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.

You will be judged (or you will be ignored)

Those are pretty much the only two choices.

Being judged is uncomfortable. Snap judgments, prejudices, misinformation... all of these, combined with not enough time (how could there be) to truly know you, means that you will inevitably be misjudged, underestimated (or overestimated) and unfairly rejected.
The alternative, of course, is much safer.

To be ignored.

Up to you.

This was Seth Godin's post, yesterday

What's that spooky music? Okay, it'll have to be Psycho, but that's not the one I meant.

Anyway - that post came exactly at the right moment yesterday to spur me on, to swallow the fear of being 'misjudged, underestimated (or overestimated) and unfairly rejected,' and send the first ten pages of my YA novel, Of Night And Light, to a literary agent, and send the screenplay of The Melting to a film producer.

Now, all I have to do is wait...for something...

I'm mean, seriously...what IS the point of me writing all this stuff, pouring my heart and soul into it, and then NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH IT?

Sometimes, I could get quite cross with myself.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

I'll tell you something. If I were to be cast away on a desert island and had to choose a book (apart from the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible) - it would be everything W.B.Yeats ever wrote in one volume, if such a work exists.

One very fat volume...quite difficult to turn the pages...useful, also, to stand on when reaching for tropical fruit high up in the trees.

If ever I could say I had just one influence, W. B.Yeats would be it. More and more, in finding my own voice, my own style...oh dear, as I'm writing that, it sounds as though the very thing I'm NOT doing is finding my own voice, my own style, but simply stealing someone else's...someone who shares my Anglo-Irish heritage too.

"The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write," Yeats said and the pieces that I write, that are my truth, that I'm most comfortable with, of which I'm most proud are in that realm, full of myth and legend and lyricism. The Melting, Of Night And Light, When The Trees Fall Silent...

(Dear God, now she's comparing herself to Yeats.)

I shall stop it at once.

But the world IS full of magic things. Here's my discovery of the day. An artist called Anne-Julie Aubry

The End Draws Nigh

W.B.Yeats for my soul, Anne-Julie Aubry for my mind's eye.

Counting Ants

 NOW I feel inspired to write.

Dreaming about being a writer is more exciting than being one.

Maybe.

The quote is a misquote or rather, an adapted quote from Marilyn Monroe, who said it about being an actress.

On Wednesday, something I've been dreaming of as a writer is going to happen. A month back, I won a screenplay writing contest with the first ten pages of my feature length film The Melting 

That wasn't the dream, as such, but the prize IS a dream - A meeting at the London Film Academy with David Pope,  "the director of advance films, whose directing credits include the award winning feature film, Miles From Nowhere. As the former head of the New Producers Alliance, David knows the who’s who of the industry, and he will get your pitch up to speed so that you’re ready to be introduced to a network of contacts tailored to your project. David will help you position your screenplay for the industry and recommend to you the producers and executives who are just right for you." 


This is worth more to me than a zillion pounds (well, almost.)


I'm bursting with excitement and full of hope (as you can probably imagine) - and scared and unsure how it'll be and wondering what will happen and whether I'll mess it up and will I ask the right questions and will I give the right answers and how should I prepare? (as you can probably imagine)


It's a big chance for me.


Positive vibes please!

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles.

"...Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."

For battle, read screenplay contest.

This is my friend Mr. Buddha, part of him at least, helping me to keep my feet firmly on the ground. He's good at that.

On Monday, I learned I had won a screenplay contest with my fantasy feature-length script The Melting. The official announcement went out yesterday, just when I had resigned myself to the fact that it was all a Big Wind-Up, that they had changed their minds and someone else had won after all.

 My delight is hard to put into words. The prize is extraordinary. No, not loadsa money. Loadsa money would be very acceptable but ephemeral.

This prize is worth way more than that to me.

It's the chance to meet one-to-one with a top UK producer who will help me hone my pitch and then "recommend and facilitate introductions to any relevant industry connections to whom the project can be taken forward." 

Absolute gold dust!

Even if it looks more like demerara sugar - that's Buddha speaking again...

People have been so kind to me. A writing friend, (you know who you are, Marnie) posted the result on another website, which I wouldn't have done. British reserve and all that. The congratulations have been flooding in. David Birch even made me a fantastic poster to inspire me.

How cool is that?

It's all fantastic, great, wonderful, marvellous and any other positive hyperbole you can think of BUT - I'm certain to reach for the self-destruct button at any minute.

NOT doing that would be a SUPREME victory.

Nature is, by and large, to be found out of doors...

...a location where...there are never enough comfortable chairs.

I like Fran Lebowitz's wit, I'm sure she'd be gratified to learn, but I don't for a single second share her feelings about The Great Outdoors.

Here she is again:

“Now, nature, as I am only too aware, has her enthusiasts, but on the whole, I am not to be counted among them. To put it bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

So, it was as a card-carrying Nature Enthusiast, that I settled down in front of the television last night to watch the first episode of BBC's Frozen Planet 

 Absolutely stunning. I was completely entranced. It was for the beauty of the polar landscape that I wrote The Melting - a screenplay that's a sort of sequel to The Snow Queen. (Steven Spielberg apply here.)

However, there were times when I had to run out of the room. I simply CANNOT watch animals killing other animals. Yes, I KNOW it's the way of things, only natural, the circle of life...and death, but I can't watch it.

Awwww sweet! A cute sea-lion and a penguin. No, NOT sweet. The sea-lion is HUNGRY. He chases the penguin because he wants to eat it. Yes, it was comical to see the pair of them floundering about on land but oh, the shout of triumph I gave when the penguin escaped from the sea-lion's jaws and swam off into the ocean.

 Amazing - the cooperative behaviour of killer whales who hunt together, intentionally creating huge waves that either wash the seal off the ice or break the ice into smaller pieces...

But I couldn't watch it. Or if I DID watch it at all it was through the narrow slits between my fingers, clamped firmly over my eyes.

It's not just the polar ice cap that's melting. It's my heart.