Pitch in

So whenever I try to create a blog in Blogger itself I get a bX-xovb7t error (this is happening to a large chunk of people and has been going on for at least 5 days so far). But it turns out that I can edit existing blogs. I sorted out Word so that I could post a blog from there but I hate it, it's just so awkward and ugly.

My solution is to create and post the initial blog then come back to Blogger to actually write the thing.

It's not perfect but it works.

I've had a bit of a problematic week, the Teacher was ill at the weekend - even though we still had to head down to my sister's 40th birthday bash, which went okay. But due to the illness my sleep can be better described as a lack of it.

So the heat coupled with lack of sleep has been the worst thing. The office has been reasonably cool (though there's no air-con) but as previously mentioned the room I have in the B+B is in the roof and south-facing. It bakes. So for three evenings I have done virtually nothing.

Though I have managed to scribble out a few more pages of Tec which is good.

This Saturday I have the meeting with the Producer in Manchester. So this evening I must sort out all my bits and pieces that I'll be taking along, all the pitches and scripts that he's asked for. Of course it's not a formal "stand there and pitch" for which I am grateful, but I still need to know my stuff so I can hit him with the throughlines with some confidence.

As we're six months through the year various bloggers have done a "how we are doing on the targets?" posting. I shall do this also in the next exciting instalment.

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What's on the turntable? "Lucifer's Cage" by Gordon Giltrap from "Visionary" (This is the first time I've had my music on all week - feel like things are getting back to normal.)

Searchamafaction #4

One of the nice things about Google Analytics is that it keeps all your information and you can examine your sites stats over whatever period you choose. I thought I'd see how I've been doing over the last year, on a monthly basis, and I find that the visits to the site had been increasing steadily up to a little over 1000 per month in January then held steady for two further months and then went into a slight decline … but climbed again through May, with June being the highest ever.

I have to report that my visits are now 80% from other sites and a mere 7.5% from search engines. I find that a little upsetting but it's a (mainly) Google thing. Google tracks when you go to a site from one of its searches – and if you come back almost immediately. If you do then it assumes the site does not fill the search requirements as much as it thought it did and so you get downgraded for that type of search. I have a pathetic 83% bounce rate – people leaving without going to another page, although I suspect that has something to do with the way the blogs are organised.

So to business, what are the best search terms for the last two months? I didn't do a Searchamafaction last month.

1. Merlin (16)

2. Imagination cubed (15)

2. My body is my tool (15)

4. Progress bar (8)

5. Inktip (7)

6. CBBC competition (3)

6. Jeff Kitchen (3)

8. Audition Bristol Old Vic 2

9. Bamzooki 2

9. Celtx 2

With oddest search term being: casanova "fake death".

Until the next time.

Testing 1-2-3

I can't use Blogger to post currently, it just gives me an error and has been since Sunday. There is no estimate on how long that will take to fix – I get an error when I try to report the error.

However I am trying this alternative, posting via Word. Looks like it works.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

As a final comment on the Ofsted inspection at the Teacher's school - today she was at an Early Years conference for educators in Huddersfield. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, everything she's implemented in the school is 100% right.

Monday saw the CBBC Screenwriting Q&A in London which I didn't attend but many in the local scribosphere did - the list is summarised by Robin in this blog entry (and includes two people I wasn't previously aware of, they are added to my huge number of blogs). Since I sent my entry - Air - three weeks ago I can't change anything but I am very interested to know whether I got it right or not.

So I have analysed each blog to arrive at the definitive list, so thanks to everyone who took the trouble to (a) go; and (b) share:

1. Relentlessly exciting;
2. Expanding the imagination of kids;
3. Show the world differently;
   
4. Educate and inform through entertainment;
5. Don't talk down to them;
   
6. Help children find their place in the world;
7. Provide quality shows that will be remembered into adulthood;
8. Child-driven story - they are the protagonists, they do the problem solving;
   
9. Real characters with depth;
10. Small cast but enough to allow for replacement in case of illness (more common in kids);
    
11. Mix of characters in scenes for both potential illness and allowing for restrictions on performance that kids have;
12. The protagonists must have exciting lives;
13. Be scary as appropriate - but not too scary;
14. Think big, go anywhere;
15. Take risks - if the characters are good you still might get the commission even if it means toning down the risks;
16. Make sure you balance emotion with action;
17. Know your genre and use it;
18. Have a solid/unusual concept;
19. Don't do personal relationships with the kids (target audience is too young);
20. Different cultures;
21. Mental illness (wha?);
22. No less than 28 pages (no more than 32);
23. Do number scenes;
24. Write from a child viewer's perspective;

Credit where credit's due most of this excellent list was stolen from Michelle (whose blog, incomprehensibly, I wasn't following either. Weird.)

Everybody mentioned this as well (wording nicked from Jez though he didn't write it): The drama should be all of these: MAGICAL (like waking up and seeing carpet of snow for the first time) THRILLING (like a ride at Alton Towers) and EXCITING (like Christmas Eve when you're a kid).

As mentioned yesterday this is a selfish blog because I am happy to report that Air meets pretty much all the requirements, except it's 27 pages (they won't shoot me for that will they?) And I did number the scenes because that's what most of my readers want - it makes it easier to discuss points.

I never talk down to kids, and never have - they're human beings who happen to have smaller bodies than adults. (I could never comprehend people who have the idea that they "own" their children. We are given the responsibility of bringing up a child so that he or she can survive successfully in this vicious world we live in: they have to be tough without losing the love.)

Funnily enough, I even have the mental health thing in there - since the main adult character assumes the protagonist has been abused and has created a fantasy world of her own to escape it. Amusing.

Risks? Yes. Conceptually big and unusual? I think so. Scary? Oh yes.

Without really thinking about it I do have a good mix of scenes some not involving the kids. I was well aware of the licensing issue since our children have done professional performances. (We've just received the paperwork for the Boy's licencing for recording Bamzooki.) Mind you the illness thing kind of surprised me, our two are almost never ill - neither of them has seen the inside of a hospital since they were born. The Daughter was personally affronted when she got a cold a couple of months ago, how dare the virus come her way.

No boy-girl (or any other variation) planned in Air. Though, funnily enough, one of my readers suggested there might be something between the protagonist and one other character. Quite surprised me. It's not in the outline.

Most of the other stuff is there too. So I heave a sigh of relief.

If you want to read the first 10 pages of Air you should be able to download it from my Shooting People profile. If you're a member, you can read it all. (Note: as of 9:00pm this evening this page is generating an error for some reason.)

And did they really say that Buffy was about slaying vampires? How silly. It was about being a teenager and how hard it is growing up. Air, on the other hand, is about family.

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What's on the turntable? "Mother Stands for Comfort" by Kate Bush from "The Hounds of Love"

Diary of an attention-seeker

I was thinking about why I write this blog.

What I write here is essentially a diary, mostly about my attempts to get into professional screenwriting by going on about what I'm actually doing on a day to day basis; plus stuff about my family, work and life in general. Hopefully being entertaining on the way.

I could never write a private diary: my own inner thoughts on a page at the end of the day; I can't think of anything more boring. Except that's exactly what I'm doing publicly. Huge dollops of me spread all over the screen.

But the truth is very simple: I love an audience. I've done some acting, some directing, poetry performance, a little bit of stand-up (in front of a known-to-be-friendly audience), our family life is filled with humour mostly stolen from TV shows but occasionally original. It's all performance.

And, when it comes down to it, this is just another type of performance.

Knowing that you are there, means that I put on a performance.

But enough with the navel gazing, onwards and upwards with the writing.

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What's on the turntable? Next door's jet-wash power cleaner thing.

One Year Blog

My blog is one year old today! (Cue cheers!)

It's a year since I moved into Reading (Berks, UK) to work on a Government education website. Moving away from home for a very long time. It's true I had worked in Dundee but that was only for a month. This was a major commitment.

Six months later the project ended, with me under something of a cloud (not all my fault but it felt like it). I scrabbled through a couple of other jobs, had nearly two months of not working over Christmas. Got a short job in Bristol that went well. Then my current job with Paramount Comedy which ends next week, which has also gone very well.

At home the family coped. It's not been easy for them. When I was there I used to do most of the cooking and cleaning. The son changed schools, which was hard, but now he's playing the saxophone which he really enjoys. And though he's not as academic as his sister he's in the top class in every subject. Plus he's been to Norway and France. And he'll shortly be on the CBBC website as an animation, and is shortlisted for appearing in CBBC's Bamzooki TV series.

The wife, everybody else seems to have names for their respective spouses, so I shall call her The Teacher, managed to finally lose the junior that was causing her incredible stress. The assistant's body was never found. Her new Foundation Stage team are brilliant and this year has been much easier. But we miss each other horribly, a couple of days a week is not enough. Once upon a time we worked together, day in, day out for 13 years. It was magic.

The daughter finished her first year college and exams and did pretty well. But she had to give up drama to do English, Chemistry and Biology in the second year. Her acting has stagnated somewhat especially when she failed to get the part she was expecting at the local AmDram for Christmas. She's not the forgiving sort. But she got settled on her alternative career: Zoo Biology, if the acting doesn't work out. She had her audition with Bristol Old Vic on Wednesday - it did not go as well as she'd hoped and she probably won't get in - but the truth is they told her she had brilliant comic timing and that she should try again next year (and that she should not go to an inferior drama college). So it really wasn't that bad.

The less said about our horrible dog the better. Eating us out of house. (No, I haven't forgotten to add something to that sentence.)

Then there has been the writing. The important bit. The bit that this has always been about. Through this blog I have met some brilliant other writers all of us at different stages of development. It's been good.

This year I went from "I can kind of write but I don't know if I'm really any good" to "it's just a matter of time before the commissions start". It's weird, really, but kind of like my elder sister who became a painter at about the same age as I am now.

It took us this long to find out what it is we really want to do. Now we have we really don;t want to do anything else.

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What's on the turntable? "Tubular Bells, Part 1" from "Tubular Bells"

It's cloutin' time!

As Ben Grimm might have said if he were British.

Language is a funny thing, innit? My daughter's English class were comparing words in the various English periods today. Unsurprisingly she had a wider grasp of meaning than the rest of her class - various tables comprise the Bimbos, the Primary School Boys and so on. Yes, it really happens.

But "clout": (a) A blow (as in striking); (b) A flag used as a target in archery; (c) Influence; (d) a short nail; (e) a piece of clothing (unspecified).

Thing is, I saw several hawthorn trees blooming today. And it was a fairly balmy day all round.

Casting a clout seemed quite in order now that the may is out. May is, as you knew, Hawthorn.

There is some discussion about this particular phrase here.

Now you can see how enormously clever the title is. (Ahem.)

The one year birthday of my blog is tomorrow. Coinciding, as it does, with the end of the financial year. A year of gibberish. I would write the blog tomorrow but tomorrow will be a busy day. I will be in work again in the morning, the afternoon is a party to celebrate the 60th Wedding anniversary of my parents. And they get a letter from the Queen. Oh yes. And one automatically every year from now on.

So I shall compose my one year blog birthday blog this evening and arrange for it to be shown tomorrow.

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What's on the turntable? "The Time Has Come" by Mike Oldfield from "Islands". To be honest this is my least favourite Oldfield album, I much prefer QE2 from this period. But it's one of the albums I don't have on CD.

Searchamafacation #2

So let's see what people have been searching for on this lil ole blog in the last month...

1. Me! (32 times)
2. Red Planet (17) - no surprise there. My daily visits are typically in the 30-40 range, when there's a Red Planet blog they shoot up to 80-100.
3. Being Human (16), popular show and I've mentioned it a few times.
4. Celtx (10) - my script-writing software of choice. It's free (-ish).
5. Go Go Google Gadget! Progress Bar! (9)
6. Joint fifth: BBC's Merlin (9)
7. Tiddly Pom - those immortal words by Winnie-thar-Pooh.

Joint 8th (3): Toby Whithouse, Gordon Giltrap and "Show don't Tell".

The weirdest search that resulted in a visit: "it was dawn when the skull wept blood."

So what's next on the writing front, as Charles asked?

Which needs to compost for a week or two; Unit X feedback will arrive at the end of the week; and I need to write a treatment for Running - but I'm not ready for that yet.

One thing that's been preying on my mind is my "make me a million pounds in 3 years" website. My business partner is getting a little peeved. So I think I'll give my evenings over to that until I get the Unit X feedback.

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What's on the turntable? "Ballet Volta" by Sky from "Sky 2" yum.

Sleepy in Reading

Neighbours. The real ones, not the TV soap.

Every Thursday the person who lives in the flat below me watches TV until 00:40am. He probably doesn't think the TV is on loudly, perhaps it isn't. But it's too loud for me. I like silence when I'm trying to sleep - or, at least, not something that might make sense.

I can't hear any word clearly enough to understand, but I can here that it is conversation, and it keeps me awake. Until 00:40. Then he'll switch it off.

Why? I mean, why 00:40? What is the magical significance of that time?

Still, I'm prepared this week - the 3rd week. Last week I was so tired you'd think I'd sleep anyway, but I just don't work like that.

Curiously it's the only thing about which my wife and I significantly disagree. To her having Radio 4 playing is "background". To me it is in-yer-face "foreground". To me music is background and it helps me concentrate (except when it has to be played at full volume - and let's face it, some things do). To her, it's irritating. She hates silence. I love it.

Apart from that we' re perfectly compatible - unfortunately for our poor children. We agree so completely on pretty much everything else that if a child tries the "asking the other parent" trick, they will get the identical answer for the identical reason. In fact they don't bother any more.

So I have 50 minutes to go. I made sure I got a good night's sleep last night. Still tired, of course, but not like I was last week. I've put on a CD that takes the requisite hour to complete.

Apart from during my computer-less-ness yester-eve, this week I have mostly been writing a treatment for Monsters for submission to the Cheltenham Screenwriter's Festival Scriptmarket. I wrote most of it Monday and finished it on Tuesday. This evening I took the editing pen to it and started ripping stuff out.

I'm really not sure about it, as it seems very disjointed. I do a lot of cutting between different people and locations often in quick scenes. It works well in its fully written-out form (I think it's quite televisual, and people who know seem to agree), but it doesn't seem to translate well to prose form. I'm trying to keep the flow natural and begin new scenes with something that naturally guides the reader. But I'm not a happy bunny.

I keep looking at it objectively and feeling that it really doesn't work. Oh well.

I'm going to keep writing until it gets to midnight and then post this blog. Then I shall write at least one more blog which will come through tomorrow afternoon - and maybe another for the weekend. Hm, Blogger seems to be 3 minutes behind my clock.

Another minute gone. Read "A Minute Passed".

Not long now.

(I wonder what the folks back home are doing...)

(We're not doing anything!)

Right.

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What's on the turntable? "Sirius" by Clannad from "PastPresent"

Searchamafacation

As I was feeling fairly pleased with my progress on the new website (the day job) I decided to have more than 15 minutes for my lunch.

And what did I do with this extra time? I analysed the search terms that people have used to find my blog in the last month. What else would you do?

Red Planet	34
Adaddinsane	26
Tiddly Pom	15
Merlin	14
The Writer's Tale	7
Demons	6

It's a blog to do with writing and people are getting very ... skittish and possibly skattish, about the Red Planet result. People look for my name, which is nice, though this is only people who have previously visited the site. The recent UK snow explains the Tiddly Pom which I used as a blog title - obviously I should have put in the entire poem, but there's this copyright thing.

I said some things about Merlin a while back, but interest has persisted, less people are interested in Demons though I said a lot more about it and it's more recent. Obviously the Russell T Davies book is of interest to writers.

There was one search for "sex.in" which resulted in a visit to my site. I find that odd, I did the self-same search and looked deep into the results and didn't find me anywhere.

Better go back to work now.

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What's on the turntable? Nowt

Beginnings

In fact this is my second blog but I lost the other one under a pile of papers.

Q: Why is it called "I didn't mean to jog him so hard"?

A: It isn't, it's called "Adaddinsane", which is not a typo, it's "A Dad Insane". The original title was that because my favourite film is The Princess Bride.

Q: Are you really David Bowie or Homer Simpson ... or both?

A: No.

Q: OK. So do you look like David Bowie or Homer Simpson?

A: Unfortunately I have to admit to the latter. But I'd prefer to look like the former.

Q: Why are you calling yourself Adaddinsane?

A: Because it's mildly funny and hasn't been taken.

That's enough of that.