“Pain is temporary."

"It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?"

Lance Armstrong

 Yep, today I need a REALLY motivational quote. Up to London last night, coaching, home at 12.30 a.m., less than four hours sleep. All my choice (except the not being able to sleep bit) so I'm not complaining.

But I AM tired.

I choose pain!

And coffee.

And having the window wide open so the fresh air keeps me awake.

And another Iced Currant Bun.

Day 21 Update
2 pages and a feeling that this is NOT enough, Caroline

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

,,,said Heraclitus.

(I'm looking at the picture, which I chose because it was jolly, and wondering which way the fish jumped.)

Yesterday was unexpected. I didn't expect it. Having dutifully informed all my clients that I'd be back at my desk (well, I'm nearly ALWAYS at my desk - but I mean, back at my desk and open for business) from 10 a.m. I expected to be inundated with work.

Nothing. No e-mails. No phonecalls. NOTHING! ALL DAY.

This was the thought process that ran through my head: Because I dared to take a week off, they have FOUND ANOTHER WRITER. Another writer who is better/cheaper/faster/more intelligent/more diligent than I am.

I WILL NEVER WORK AGAIN.

So instead...I carried on with the screenplay and got on more quickly with it than on the days that I took off especially to work on it.

Now THAT was unexpected.

Day 20 Update
7 pages and sailing

A word is not the same with one writer as with another.

 "One tears it from his guts.  The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket."

So said Charles Péguy - a noted French poet, essayist, and editor born in Orléans. So noted, in fact, that I've never heard of him.

I think I could rephrase it to fit in with my writing experiences, starting "One day of writing is not the same as another..."

 
The day before yesterday - tearing words one by one from my guts. Yesterday, pulling them effortlessly from my metaphorical overcoat pocket.

It's the first time for AGES I enjoyed writing (and I tell everyone I do it for fun!)

I did get a little bit peeved when I read this from Viki King's How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method (It's in the fantasy genre!)...bearing in mind I've been battling with this screenplay on and off since January...

Day 3 (says Viki) Write pages 30-45

Day 15 Update
6 pages and joy!

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real

Ha! You thought this was me ignoring the fact that yesterday I started on a screenplay writing regime designed to meet a deadline...and vowed to update you on (lack of) progress.

Fear is a factor in all this, believe me.

Until yesterday, I hadn't even dared look at the first ten pages of my screenplay, written so long ago. Here is what I had concluded:

1. The script was a load of rubbish
2. I wasn't even interested in it anymore
3. I couldn't even begin to think how to continue it
4. Why did I ever imagine I could be a screenplay writer?

This was FACT. THE TRUTH. Very real in my mind.

So, yesterday, I gulped and swallowed and looked at those ten pages...It took me until after 6 p.m....

This is what I found:

1. The script was actually pretty good
2. I loved the characters I had created and wanted to develop them
3. Plenty of ideas popped into my brain as soon as I started reading
4. I AM a screenplay writer

False Evidence Appearing Real, indeed.

I have awarded myself a badge:

Day 1 Update

I didn't write 3 new pages. I DID look at the first ten pages, revise them and write1½ new pages and think about how the story will unfold. I felt pleased.

On writing screenplays: There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

Okay, Richard Attenborough, I'll let you out now. You have just been conferred God-like status for saying that.

Well...let me look at my calendar. Hmmmmm. I have precisely 41 days to complete a screenplay of which I've only written ten pages. I know the ending. It's the 90-odd pages before that I'm unsure of.

Here's another quote about writing screenplays, this time from John Irving:

" I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey."

41 days...taking out the days when I'm working my socks off, the days when I have family staying, the days when I'm coaching on a Self-Expression and Leadership seminar up in London...

So, LESS than 41 days then.

This is what I am saying to myself: If it was a project for work, I wouldn't even blink. I'd be working crazy hours like I was for the last two weeks. SO, all I have to do is apply the same sort of pressure to myself over the screenplay deadline.

Easy!

Yeah, right...

The shallow business of film: Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.

No they are NOT, Jonathan Swift. At least, not in MY world.

I just wish people wouldn't MAKE promises at all. Oh yes, I know that people hear what they want to hear...Another quote on the subject, this time by Edgar Watson Howe: "Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made."

Am I sounding just the teeniest bit bitter and twisted? Yup. Here's what has happened.

I won a contest, on the strength of the first ten pages of The Melting, the prize for which was this:  "XXXX will get your pitch up to speed so that you’re ready to be introduced to a network of contacts tailored to your project. He will help you position your screenplay for the industry and recommend to you the producers and executives who are just right for you." 

At the end of our meeting I was told "Give me a week and I’ll send you a list of the right people to approach and I want to talk to a director friend in the States because The Melting is a studio film and he’ll know the right people to talk to in Hollywood." (I KNOW he said that, because I was so delighted, I wrote it down, the exact words.)

After MONTHS of waiting, during which I sent the occasional very courteous e-mail, I was finally given the e-mail address of ONE contact, in the UK, who 'had agreed to read my script.' (Even that sounded pretty grudging to me.)

I sent it off, with another courteous e-mail, only to get a reply saying that I hadn't pitched it properly... (Excuse ME, I didn't realise I HAD to pitch it. I thought it was all arranged.)...but he went on to say that THIS TIME he'd be kind to me and read it anyway. 

Caroline, feeling a little frustrated when dealing with patronising producers

I could imagine him patting me on the head and saying 'Very good dear. Now I wonder which of us gentlemen put that idea into your pretty little head.'

TEN WEEKS went by. A few days ago I mailed him. Courteously. After a couple of days I got this.

"I read The Melting but am going to have to pass. Disney is doing Snow Queen (Frozen) as a big tent pole so it's got some heavy competition."

YES, THAT'S WHY I WROTE A SEQUEL...

Listen, I'm not feeling sorry for myself - just very angry at the way writers are so very often treated.

The power of small

Or - how little things can make a huge difference.

By Carly Allen-Fletcher at http://carlydraws.com/

So yesterday, there was the Goliath in my life that I was battling, my feelings of resignation about my creative writing, my thoughts that I'll NEVER be J.K.Rowling - for that is Peter's idea of the successful author he would like me to be (which is not actually my ambition!)

Funnily enough I do believe Peter's aspiration for my future has little to do with the quality of the work or my creative fulfilment...more the size of the bank balance. Hard to imagine, eh? Quite often when I'm struggling away to perfect a recalcitrant phrase, he'll say 'Why can't you just write something like J.K. Rowling does and then you can keep me in the manner to which I'd like to become accustomed?'

I could almost hate J.K.Rowling...

Anyway - I was girding up my loins (as I am in biblical metaphor mode) to write a query letter to an agent when...David arrived in my In-Box, fully armed with anti-Goliath sling and handy pebble...

...in the form of a film producer from Connecticut requesting one of my scripts and also wondering about me being involved in a rewrite of a feature.

I'm not stupid. I KNOW that a) he's probably sent the same e-mail to a zillion other people and b) in all likelihood, nothing will come of it....

but, boy, did Goliath collapse at once into a crumpled heap.

So far, he hasn't got up again.