5000

As previously mentioned, ever since I got onto the Circalit Gold List scheme, and the Industrial Scripts Connections the number of people accessing my Shooting People profile page has shot up - from 30-40 per week average, to 140-160 (170 yesterday).

Well, there's a cumulative count which I knew was approaching 5000, and it hit that. Honestly, I wasn't sitting there refreshing the page until it changed (the page that gives the result is not the page that does the counting) but by chance I had a peek when it was on 5000, so I took a picture.

Does it mean anything? Who knows. Nobody has got in touch.

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What's on the turntable? "In the presence of" by Yes from "Magnification"

Nearly three weeks...

...since I last blogged. A record.

It's not that my life has been operating at absolute zero - no energy - quite the contrary, I've been doing all sorts of stuff but it's all been a bit unfocused. So I've had nothing really concrete to say.

I'll sum up:

I've been working on my new web project which will be revealed presently - it's nearly in a working condition although there's still loads to do.

I've done some re-working of the Winter project and sent it for some professional feedback. I know a lot of things that are wrong with it but, again, it's a bit unfocussed so I need some focussing.

I wrote and delivered a pitch for Big Finish in their New Writers initiative. What I thought was a nice little Fifth Doctor & Nyssa story. I have a friend who's a complete DW geek, so was able to confirm that my Earth-historical had never been done in any of the books, audio stories or in TV in the entire history of DW. Conename: Boots, just in case it goes anywhere.

Still doing the contract day job, part of my unfocusedness was due to the contract being finished and having to spend time looking for a new contract. As it turns out the current company decided they had enough money for another two months and want me to create a fairly radical piece of work. Should be very interesting.

Went to see Sherlock Holmes - what a lot of fun that film is, certainly too much fun to nit-pick. Interestingly enough I actually pitched for that job as well. Don't believe me? Well, 18 months ago a message came up on the Shooting People screenwriters bulletin offering the opportunity to pitch for a big industry movie. The producers thought it might be interesting because they might come up with something new. And it was a Sherlock Holmes story. I may have pitched but I screwed it up anyway, by not reading the brief carefully enough. Though my story featured Irene Adler as well.

The Boy was on TV again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qhq51/BAMZOOKi_Series_Four_Episode_12/ and it's a nail-biting finish.

I've also been pumping my existing stuff out to various screenwriting competitions.

So that's about it really. My main focus right now is to complete the web project up to a point where my partner on this project can start creating content. Oh, perhaps I should say at this point that the project is relevant to screenwriting but it's new*.

So until the next time: au revoir.

* I rewrote that line half a dozen times but every time I came across like some ignorant pleb thinking he's going to create a copy of ebay, Facebook, Shooting People, Zoetrope - or anything like that - and make a million (some people really do ask web designers for that - "I've got £500 make me the new ebay"). It isn't any one of those.

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What's on the turntable? "One Vision" by Queen from "A Kind of Magic"

The Inktip Trial: Day ... whatever

Someone read my Monsters logline, which is a shame really 'cos it's rubbish.

However if you really want to know how to create a good logline you could do much worse than read this (I hadn't read it before uploading Monsters to Inktip.) You might also want to read this about pitching.

Don't forget you can read the first ten pages of Monsters at my Shooting People profile (all of it if you're a member).

I've added a new block with a list of useful screenwriting links - things that I like.

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What's on the turntable? "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton from "Clapton Chronicles"

Miscellany

Yesterday's train was held up for about an hour en route, which meant I got lots more writing done on Tec. Now on 34 pages so I could, theoretically finish by tomorrow - writing 21 pages in two days is feasible - but I suspect it's a bit much with my weekend schedule.

I do sometimes wonder whether I'm justified in travelling First Class, I always use the cheapest option of First Class, but it's still not cheap. (Except when it's cheaper than standard, which does happen.) But then I think: I would be wasting hours of my time if I didn't. And I cannot work in the press of people that is Standard Class. So it's that or do nothing except maybe read.

Reading is fine, except: Because the train was late I missed my Manchester connection and had 50 minutes to kill. So I found myself in WHSmith desperate for something to read. I looked at the magazines: Nothing inspired me. I looked at the books. Nothing. Even though there are writers that I like with books I hadn't read, like Bill Bryson. I just had no enthusiasm for anything on display.

I was just walking out when Astronomy magazine caught my eye. I've always been interested in space, but my knowledge of current cosmological thinking was many years out of date. So I bought that, quite cheap too. Excellent, I could bury myself in some interesting cosmological theories and ideas including how a more accurate measurement of Hubble's Constant (the rate at which the universe is expanding) has ruled out various theories as to the nature of dark matter. Cool.

My Shooting People pitch of Monsters has yielded a communication from someone who hadn't read the script for that yet but had read Air and really liked it. Which was nice. There may be a future in that contact, we shall see.

Regular readers may have noticed that I have not mentioned the comic book version of Monsters for a while. This is because the illustrator has had to go off to Ireland for a while.

The Boy has been at SpaceCamp all week, building rockets that really go up. We had received a phone call from the school saying "don't go you haven't got a place" but the Teacher hadn't picked up the message. Since other kids hadn't turned up anyway the Boy got in. And his team came second out of 22 by the end of the week. (They had to do Dragon's Den-type presentations and all sorts.)

And then he got a call from CBBC saying that he was through to the next round of the Bamzooki TV show, so a good week for him.

The Daughter has been revising for her final A-Level exams starting on Tuesday but went to give blood yesterday (something she's been trying to do for several months). It all went reasonably well although, like the Teacher, she has veins that like to hide. Making it difficult to get the needle in. (I am physically incapable of giving blood - look, I just can't okay? Just writing that previous sentence about the needle made me feel woozy.) However the Daughter almost fainted three times afterwards so the Teacher had to go and collect her. She was advised to drink a lot more water before giving blood next time.

I was underwhelmed by the level of interest on Inktip yesterday and I'm seriously doubting anything else will happen before the end of my free trial.

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What's on the turntable? (The daughter is talking about The Odyssey.)

The Inktip Trial: Day #2

Not much happened today on Inktip. In fact nothing.

Except I got an email telling me that my listing would be removed in 7 days, so the system is quite efficient. It also offered to let me pay some money to have the listing there for 6 months. ($10/month isn't really that bad.) They also offer lots of help in improving your logline.

Now one reason why I didn't get read today is that as more people put in their titles your one goes down the list. However you are allowed to bump it back up to the top every 6 weeks. So it's not a major issue - plus you are not fighting against everybody on Inktip because the listings are accessed by searches so the more details you can put in about your script the better your chances of appearing in searches. (So if someone wanted SF, Martial Arts, Female protagonist, TV - I'd be up against Joss Whedon - I'm cheaper than he is.)

In other news...

Popping Monsters into the Shooting People Script Pitch bulletin boosted the number of people that had read my profile by 11. Which is pretty good considering how few people read it previously. However there is no way of telling how many people have downloaded the scripts to read.

I wrote about 6 pages of Tec last night which brings me up to about 28 pages. I am not, realistically, going to finish by Sunday but I did have the hiatus caused by reworking Air for the Writersroom/CBBC competition. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The day job has become pressured, the new project requires me to finish something with the power of Google Analytics written from scratch in 10 days. I suggested that their specification was a little ambitious. Still I shall do my best - which is usually quite good - and do have some help.

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What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part One" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations"

The Inktip Trial: Day #1

(Cue: Law & Order "blong-blong" effect)

Logline views: 4
Script downloads: 1

One of the things you get back from Inktip is who downloaded your script, though it's just a courtesy, a protection, and a great promotional technique as Inktip protocol says that you do not contact anyone who viewed your script for 3-6 weeks and then only contact by snail-mail. (Though I might get away with e-mail since I'm over here and they're over there.)

So, who downloaded my script? A manager - obviously looking for talent that he could promote - luckily, as I have an IMDbPro account I could look him up, and he is there on IMDb with clients who actually do stuff.

So that was a good start.

Also, today, I had Monsters in the Shooting People script pitch bulletin though it has not, as yet, made any appreciable difference to the number of hits on my Shooting People profile. Maybe people aren't looking for TV.

However my linking up of all my business profiles multiplied the hits on this blog by 4.

Which was nice.

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What's on the turntable? "Take the Long Way Home" by Supertramp

What which? Eh?

I have popped my 15 min test script combining Being Human and Torchwood characters on to my Shooting People website for anyone to read - click the link of the left - don't forget it's just for fun.

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What's on the turntable? Nuffink

Gone all commercial

I decided to do some web promotion - well sort of "passive" web promotion.

I'm a member of the Shooting People website and for about £20/year you get access to lots of lovely stuff including a place to store your scripts and make them available for reading, should you so wish.

So I have expanded my profile on there to include Monsters and Air, which you can read in full if you are a member - and even if you're not you can read the first 10 pages of both. Aren't I good to you? (Hm, depends on whether you like them or not I suppose, well, it's the thought that counts.) I also spent some time putting together the pretty pictures to go with the scripts.

I'm also a member of LinkedIn which is for professionals (any sort) and has all sorts of discussion groups and such like. So I had a revamp of that too.

Then I crosslinked everything, you can see the links at the side there.

Sorted.

Tomorrow it's back to Tec.

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What's on the turntable? "Heartsong" by Gordon Giltrap from "Perilous Journey". Not sure why but I've had GG on repeat play for the last week, and I only have two albums. Easy on the ears when writing I suppose.