.

My ultimate goal would be to write something which takes someone out of the grim realities of their world and into a place where their imagination can soar with possibilities and hope. You see whenever I have had to deal with issues in my life I have used reading fiction and/or watching movies as a form of escape. That sounds a little naff but it genuinely is what I have done.

When my first baby was born I was reading a book by Martin Cruz Smith called Rose and even though I was dealing with the hideous nastiness of facing his death, reading that story allowed me to spend time in a different place just for a little while and allowed me to just breathe. The same thing happened when I was discharged from hospital. I was utterly exhausted physically and emotionally and just needed to relax and breathe so I watched Roman Holiday. I've always loved that film; Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn are amazing in it.

Entertainment may be viewed by some people as being pointless or empty but it has the power to lift us from grim reality, to connect with our emotions, make us laugh or cry, make us think and lead us into taking action. I have been considering this for a few days as I was thinking about the story I will be writing during Script Frenzy. I was feeling a little guilty that it was a bit of an empty airhead yet commercial story and may not connect with people but then I realised that commercial does not mean empty. Commercial stories can still be of value in numerous ways.

I'll be thinking of this some more as I attempt to write my screenplay.

The Journey To Being A Screenwriter continues

Okay so I had a stressful day yesterday. I came up with 2 new movie ideas, one a light fluffy, frothy Rom com and one a poignant comedy. I was trying to think about the poignant comedy to help me get through the day at work but also to take my mind off the passing of Layla Grace on the 9th March. Have a look at her story on http://laylagrace.org/ It really affected me and my thoughts and prayers were with her family as they tried to face the first day and now every subsequent day without her.

Each time I thought about what her mother was going through, my eyes welled up with tears. The pain, anguish and disbelief that what you most feared has happened is unbelievable.

It makes me wonder what the difference is between wishful thinking and having faith for a miracle.

But, in the meantime I also thought about trying to write a one page scene to enter Julie Gray's latest competition. The deadline was midnight on Thursday 11 March and every one of the dozens of ideas I came up with was absolutely, utterly useless. Trying to get anything worthwhile onto one page was like knocking my head against a brick wall and I found it completely frustrating. The annoyance however was at my own lack of ability to just knock out a scene effortlessly.

Anyway this morning I was chatting to my friend at work who I absolutely adore and he made me laugh about it so I came up with something - totally tongue in cheek but I enjoyed it, so hopefully Julie will too. There's stiff competition out there though so I'm not under any delusion that I'll win or anything absurd like that but I think it was good practice and got me thinking and writing.

It's also part of my daily WriProNeLL i.e. Write - Promote - Network - Learn - Live well

So today was a better day personally but I don't think I'll ever forget Layla Grace or her family. There is such power in words - just check out her blog to see what I mean.

NaNoWriMo - The Journey

Okay so I'm looking forward to writing a feature length movie script during Script Frenzy (http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/) in April this year. I've started planning for this already as I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2009 and learnt a few lessons about planning, from my lack of it.

Here is a re-post of my NaNoWriMo experience...

Getting involved with NaNoWriMo, started off on 27 October, with a guy who works at my company mentioning NaNoWriMo briefly. I had a look at their website and was hooked and determined to have a go. The idea is that you sign up to participate in a global network of people who will all attempt to write a 50,000 word / 175 page novel during the 30 days of November.

On Friday 30 October I went to an event called Worship Central at ALC (Abundant Life Church) where Tim Hughes and Al Gordon led worship, taught on Godly creativity, then more worship and prayer. I felt so inspired to create something amazing and really sought God to help me just flow with literary creativity. I was fired up, ready to go and couldn't wait to start; so much so that I started to write at midnight on Sunday 1st November. It only took one hour to write the first 1666 words.

But...had I kept to that and written 1666 words every day I would have made the target of writing a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. Unfortunately, by the end of November my word count was an abysmally low 14,966 so I had to accept that I failed in reaching the target.

But...I achieved something amazing. During November, I had my ups and downs, days of writing loads and flowing in the story and days of writing nothing. I have come up with a story about some characters that really interest, inspire and surprise me. I have started a novel that I know I will complete and I have enjoyed writing again immensely; so much so that I think it will be hard to stop.

I am already planning to participate again next year but I will plan out my writing schedule, story and characters in advance. Having said that, I think there is definitely something to be said for the 'flying by the seat of your spontaneous pants' method of writing, as there is just such a beautiful flow.

The Journey To Being A Screenwriter

This last weekend I had the amazing opportunity of being able to participate in a Screenwriting workshop in London, taught by Julie Gray from Los Angeles - see her blog on www.justeffing.com She is 'good people'.

I was a bit concerned that maybe I wasn't worthy to be there as although I love to write and have more ideas than I have time to work on, in my ideas journal, I wouldn't dare to presume that I have any talent. I mean talent is something that other people have, such as authors like Carlos Ruiz Zafon (writer of novel The Shadow of The Wind) and screenwriters like Shane Black (writer of the Lethal Weapon movies) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Oscar winning writer of Ghost and The Time Travelers Wife).

But Julie is an amazing encourager so I went along down to London anyway, ready to learn as much as I could and to make the most of the opportunity.

The class was absolutely, unbelievably excellent, far exceeding my expectations. After the first day – I was exhausted as I’d taken in so much and met some really cool people but after a few writing exercises and testing some of my movie ideas, I ended up feeling like a worthless, talentless, little wannabe. I was devastated and considered not going back for more on Sunday but then I prayed and asked God to help me get my head together and present some more movie ideas on Sunday morning.

So I went back with 6 brand new ideas, each of which had varying degrees of merit but when I presented them to Julie she said yes to 3, no to 1 and said the others were more novel ideas and suggested I put them in my ideas folder.

By the end of Sunday when I had worked on 1 main idea – I left on cloud 9 feeling so inspired, encouraged and motivated but at same time utterly exhausted. The idea was just a fluffy, frothy romantic comedy but everyone loved it and said it was very commercial and had ‘legs’ to use a Hollywood term.

I met some of the most incredible and amazing people who were just so lovely, talented, inspiring and collaborative. We all exchanged email addresses and I know that it's going to be fun to keep in touch and see how we all develop and grow as writers in our careers.

I’ve got so much more hard work to do now though so better stop blogging and get on with my story development etc.