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!

Why writers don't discuss getting fired: it sucks

Most writers don't talk about getting fired - at least, not in public. Writers are happy to share war stories with other writers, but announcing you're been booted off a script is like saying you admire the wit and wisdom of Michael Gove: rare, not well-advised, and possibly the sign of a psychotic break on your part.

The reality is most every professional writer will be fired off a gig at some point in their career. It's a rite of passage, if not an enjoyable one. Everyone will tell you not to take it personally, that it happens to all of us, that you simply have to suck it up and move on. That's all true - but doesn't actually help much at the time.

For a writer, getting fired to akin to being dumped by someone you really fancy while you're in the middle of having sex with them. You may've spent weeks, months, even years getting to this. But halfway through, they decide it's over. You're not satisfying them. Seemed like a good idea but you're not doing it the way they'd hoped. Goodbye.

Unsurprisingly, this news is never welcome. Being rejected isn't much fun, but you can comfort yourself with the thought they made a mistake by not picking you. Getting fired is more personal, because it feels like a condemnation of your performance. You couldn't make them happy, and now it's over. Don't call us. Etc, etc, etc.

I've been on both sides of this situation. When I took over as editor of 2000AD, I booted several creators who didn't match my creative vision for the comic. Whether or not I liked them personally was irrelevant, it was simply about the work. So that was some [tiny] comfort when I got booted from a job last year. It wasn't personal.

But your confidence still takes a hit. You question yourself, your ability, your ambitions as a writer - it's only natural. You try to pick yourself, move on, find a new path forward. Slowly but surely, you rediscover your writing mojo. The wound heals over, forms into scar tissue. With time comes distance, and objectivity.

The worst case scenario is getting booted off your very first commission. That has the potential to crush an emerging writer. If the boot comes after that a few successes, at least you know you can make it as a writer - just not on that particular job. Most important thing you can do? Learn from the experience. Onwards!

Tell people you're writing 61k in a month and they freak

I'm on a break from writing computer strategy game Fate of the World until January. The start of next year looks like another busy spell, with several potential writing gigs looming including - fingers crossed - a trial script for something I've been pursing the better part of five years. Many irons, numerous fires, so little time.

But all of that looks like work for 2011. So, what am I doing to keep myself busy between now and the first week of January? Writing a 61,000 word book, of course. [I'm also teaching and will be spending a lot of time marking over the next two weeks, but that's my part-time job and an ongoing thing, so I take it as read.]

I've noticed a strange reaction whenever I mention writing a book over the next month: people freak out a bit. I suppose 61,000 words in about 30 days sounds a bit daunting, but I've done it before. Indeed, a third of the book is pre-written, although that will need significant revision. So it's not an impossible ask.

I've already done much of the research. Mostly a matter of applying bum to chair and writing. Aside from my teaching gig there aren't too many other potential diversions between now and Christmas. Apologies if I'm blogging much between now and Christmas - I'm busy writing. In the meantime, keep warm and stay happy. Onwards!