Endings, beginnings, a bit of quo vadimus

Feeling a bit quo vadimus today. That's due to a lot of things ending all at once. For example, the current cohort of MA Creative Writing students I help teach at Edinburgh Napier University leaves this week. They get final tutorials tomorrow. Most have been with us a year, part-timers two years. [One part-timer suspended studies for 12 months and has been around - off and on - since our course began back in Sept. 2009.]

In academia, the end of one cohort heralds the arrival of another. We've five part-timers returning for their second year, plus four new part-timers and more than a dozen full-timers. Due to a quirk in scheduling, the new postgraduate academic year isn't starting until the end of September. So there's a longer than usual lull between saying goodbye to a lot of familiar faces and hello to a class full of newcomers. Time to reflect.

This week I finished writing the first draft of a feature film screenplay I've been developing for eight months [on spec, nobody's paying me to write it.] The results are out with three professional script readers and my agent for feedback, so there's nothing more I can do on it right now. You can Read the first ten pages on the Akumu Facebook page. [Feel free to like the page - as with most writers I do crave validation.]

I first had the idea for this project in March 2008 while visiting New Zealand. It was triggered by a creepy painting hanging in the window of an Auckland art gallery. The story's been bubbling away in my head ever since, nagging to be written. I tried developing it for different media, but a feature film screenplay seemed the right choice. [I think it'd make a cracking graphic novel, but that's a discussion for another day.]

Writing the screenplay for a feature film has been on my To Do List for even longer. Every year I set myself a handful of goals to achieve in the coming twelve months. Every year I seem to have included writing a feature on that list, and epically fail. That dates right back to my screenwriting MA at Screen Academy Scotland. I planned to write a feature as my major project in 2007, but realised my project sucked.

A week before the deadline to hand in a final treatment, I abandoned it. That meant I had to devise, develop and write a new major project from scratch over the summer that year. The result helped get me a trial on the BBC TV drama series Doctors, and a much revised version of my script was a finalist in the Red Planet Prize two years later. I made the right choice in 2007, but it left a gap in my writing portfolio.

Having finally accomplished what I'd failed to do for five years, it does beg the question: what do I want to write next? Put it another way - where are we going? I've got a few opportunities I need to follow up. Some new media I'd like to explore, some writing media I'd like to revisit. And I definitely need to develop new story of the day pitches for Doctors, an area where I've let things slide this year. Choices? No problem.

But what's the big project I want to develop next? What's the story I'm most passionate about telling, the one I'm burning to write? I need to choose wisely, as it could well occupy most of my Copious Spare Time™in 2013. This is a project I'll be writing for me, not because it fits a particular brief. I'm not bad at writing within constraints, crafting a story with pre-created characters, worlds or narrative threads.

But my most individual work - the place where my voice as a writer is most apparent - tends to come when I'm not concerning myself too much with formats and constraints. Where I switch that editorial production tendency to invoke limits over imagination. Let my creative side out, ignore that tendency to worry what's possible or practical or preferred. A story only I can write, that's what my next big project has to be. Onwards!

Star Wars promo for MA Creative Writing course

Just for fun, here's a promo I whipped up for the MA Creative Writing course at Edinburgh Napier University, using the Star Wars crawl creator. In case you're wondering, it was the Times newspaper that called our programme a radical departure...

Genius Flowchart: So You Want To Get Published?

Somebody on Twitter [@caroleagent I think] linked to this genius flowchart of what it takes to get published. It's from the website of YA author Kate Hart, and highly recommended. Click the pic to see a larger version, or go download the jpg from Kate's site.

Yesterday: just another manic Tuesday. Today: ?

Had a busy day yesterday. After a frenzy of writing in the morning, drove to Glasgow for an afternoon of stuff. Appeared on BBC Radio Scotland's Culture Cafe talking about the imminent impact of product placement rules being relaxed for UK TV. [British residents can hear me burbling away via the magic of iPlayer for the next week - just go here.]

Despite talking about produce placement, BBC rules meant we couldn't name any of the brands we were discussing. Felt like we were playing a game show called Imply/Infer. [Hmm, quite fancy the sound of that!] But to get permission to use an audio clip from The Truman Show, the Culture Cafe had to plug the Paramount film's DVD. Bizarre.

Next I had a script meeting with a producer where we spent a lot of time talking about broken bones. Unfortunately, the contracts for this gig haven't been signed yet so I can't emerge from my superstition-induced Cone of Silence to tell you what I'm writing. Let's just say pre-schoolers are the audience, and it's not drama or comedy.

Then it was straight to another meeting, catching up with an independent producer I first met at the Scottish BAFTAs back in 2007. We haven't worked together on anything yet, but keep in touch and swap stories from our respective trenches. Hopefully the planets will align for us to collaborate on something sooner, rather than later.

Today I will mostly be second drafting, and waiting for news from Edinburgh Napier University where I teach part-time on the Creative Writing MA. Academic redundancies are afoot and announcements are imminent. This has been rumbling on for months, but a new teaching trimester starts tomorrow for us - or does it? On, well. Onwards!

Genius: This Is Alternity

This is... Alternity from Temporal An0maly on Vimeo.

Steven Cook is a talented bugger. For years he was art editor on iconic British comic 2000AD, constantly pushing the envelope with his cutting edge designs. It's his badge logo you see on the weekly's front cover, graphic novels, and other merchanise.

He also does a fine line in alt-art, create dazzling fusions of past and present which have been exhibited in numerous galleries on different continents. [Steven kindly enough to let us use BarBelle - the picture at 3:30 in the video - to promote the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University.] See more of Steven Cook's work here.

Five years of Vicious Imagery

In October 2005 I started this blog as an online journal for my experiences as a postgraduate screenwriting student. I was trying to make the leap from scribbling tie-in novels, comics and audio dramas to writing TV drama. I'd had a couple of near misses with TV, but lacked the craft skills to take advantage of those opportunities.

Back then I knew I could tell a story and get paid for it. I'd had nearly 20 novels published, maybe a thousand pages of comic script, about a dozen hours of audio drama and been working with stories as scribe or editor for years. But could I transform myself from successful tie-in hack into a writer of scripts for TV dramas?

Five years on, the answer is yes. I write for the BBC1 series Doctors, with my first ep broadcast in February this year. My second is on next month [Thursday November 18th, to be precise], and I'm in the midst of writing my third for transmission in March 2011. I'm also taking baby steps into the world of writing for children's TV.

I have an agent, the lovely Katie Williams at Blake Friedmann [details at the top right corner of this blog]. My second radio drama was on BBC7 in August this year, four years after my first broadcast writing credit [for a Radio 4 play]. I'm writing for my second computer game this year, after a long spell away from that field.

Back in 2005 I was venturing into the world of university study for the first time as a post-grad screenwriting student. Now - in my Copious Spare Time™ - I lecture part-time on the innovative Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University. I get to talk about writing 2.5 days a week and that's never a chore for me.

It's surprising to me how far I'm come in the past five years. If you'd have told me what lay ahead, I would have grabbed it with both hands. There are some experiences that feel like wasted efforts or missed opportunities, but I've always believed you learn as much from your mistakes as your triumphs, so it's all good.

I won't try to guess where the next five years will take me. I'm still at the start of my journey as a TV drama writer, who know where that might lead. There are shows I'd love to write, creative itches I'm dying to scratch. Most of all, I need to find time - to make time - for my own characters, my own stories. Onwards!

MGEITF & end of Year One

Yesterday ended year one of the MA Creative Writing degree I teach part-time at Edinburgh Napier University. We had final tutorials with the graduating students, talking through their personal development plans and offering some final pieces of advice on what they should be doing over the next two year.

Unlike most Creative Writing MA courses in the UK, we focus on vocational skills, popular genres and commercial storytelling media [screenwriting, games, radio drama]. Why train writers to fill out grant forms, as some courses do? Far better to equip them with skills so they might earn a living, instead of relying on handouts!

Rant over. Anyway, a new cohort turns up on September 9th, plus nine part-timers return for their second and final year. We've learned so much from our first running of the course. No doubt there are unforeseen challenges ahead, but second time around is a much less daunting prospect. Can't wait for it to start.

Dashed from uni to the Edinburgh International Television Festival, switching changing my metaphorical teaching hat for the jaunty chapeau of a writer. Not many writers attend the festival. It's not cheap, for a start, and populated by upper industry echelons. Writers are the other end of the food chain in this context.

Still, it's an opportunity to listen and learn. Went to Mark Thompson's MacTaggart lecture last night. Thought he gave a good defence of public service broadcasting, took a few pops at Murdoch empire. I just wish the BBC was less apologetic and reactive when its enemies stir storms in teacups about trivia. [You can read the full text of his speech here.]

Right, must return to a scene by scene I'm writing. Got up at six this morning to make sure I nudged it forward, before heading into Edinburgh for TV festival day two. I'm at the different coloured post-it notes section, playing with a jigsaw puzzle of plot points and story beats. Onwards!