Film idea

I was hit in the head with a film idea yesterday at lunchtime, and I can't shake it. I was dreaming about it last night, feel like I know the character quite well already, have major plotpoints floating about my brain in no particular order.

Why does this happen? The front cover of a book for small children led me down a trail of thought which ended with my film idea. Would I have had the idea if I hadn't seen the book? Do I owe the book (whose story is completely unrelated to my own, I assume, as I haven't even looked at the synopsis) thanks for this inspiration?

The brain is a funny old thing.

Back from Holiday

I'm back!

We had a lovely time in Paris. I can't say that it was a relaxing holiday, given that we marched all over the place and wore ourselves out for four days, but it was lovely and filled with great memories for me.

We saw everything possible, I think! I don't even know if I have a holiday highlight, we saw so much. I did love the Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower at night. I did not think much of the area around the Moulin Rouge, though. Ugh...

Got to read a couple of books before Uni starts now, though! Tomorrow should be fun.

On Holiday!!

I am away to Paris on Monday, and won't be blogging for a week or two.

Hopefully I will return filled with enthusiasm and ready for Uni, with lots of interesting things to blog about...

Until then, hope everyone has a good one.

Au-Revoir!

Happy Birthday, Roald Dahl!

It would have been Roald Dahl's 90th Birthday today, and so today is Roald Dahl day...

Roadl Dahl Day

I really loved my Roald Dahl books when I was little. Matilda was my favourite RD book (although The Witches, The BFG and George's Marvellous Medicine kept it on its toes).

I used to feel that I could have been Matilda, had everything gone a little bit wrong when I was wee. I loved that she was such an avid reader - I read so much, I too literally exhausted the Children's Library and was allowed to draw out adult books before I was supposed to (although this turned a bit sour when I was reading a teen book had to ask my mum what something fairly racy meant - she flipped).

I'm sure the man had his flaws, but he knew how to entertain children, without parallel.

3 weeks to go!

Only 3 more weeks until I start the Screenwriting MA...

I'm getting ridiculously excited and nervous now, in equal amounts. Excited to be finally starting, to be set on a path that I hope will make me happy, to meet new people. Nervous because I'm terrified everyone will be better than me, everyone will be more experienced than me, that I will be completely unable to speak in class or share my ideas, and that a dream I've had for so long will be effectivelly quashed by inability rather than suppressed by ignorance.

Ah well.

I ordered some of the course texts yesterday - blimmin heck, I'd forgotten how expensive course books were! One of them came rocketing in at £25 (which was only because I bought it second hand - £50 normally!!), but the rest I made sure I got from amazon's cheap associates. When they arrive I'll have a good bit of reading to get done in a very short space of time! I'm looking forward to that, though.

Roll on the 28th! It's only fresher's week, but it's a start!

Bad Blogger

I have just looked back over the last month or so's blog entries I've created, and I'm not impressed. My mind has been all over the place, and I seem to have been capable of only the worst sort of blog talk. (Much as I liked my celebrity look-alikes, they are not the sort of thing I would normally talk about.)

This weekend I am going to do a little writing, perhaps see some snakes taking over a plane and getting their asses wooped (like it??), and I'm going to read as many Saki short stories as I can. Hopefully this will lead to a calm, creative little me next week, filled with interesting and relevant things to talk about. Hopefully...

Gillian Baverstock - Growing Up With Enid Blyton

As I mentioned last week, I went to see Gillian Baverstock at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday.

The eldest daughter of Enid Blyton, she was entertaining and engaging through the entire hour, and I could have happily sat through more of her stories. She was at the festival to talk about her mother - how Enid Blyton wrote, what her home life was like, what she was like as a mother, etc.

When I was about 7-10 I loved Enid Blyton books. I liked the Famous Five (esp five run away together), the Adventure books, St Clare's and, most of all, Malory Towers. Although this event gave me a fairly strong desire to run out and buy the Malory Towers books again, I can't help but imagine that I will be disappointed as an adult. Perhaps not, but I've often found books I liked as a child to be fairly disenchanting nowadays. Gaps in the story, lack of character emotion, stereotypes, the bigotries of the time, all these things can have slipped from your memory and it can be quite shocking to discover them again.

I recently re-read the Narnia series, and while I still loved a lot of it I was amazed at the religious thread (which I so did not notice as a child), the racism, the weird anti-vegetarian comments, the sexism. It was quite disturbing to see them all, actually. I don't want that to happen with my Malory Towers books, so I will stave off for a while. Mind you, if anyone else read them and has read them as an adult and thinks they're still alright, let me know!

Anyway, something I took home with me from this event was the way Enid Blyton wrote. Apparently, to start a book, she would sit in her study with her typewriter on her lap, eyes closed while she imagined the characters. When the main characters were in her head and interacting with each other, she would imagine the setting. Then armed with nothing else, she would start to write. At the end of the day, when she packed the typewriter away and was having dinner, she would have no idea what was going to be written the next day.

I quite like the idea of writing like this. I'm always happier when I don't plot my stories (in fact I'm terrified of writing a synopsis and the thought of doing it for Uni is scarying me), as I love seeing where the characters take me. I like to think that my characters will have depth and emotion enough to lead people down an interesting road, but I think only time will tell that one. Sure, when they do wander away and start picking leaves from trees instead of doing something exciting I will reign them back in and force them to entertain, but for the most part I like freeforming it.

I've had another idea for a kids book, and I'm going to work on that tomorrow. First chapter has been written at lunchtimes this week, hopefully will get a couple done on the weekend...