Two good words

After a mammoth slog over the weekend, I finished my script.

I say finished, but of course I mean I just finished a draft of it. I wrote most of it on Saturday, leaving Sunday to complete the last 'act' (although it doesn't have acts as such) and read, tinker with, read, tinker with, etc.

As you would expect from such a quick draft, it lacks subtlety, character nuance, and probably the odd word or two. I managed to flesh out the characters as much as possible, but it's probably all very 'on the nose' at the moment. However, I'm happy with it, and have submitted it for the next She Writes phase - workshops.

I'm going to try and keep up the writing momentum this week by entering a piece in the New Scientist Forgotten Futures competition - as first spotted on MJ's blog.

Feeding frenzy

I've been writing in a bit of a frenzy the last few days, and it's going to be an intensive weekend.

On Monday I'm due to hand in a completed draft of my script for She Writes. This will be used for the performed reading in December, so needs to be as good as I can get it. I feel like there is still a lot to do - thank goodness that I have a complete outline. I never used to be a fan of them, but now I find them invaluable.

On the plus side, I've really enjoyed writing lately. It's been a while since I felt like I was in any kind of writing 'groove,' so it's been great. I had this afternoon off work, and took myself to a cafe to write for a couple of hours for the first time in months. It was lovely to sit with a hot chocolate and tap away, with no distractions save the early Christmas music.

For now, it's curry time - then back to the script.

Lucky 13

Oh my goodness.

I just realised that I have only posted 12 blog entries this year. 12! Shocking stuff.

It's curious, as I have been very busy, and lots has been going on. I just haven't felt much like blogging, or tweeting, or anything like that (in part, I blame the death of my laptop a couple of months ago). I've also been inundated with spam on all my blogs, which made me want to ignore them for a while.

Here's a brief summary of what I've been up to:

1. Ladies Who Lunch won best film in the Short Films and Music Videos Category at the Black International Film Festival in Birmingham last week, which is hugely exciting. I'm so pleased for everyone involved, especially my producer/director Victoria Thomas, who optioned and made my script into a living, breathing, festival going film.
2. LWL and another film I worked on both screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner. Not sure why I didn't blog about this at the time - I suspect shyness.
3. My next She Writes session is a mere 3 weeks away. The first 30 pages of our scripts are going to be performed by actors, with workshop sessions to go through anything that crops up. This is also very exciting, although I am quite nervous about it - hopefully a healthy combination.
4. I bought a new netbook to replace my dead laptop. It's so shiny and small.
5. I attended lots of events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, and mortified myself by gushing like an idiot at Philip Pullman. I'm not going to repeat exactly what I said, but it involved clutching my heart in a rather dramatic fashion. (Why am I so bad at talking to authors I love?)
6. I went on a proper holiday for the first time in ages, so Madrid. Beautiful place. Here are some photos, for those of you interested:

I'll be back. Soon.