The Day I Inconvenienced Tony Jordan

I have the worst sense of direction on the planet. I have an 'A' Level in Geography. True, I can hold court on the finer points of glacial moraines and oxbow lakes (pay attention in class when taught about these, kids, because you're going to need that knowledge later in life!), but this has not helped my navigational skills one iota.

Which goes some way to explain why I turned up 15 minutes late to the Red Planet Workshop with Tony Jordan. I apologised and mumbled a joke about how I was using Zen Navigation to get there (just follow a car that looks like it knows where it's going). He was very gracious and he laughed. And it reminded him of a time when.... 

Tony Jordan has a story for every occasion. I'm a big fan of people like that. And he swears like a docker. I'm a big fan of people like that as well.

And there was cake.

He told me - told us - that we could write. That's why we were there. Aces.

Jason Arnopp's covered pretty well what we can talk about here

So, Tony is interested in what we want to write next. "Imagine you've got three months to live and you can only write one more thing. Something that you want to be remembered for. That's what I want to see."

What did I take away from the morning? Tony (See? I called him Tony!) didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Write what you want, not what you think people want to read. Don't get bogged down in technicalities. Be nice to people on the way up. But, Christ, it's the way he tells it! 

I've been struggling with the writing recently. With a full-time job, pregnant partner and psychotic children, I'm constantly tired. I'd hit a wall. I've been working on a new draft of a script for a producer for weeks now and I'd only managed to make it to page 18.

After the workshop, I jumped in the car, put my foot down (I was an expert in the minor roads of Bedfordshire by now) and made it home in record time. I burst through the door, immediately fired up the laptop and wrote 7 pages in 3 hours. OK, I immediately fired up the laptop and went onto Twitter. But then I did the writing. 

The passion's back. I love what I do. I love what I'm trying to do. And, just for that, I thank Tony Jordan. If I play my cards right, I'll hopefully have a lot more to thank him for.

Did I mention there was cake?

Crashed and Burned into the Red Planet

Like Beagle 2, I've bounced off the atmosphere and careered into a crater and do not stride the Red Planet contest like some writing colossus. 

But as least I've gone where no simile has gone before.

Lucky really. I've re-used quite a few gags from that entry in other stuff...

Big up to whoever does win it. Fingers crossed it's someone from the blogosphere...

Confusing Red Planet Update

Woo - and indeed - Yay! Snow day! 

Made it to the end of my road, saw the main road was still three inches deep in snow and not gritted and turned around. 

I've spent the morning staring out of the dining room window watching people fall over. The highlight was the guy on the bicycle with a particularly smug look on his face going arse over tit. Funniest. Thing. Ever.

Then did some writing! Double Woo and a side order of Yay! 7 pages of "Four Horsemen" down, another 20 or so to go!

But enough of me laughing at other people's pain. I cracked and emailed Red Planet yesterday. This is the email I sent:

"Hi

I hope all at Red Planet are well. I was just wondering whether an update on when the short list of finalists for the Red Planet screenwriting contest might be announced?"

And this is the very nice reply I received:

"All those who were selected for the next round have been contacted. We are now waiting to hear the winner.

This will hopefully be in a few weeks."

Now, I've asked for the numbers that have been selected because I'm not sure whether they mean the 70-odd finalists have been notified, or whether a shortlist has been drawn up from those 70-odd and they've been notified. 

I'll update with more info as and when I get it. 

How Soon Is Now?

If you've ever been in front of me in a line, you'll know that I'm no good at waiting. In fact, while we're here, if you're an Easyjet employee, I apologise for Rome Airport 2006.

I might be British, but I lack the skill or patience required for queuing, in the same way that I'm missing the gene that makes men like the internal combustion engine. Which, in a roundabout way, gets me to my point. When you start this writing lark, nobody tells you how much waiting is involved. Surely, you finish a script on Monday, Spielberg likes it and you're on the DreamWorks lot by the next Friday?

Currently, I'm waiting for feedback for something at the BBC, something my agent passed to a production company and a treatment I gave to my agent. Not forgetting Red Planet, of course. I know a lot of you out there in the ether feel my pain on that one. Combined, that's several man months of waiting.

Perversely, the better the script, the longer you have to wait. If you've (and when I say "you", I mean "I") written a pile of crap, it'll come straight back at you without time for you to duck. But if someone likes it, they pass it to someone else, who passes it to someone else... No news is good news and all that.

So, while I wait for the big brown envelope of death from the Beeb, I'm going to have to stop procrastinating. That just makes it worse. I'm actually going to have to start writing something new. Yeah. It'll be big and have flying saucers and ghosts and witches in it. Yeah. Jim Carrey will star in it. Yeah.

Now, I'll just fire up Google and do some research...