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!

"Well, that was predictable": Sorkin recycles Sorkin

NSFW trailer for Sorkin's new series, The Newsroom

Aaron Sorkin has a new series on American TV this summer. One of the pre-eminent writers of recent times, Sorkin is best known for creating The West Wing. He won an Oscar for writing The Social Network, and was nominated for Moneyball. Other credits: A Few Good Men; The American President.

Sorkin has created two other TV series, but neither came close to matching The West Wing. Sports Nights went behind the scenes at a struggling sports news show, and ran two seasons. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip went behind the scenes at a struggling sketch comedy show, and lasted one season.

The Newsroom goes behind the scenes at a struggling news show, and it's written by Aaron Sorkin - that's all I need to know. Sorkin excels at tackling big, important issues. To me, show within a show formats set in sports and sketch comedy were never the best prism for his broader concerns.

Setting his new show within a news show is a better fit. Plus The Newsroom is being made for HBO, removing many of the creative shackles imposed by network TV. HBO series have shorter seasons, which will also be to Sorkin's benefit, as he tends to write most episodes of shows he creates.

Alas, all HBO shows are on Sky in the UK, which I can't get. So I'll have to wait for the boxed set or hope it pops up on iTunes. No matter. It's been a long time since we're had a new Sorkin TV series, and my discs of Sports Night, West Wing and Studio 60 are getting worn out. The Newsroom? Bring it on.