Stating The Bleeding Obvious

The Better Half and I are friends with a couple. They're in a similar situation as us. A SITCOM family (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) with kids of a similar age to ours.

It turns out that he's been pretty much putting it around as much as possible behind her back for the last few years. Now, I've never really liked him, but I must admit that, since this revelation, I've had a kind of grudging respect for him. 

Any adulterous married man with a full time job and two children is displaying quite exceptional time-management skills. I don't have the time and energy to disappoint one woman, let alone several.

Which is my roundabout way of saying that, of all the many balls that I've been juggling lately, the one that I'm going to have to drop is the Screenwriters' Diary. It was a nice idea, but it just takes up too much time. And that time is becoming more precious now that there are less than two weeks to go until the birth of Kid C. I have decided to officially start shitting it. 

The writing is the important part, and I'm getting some done again. I'll hopefully return to the Screenwriters' Diary in due course and I'm still going to blog as usual. Sorry about that. 

 

My Great Big Internet Experiment

Here's Kid B throwing anything she can find into the river near our house. Mostly leaves. And twigs. And - given half a chance - my Blackberry. Bless her and her destructive tendencies. 

I've been thinking that I should take more photos. The Better Half bought a camera for my birthday a few years ago and it only comes out on special occasions. 

With Kid C on the way, I thought it might be good to do, maybe, one photo a day for the first year of his life. And, hell, it might make this blog look a bit prettier. 

I was tweeting while I was taking the above photo and thinking about Flickr and social networking and things. I can multi-task with the best of them. I was thinking that this whole social networking thing has made me less misanthropic. I'm actually interested in other human beings that I don't have a romantic or biological connection to. I want to know more. But not in a scary stalker way. 

How about this for an idea? Once a month, we get as many people as possible around the world to take a photograph at the same time, write a caption no longer than the now traditional 140 characters and then post it somewhere. Webcam, camera phone, Huge SLR job, anything that records an image. We'll either upload to a Flickr album or I'll set up a blog.

We'll alter the times to get a cross-section of life. So, first photograph on 1st April at mid-day GMT, second photo 1st May at one o'clock, third photo on 1st June at 2 o'clock. It could be a year in the world's life. 

It's all just a rough idea at the moment, but I think it could be really interesting. What do you think? Let me know. We've only got a couple of weeks before 1st April to mobilise the troops!!!

And thank you for letting me use the word "misanthropic". Always wanted to. Never had the chance until now.

Oh, Screenwriters Diary Newsletter out tomorrow. Sign up! I steal a joke from "Peep Show" this week!

Shooting People

Quick post before I jump in the shower and go to work (don't worry, I am clothed)

I'm getting lots of nice comments about the Screenwriters' Diary. Thank you very much. I've been thinking of ways of spreading the word and obtaining more information for it and I'm considering returning to the Shooting People fold. 

So, a question. What's it like? I used to be a member and it was really useful. I made some contacts through it, got some stuff optioned. Then, a few years ago, it seemed to descend into nothing but people having arguments on it and, well, it stopped being useful. 

How do you find it? Has it improved at all? In these "harsh economic times" and being a SITCOM family (Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage) I'm loathe to throw thirty of my hard earned quid away. 

Shameless Self-Promotion

This morning I was updating the Screenwriters' Diary. Going through my list of contacts and references, I got all frustrated and thought "Gah! Why isn't there one central place where I can just search all this stuff in date order? It would make the research so much easier."

Then I remembered that there is, it's the Screenwriters' Diary and that frustration was the reason it came into being. 

I've compiled the weekly newsletter that will be going out tomorrow morning. There are some interesting opportunities that I'll be taking advantage of and I think you should too!

There's still time to sign up by simply adding your email address to the top of the page. Go on, feed my ego. You just have to delete an email every Monday morning...

Virtuocity Update

We Daves, as a breed, are a helpful bunch. So it's a big thank you to Dave Melkevik over at The Columbo Effect for updating me about the call for screenwriters by Virtuocity. My original post's here.

Apparently, in a last minute decision, the contract has been awarded to another company so Eyebrid Blaze Ltd aren't taking any more submissions.

I've removed it from the Screenwriters' Diary to avoid any confusion.

Right, back to Twitter. It's like networking, but you can do it in just your pants.

(Yes, those who are already tweeting, I know I used that line yesterday, but I quite like it!)

HTML And Me...

I've been fiddling with the site again. Every now and again, my geek tendencies bubble up and I have to get busy with HTML. 

It's all a bit shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic, but hopefully it works better. Does it look a bit too cluttered? I wanted to try and get 3 columns on the page. Let me know what you think, it would be greatly appreciated. I've only looked at it through Safari, so please let me know if it's all gone horribly wrong in Explorer/Firebox.

Busy day on the writing front. Have found out that my day-job employers are putting me on a different project from the 23rd, so it's more hours and the commute will take twice as long. So I want to get the first draft of "Four Horsemen" finished this week. Exactly half way through at the moment. 

And the Screenwriters' Diary Newsletter Part Deux will be winging it's way out tomorrow, so please sign up if you fancy it snuggled in your inbox, whispering sweet nothings to your other unopened emails...

Moral Dilemma

I failed to watch the rugby yesterday. I ended up watching "Go, Diego, Go", but, putting a positive spin on it, we all learned something about three-toed sloths. 

I've just put the finishing touches to the first Screenwriters' Diary newsletter, so it'll be nestled in your inboxes tomorrow morning. If you haven't signed up, it's still not too late. Just put your email address in the box and click on "Sign Me Up!" on blog website. 

I have a bijou dilemma-ette. My two current favourite bands in the world are the Hold Steady and (whisper it) Counting Crows. I've just discovered that they playing a gig TOGETHER on 14th May at Wembley Arena. Just imagine if it was your two favourite bands. How excited would you be?

If you haven't checked them out, I heartily recommend the Hold Steady. Their tunes are so lyrically dense, they stop being pop songs and become short stories with kick-ass backing music. 

Unfortunately, Kid C is due to make his entrance into the world exactly one week later. I've presented all the relevant documentation and the Better Half has approved my exit visa. But in the ninth month of pregnancy, anything previously agreed tends to become null and void (which, trust me, is fair enough)

Is this selfish of me? Should I book my ticket? Assuming I can find someone to go with, seeing that all my friends, who have not yet given up appearing hip, have no interest in either of the two groups...

Screenwriters' Diary Newsletter Launches!!!

For those of you reading this on the website, you'll notice a nice shiny new box above this post.

And if you put your email address in this box, then you'll be the proud recipient of the Screenwriters' Diary Weekly Newsletter. Every Monday morning, it'll contain all the new opportunities posted onto the diary and reminders for the week's upcoming events, in an easy to digest format.

So, if you have something you want to tell people about, click on the "Email Me!" link on the website and let me know.

Don't worry, to avoid inbox carnage, I'll limit it to once a week unless something very urgent and important pops up mid-week. And I won't be doing anything dodgy with your email addresses. Partly because I'm a nice guy, but mostly because I'd have no idea what to do with them...

If you have any problems or suggestions, please get in touch and we'll work through this together.

Remember that you can also stay up to date with the daily posts by clicking on the RSS or email feed over on the right hand side of the website as well!

I shall be having a little launch party of my own tonight, which will involve a can of bitter and "Battlestar Galactica". I know how to party...

Our Survey Says...?

You'll continue to be pleased, I hope, that the pilot episode of "Four Horsemen" is progressing along nicely. I'm working on the beat sheet and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. There are character and story arcs forming and quite a good joke about V.D. in the Middle Ages.

But, the real reason for this post is to gauge opinion. As we know, I'm a stats-whore and people who find their way over here (and thank you, one and all for taking the time) are looking for the contests and opportunities.

So, I'm going to suggest this. Those who sign up for the RSS and email updates, I'll compile a weekly newsletter that will plop warmly into your inbox on a Monday morning? It'll give a list of all the items added to the Screenwriters' Diary within the last 7 days and a reminder for those opportunities with a deadline that week?

Whaddya think? I'd be very interested to know.

The Screenwriters' Diary Is Go!!!

When I started this blog, I wanted it to have a purpose or provide a service. I just couldn't think of one. Then, this weekend, thunderbolt city. And The Screenwriters' Diary was born.

So, I've been mucking around a bit with HTML and if you look to your right, you will see a diary of future events and competitions of interest to screenwriters. I'll update it as and when I discover more things.

Click on one of the links in the agenda and then "more details" and this will show you the link to the event's official website or, if it exists, the link back to my original blog post.

If you click on "Full Calendar" beneath the Diary, it'll launch the full searchable calendar. Also, if you have Google Calendar, you can import any of the entries into your calendar. I've also managed to link it up to iCal on my MacBook and you should be able to synch it to any desktop calendar so when I update the online calendar, yours gets updated too. Let me know if you have any problems with this.

I want to make this an interactive thing between me and you, the David Turner Conspiracy. You'll note that I've added an "Email Me!" link. If you come across anything that might be of interest (competition / schemes / maybe you're having a screening of a short film), drop me a line and I can update it. In the blog post I'll name you and, if you give the details, provide a link to your blog or website. Any feedback will also be gratefully received.

You'll note that there's only one American competition listed so far, the Bluecat contest. I've entered this in the past and had good feedback on my entry. Do we think that it would be beneficial to list the American contests? Let me know. If so, I'll update the diary with those as well.

The best way to keep up to date is to subscribe to the blog, either via RSS or email, by clicking on the "Subscribe" option just above the Diary. I'd also be grateful if you could forward this post onto any other writer friends you have. The more people we can get on board, the more indepth we can make it. Onwards with the Interweb 2.0!!!