2018 a year in review

by | Mar 24, 2019 | Review, screenwriting, Uncategorized, Writers toolbox, Writing

[Written in Dec 2018 and unable to post until now – I forgot that I’d drafted this when the Blog was down and was unable to post it]

It was a tough year, but it had a better finale than 2017.

Less people that I know and love died this year. For that I am grateful. Nevertheless, still we lost more friends. And with each passing day it feels like more of my past is being eroded. How long before it feels like it never happened?

(more…)

2015 – my creative resolutions and goals

by | Jan 8, 2015 | Prose, screenwriting, Uncategorized, Writers toolbox, Writing

As previously mentioned, in my last post, I was quite chuffed with the results of my efforts trying to keep up with my resolutions and goals for 2014; despite a challenging day job and the fact that I had to put some creative goals on hold in order to fulfil my non-creative life goals (such as relocating to a new country). it was far from easy. But with the help of some very understanding loved ones and friends, I was able to make them happen.

This year I am hoping will be no exception. I have distinct creative goals in mind and here they are.

CREATIVE GOALS FOR 2015:

 

I want to:

  1. Finish / rewrite my Nanowrimo 2014 novel (MUTAGENE) and self-publish it. This will be the primary goal and will dominate everything else this year.
  2. Write the entire first draft of a new feature script. It’s an aspiration, but I have some contenders that are jockeying for position inside my brain and fighting to get out.
  3. Rewrite one existing feature screenplay for circulation. I have 4 perfectly good feature film scripts sitting around doing nothing. Each of them needs a rewrite. And I think I need to learn more rewriting skills, so I should definitely set about doing this. Nothing of mine is ever ready after one draft. 
  4. Read more more screenplays – and study 1 a month. I think it would be good to rebuild my grasp of story structure, style and pacing and help me to see the flaws in my own writing.
  5. Circulate my short scripts for critical feedback and possible acceptance from a production company. Why have 12 of them sitting around doing nothing? it’s stupid. 6 of them are definitely worthy of production. They’ve just not found the right home to love them.
  6. Finish the edit of one of my, as yet unfinished, short films. I have two unfinished films. Neither is perfect and that drive for perfection is why they are dormant and unfinished. Even if they suck I will get them to a point where I can at least put them out there for ridicule. 😉
  7. Do more writing courses this year. I haven’t yet decide which area should dominate – screenwriting or prose – but I will have a better sense once I’ve dug into my Nanowrimo novel and looked at it’s imperfections.
  8. Read more books and articles on my craft. I went through a splurge of buying more books last year. Buying them doesn’t help you if you don’t read them!
So that is more than enough to be going on with, even though it is not a nice standard number like 10 things to focus on. But I’m not bothered by convention. And don’t be limited by my rules. If you only have 1 goal, that’s cool. If you have 0 goals, that’s worrying to me – but I’m not you. If you have 20, then good luck. That’s a lot to manage. 🙂

You’ll notice that there isn’t much new film production listed above. It doesn’t mean that I can’t change my mind later if something good enough comes along. Right? None of this is set in stone. But each of these will help me to further my craft and contribute to my happiness and wellbeing – even though I’m setting myself quite a challenge. And to me, filmmaking is one of those goals that’s impossible to manage if it is collaborative and dependent on others. It’s fine if I come up with a solo project to work on, e.g. an animation.

So why do we need goals?

Why wouldn’t you want to push yourself? If you’re reading this, then you have an aspiration to create something. There’s a flame of desire that is most certainly flickering within, even if you can’t see it. And what better way to fan the flame then to set yourself some small, measurable and achievable goals that will eventually help you to find the creative path you really wish that you  were on?

The best goals are SMART goals:

  • Specific – targeted toward a specific area for improvement.
  • Measurable – quantifiable or indicative of being able to measure progress.
  • Assignable – specify who will do it.
  • Realistic – you need to consider what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources / luck. So don’t hold yourself to ransom if they’re dependent on others. try to make them things that you can realistically achieve on your own.
  • Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved in this calendar year so that you can later measure if you hit them. And yes, the clock is ticking. But if you pick smart, small goals, you can always set a specific date – like “I will enter this screenwriting competition, by the deadline which is: DATE”.

Should I share my goals?

 You don’t have to share it. But if you do, you’ll be surprised by how many people who care about you may offer to help you or understand when you need to put your goals before their desire for instant gratification. And there’s always a benefit to be gained from putting yourself out there, to have people check up on you and make you stick to them.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do – if you choose to wing it, or if like me you’d like to set about defining your own goals!
If you share them here in the comments, I’d be happy to read them.

 

Obligatory end of year post [WARNING – may contain nuts!]

by | Dec 31, 2014 | Film, Production, Prose, screenwriting, Writers toolbox, Writing

Feeling enthusiastic about the coming year? I am. Very much so.

I don’t mean to sound smug, but unlike the previous [bleak] most recent years 2014 was a productive year for me. I stuck to my goals and completed all but 2 of them; including relocating to Sweden to continue to pursue my happiness, giving up a perfectly good job, renting my house out and throwing myself into the unemployment pool, setting up my own company and then luckily finding a new job – with my first happy clients. All so that I could be where I felt I needed to be, do what I felt I needed to do with my life and ultimately, because my life felt like a trap. It felt stagnant and I felt like I was doing nothing with it; at least nothing that I wanted to be doing.

Some of the creative things I was proud of:

  • I made more films earlier in the year – not for public consumption. Merely for fun and to get back into making films. We even had a club going at work, where we each made a ‘Ten Second Film’ a week; purely to prove to each other that creativity was possible for anyone and there was a way to tell a story with a variety of methods and everyone came to the same story theme from a completely different perspective and often using very different techniques and tools. Want to know more about how this works?
  • I wrote a novel as part of Nanowrimo 2014. Yes it still needs to be rewritten, but it’s down – out of my head and on the page.
  • I joined two writing groups (one for writing and one for critique) – in order to overcome my shyness and seek out others, to help look at my work objectively and constructively and also to see if I could be of assistance to others. I made some new friends in a new country and I’m sure that it will be a great help in 2015.
  • I took a few online courses to help learn my craft. And I read every article that seemed relevant to what I was trying to achieve – in order to learn more.
  • I also sought out more books on my craft. And I downloaded any free screenplay that I could get my hands on – I suspect that 2015 will be very much about reading more of those scripts and learning form the best.
  • I wrote something almost every day – even if it was my journal or some short #VSS tales in Twitter; something I was never good at before.
  • I used meditation to help fight my way out of creative blocks / writing block.

I’m currently setting my goals for 2015 and I’m looking forward to using more of what this great online community / the interwebz has to offer – attend more courses, develop and refine my writing skills and seek more professional critical feedback and to also help others, where I can, to achieve some of their goals. This year was a rehearsal, to see if I could still muster the gumption to take this seriously and invest serious amounts of time and energy. I did it. But I can give more. Much more.

More on my goals in the new year. I tend to like to let them simmer for a bit to see which ones fight to the surface more.

But if I may be so bold, can I suggest that we all help each other to get a step further up the path to creative freedom and feel the buzz of a little more success!

Have a great 2015 all!! Don’t fight the good fight alone! Let me know if I can help in any way in 2015.

Oh and here’s the [random] Nuts.

Life After Nanowrimo – what now?

by | Dec 12, 2014 | download, Editing, Prose, Review, screenwriting, Writers toolbox, Writing

So I finished Nanowrimo, and then like the survivors of great battles and those that complete marathon races, I had a very bad case of fatigue and I was overcome with a serious case of ‘What the f$%k do I do now?’

Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 12.09.03

 

I made sure of course that I backed up all of my files; multiple times (in Drop box, One Drive, USB, External backup) and – as I was using Scrivener, made sure I took a snapshot of the work, before I ever go back and then sat there, twiddling my thumbs. There as lots of twiddling. Lots of doubt. Lot’s of house cleaning and social engagements to fill up my time predominantly, but when in front of a computer – and starting at a blank screen – still faced with the same question: What to do?

I very much wanted to rest MUTAGENE – my Nano novel – and wait a while before revisiting it for editing / rewriting purposes. There are some plotting / planning activities and exercises I can still do on it, if I get desperate. But I wanted a break from it. After all, things had grown stagnant and we both needed to see other people. Or at least I needed some fun.

So I trawled back through my folders, trying to work out which of my other legacy projects was in need of love – as I didn’t have any burning new ideas to work on at that moment. That’s when I realised that I not only had one candidate, a short story I’d forgotten about (called ADRIFT), I also stumbled across a feature script I’d completely forgotten that I’d written (for a Script Frenzy competition a few years back)! Such a shambles. Such disorganised folders and files! And entrusting my faulty memory to guiding me clearly wasn’t working all that well. I decided that I needed to come up with a more appropriate plan to manage my writing projects.

After some soul searching, and some web searching, I realised that I needed a tool, like a database to track / catalogue every single idea, and I then needed to track which ideas then get worked on and when they become ready for circulation or publication.

I had three options:

  • an online writing database tool, such as writersdb and QueryTracker.
  • using Ulysses or Scrivener to track all of my projects; or
  • building my own tool to track all of my ideas and projects.

It wouldn’t be fun building such a tool, or populating it. But afterwards I would be in a much better position to track each idea through to completed project, and track my career more professionally – e.g. evaluate how much money I’d paid for editing surfaces, or been paid for successful story submissions, or for contest submission fees for scripts etc. I’d then have enough data to take stock of how things were progressing and make a judgement as to whether, like any business, it was still worth pursuing; or if torn between taking different roads, I’d have more than a gut feel to direct my decisions.

I didn’t really feel a need to track my writing each day, as that data would sit within Scrivener, or could easily be tracked in each project if I wanted to. And I was wary of my data being online, and being restricted to someone else’s design. And although I saw how someone else was using Scrivener to do their project management, it didn’t resonate with me. Seemed overly bloated and cumbersome. I wanted something small and portable. So I turned to what I know – I know spreadsheets. I know Excel.

So here’s what I built:

An excel sheet that has a project tracker tab: that tracks the name, type of project, genre (for film and prose), what stage it is in and what draft no and what is the latest file version.

Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 11.52.43

 

It also has a second tab for tracking submissions – once you’ve ushered a project through to completion on the first tab, you go to the tab called ‘Manuscript Script Submissions’ – for screenplays you submit to competitions or production companies, or manuscripts you submit to publishing companies or literary markets – and the feedback or decisions you get on that work, that may help you shape how you later go back to the rewrite / edit stage.

Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 11.53.17

 

The drop downs are populated on a third tab – so you can edit the field to your heart’s content and customise it to fit.

Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 11.53.32

 

DOWNLOAD THE FILE HERE: 

PROJECT TRACKER V1.0 Alpha 

Please do download it. Give it a whirl. It’s nothing fancy. But it works for me. 

Feel free to try it out, if you think that it might be useful for you also. If you change it, I’d love to know why and how, in case it may be useful to put it into a new version to share with others. And also, if you think it’s flawed – please let me know and I’d gladly consider any amends. I’m especially curious to know if there’s anyone else out there in the same boat, with more ideas than organisation.

For now, I’ve got some data to populate into this thing. I’ve got one short story to write. And then I need to plan how I intend to start my Nano novel editing / rewrite process; come January I want a proper plan in place.