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 I've always been interested in space, but my knowledge of current cosmological thinking was many years out of date.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.
What's on the turntable? (The daughter is talking about The Odyssey.)
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
The Business #2: Is there anybody there?
So you've got your goal and your plans and a place to worry about the legal stuff. Now what? Is it time to write yet?
Not yet.
In a business things come in and things go out; and there are customers who exchange things that are valuable to you for things that are valuable to them - money and scripts, for example.
But for any of that to happen they have to contact you. Generally they won't come knocking on your door, but they will email and they will phone and they may write. So you need a place for that - when I say "place" it's not necessarily a physical location could be just the time when you deal with phone calls and emails.
This should not be all the time. When I'm on my day job I switch off my mobile and don't have access to my main e-mail address. It's distracting and reduces my productivity. If it's an important call they'll leave a message. It's worth turning your answerphone message into something friendly like "I'm really sorry to have missed your call but I'm in the middle of something right now. Leave a message so I can get back to you."
Being a business means being organised and setting aside time for stuff. It doesn't matter whether your writing time is spent staring out the window. You and I know that that is valuable staring time. It is part of writing. But that's not the time to be doing something else, because that's your writing time. (If you know that ironing will help then feel free, it's the business part I'm talking about.)
If you feel bad about cutting off your phone and email lines - then perhaps you really need to. Twenty years ago nobody thought twice about not being in constant, obsessive communication with everybody they know.
Anyway, have a time and a place to handle communications. Another point is that if a letter comes in that's financial put it in the financial pile, likewise emails, or calls. This is not the point at which you deal with financial things, this is just the time and the place when you look to see what communications have been sent.
When you work in a larger organisation you have a time to be at work and you try to do that because it's the right thing to do. Keeping a schedule is good even when you're "just" a writer on his/her/its own. You need to be disciplined in your schedule, and in how you deal with your business. It isn't easy, and this is one of the reasons why writing in particular isn't - it's just between you and the words.
You also need to have a plan as to what to do when a potential client communicates with you, how will you handle it? What do you need to find out from them? Better a bad plan than running around like headless chicken. For example, your first step would be not to reply, but see what you can find out about them. If you have an agent you contact them about it. Never be rushed, it has the potential to lead to big trouble.
Anyway the long and the short of this article is you need to have a place when you deal with external communications, when you put them in the right pile not answer, and only do it at specific times of the day.
Next time we look at the next part of being in business, and it may not have much to do with writing either.
What's on the turntable? "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield
Not yet.
In a business things come in and things go out; and there are customers who exchange things that are valuable to you for things that are valuable to them - money and scripts, for example.
But for any of that to happen they have to contact you. Generally they won't come knocking on your door, but they will email and they will phone and they may write. So you need a place for that - when I say "place" it's not necessarily a physical location could be just the time when you deal with phone calls and emails.
This should not be all the time. When I'm on my day job I switch off my mobile and don't have access to my main e-mail address. It's distracting and reduces my productivity. If it's an important call they'll leave a message. It's worth turning your answerphone message into something friendly like "I'm really sorry to have missed your call but I'm in the middle of something right now. Leave a message so I can get back to you."
Being a business means being organised and setting aside time for stuff. It doesn't matter whether your writing time is spent staring out the window. You and I know that that is valuable staring time. It is part of writing. But that's not the time to be doing something else, because that's your writing time. (If you know that ironing will help then feel free, it's the business part I'm talking about.)
If you feel bad about cutting off your phone and email lines - then perhaps you really need to. Twenty years ago nobody thought twice about not being in constant, obsessive communication with everybody they know.
Anyway, have a time and a place to handle communications. Another point is that if a letter comes in that's financial put it in the financial pile, likewise emails, or calls. This is not the point at which you deal with financial things, this is just the time and the place when you look to see what communications have been sent.
When you work in a larger organisation you have a time to be at work and you try to do that because it's the right thing to do. Keeping a schedule is good even when you're "just" a writer on his/her/its own. You need to be disciplined in your schedule, and in how you deal with your business. It isn't easy, and this is one of the reasons why writing in particular isn't - it's just between you and the words.
You also need to have a plan as to what to do when a potential client communicates with you, how will you handle it? What do you need to find out from them? Better a bad plan than running around like headless chicken. For example, your first step would be not to reply, but see what you can find out about them. If you have an agent you contact them about it. Never be rushed, it has the potential to lead to big trouble.
Anyway the long and the short of this article is you need to have a place when you deal with external communications, when you put them in the right pile not answer, and only do it at specific times of the day.
Next time we look at the next part of being in business, and it may not have much to do with writing either.
What's on the turntable? "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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.
What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part One" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations"
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.
What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part One" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations"
The Business #1: I Have A Dream
All businesses start with an idea - almost a story idea since it's "What if...?"
"What if I wrote scripts, people turned them into productions and people saw them?"
That's where your business model starts: with you and your idea. It is the fundamental, the thing that drives everything else. All to often someone starts a business producing one thing and life happens, it changes, they bring on other people who modify the basic idea. And suddenly you're working in a business that you didn't want and not enjoying it.
It happened to me. And for 4 years I was miserable trying to convince myself it was the right thing. But it wasn't.
So that basic idea needs to stay pure. This is your goal (or goals), something like "Writing highly successful scripts that are in demand". You can review your goals from time to time but that should be from the viewpoint of "how am I doing" and "is there some way I can write this goal better?" rather than changing anything.
All businesses have legal stuff they have to deal with, and it's important that this is separated out from the rest of the business. Otherwise you get distracted. As a silly example: The cleaner has business contracts dumped in his lap to approve.
Of course if you're on your own it's harder to separate these things out, but you need to. It doesn't mean your ignore final demands from the electric company, it does mean that you allocate time to deal with these things and when it's done you put it aside.
If you're lucky enough to have an agent then the contract side of things fits in this section.
Finally you have Planning and Management: What you need to plan is up to you, but it should be a set of steps that will lead you to your goal. These steps need to realistic, they might involve getting training, the bigger plans could span years, but the key point is this: do they lead to your goal(s)? The management bit is organising things so that you can achieve the steps and ultimately achieve your goal. Reading, or seeing in person, Adrian Mead would certainly help you see what your plans ought to be.
Things you could do:
Write down your overall goals, the big ones. Don't be afraid of big goals. Better to shoot for the stars. Look through your current life, are there any legal things that could do with handling? Write those down in a list, see which one you could deal with first (probably the most pressing) and deal with it. Now that you've got your goals have a go at breaking them down into smaller steps, different stages, and then break them down further into smaller steps. Get Adrian Mead's monograph "Making it as a Screenwriter" for other excellent advice.
Next time we'll look at some basic organisational bits.
What's on the turntable? "Barrytown" by Steely Dan from "Android Warehouse"
"What if I wrote scripts, people turned them into productions and people saw them?"
That's where your business model starts: with you and your idea. It is the fundamental, the thing that drives everything else. All to often someone starts a business producing one thing and life happens, it changes, they bring on other people who modify the basic idea. And suddenly you're working in a business that you didn't want and not enjoying it.
It happened to me. And for 4 years I was miserable trying to convince myself it was the right thing. But it wasn't.
So that basic idea needs to stay pure. This is your goal (or goals), something like "Writing highly successful scripts that are in demand". You can review your goals from time to time but that should be from the viewpoint of "how am I doing" and "is there some way I can write this goal better?" rather than changing anything.
All businesses have legal stuff they have to deal with, and it's important that this is separated out from the rest of the business. Otherwise you get distracted. As a silly example: The cleaner has business contracts dumped in his lap to approve.
Of course if you're on your own it's harder to separate these things out, but you need to. It doesn't mean your ignore final demands from the electric company, it does mean that you allocate time to deal with these things and when it's done you put it aside.
If you're lucky enough to have an agent then the contract side of things fits in this section.
Finally you have Planning and Management: What you need to plan is up to you, but it should be a set of steps that will lead you to your goal. These steps need to realistic, they might involve getting training, the bigger plans could span years, but the key point is this: do they lead to your goal(s)? The management bit is organising things so that you can achieve the steps and ultimately achieve your goal. Reading, or seeing in person, Adrian Mead would certainly help you see what your plans ought to be.
Things you could do:
Write down your overall goals, the big ones. Don't be afraid of big goals. Better to shoot for the stars. Look through your current life, are there any legal things that could do with handling? Write those down in a list, see which one you could deal with first (probably the most pressing) and deal with it. Now that you've got your goals have a go at breaking them down into smaller steps, different stages, and then break them down further into smaller steps. Get Adrian Mead's monograph "Making it as a Screenwriter" for other excellent advice.
Next time we'll look at some basic organisational bits.
What's on the turntable? "Barrytown" by Steely Dan from "Android Warehouse"
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
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.
What's on the turntable? "Take the Long Way Home" by Supertramp
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.
What's on the turntable? "Take the Long Way Home" by Supertramp
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