Upcoming projects

Here's a sort of catch up on stuff I'm upto at the moment.
This is all stuff that I'm pursuing myself, making for no budget, you can't sit around waiting for people to do stuff with your scripts you have to get out there and do stuff yourself.
Although I have got some big scripts that I'm seeking production companies for.

The thing with these upcoming projects is I'm not sure if any of them will happen, things change, it's not easy to get things made, the only one I'm sure about is the first upcoming project as I finished editing that myself last night.

So...Here...We...Go

Typecasts- This is something that’s definite. It’s been written, shot, edited, Completely completed. It’s a 5 minute, supposed, comedy short film. It concerns a couple, one an actor and the other his put upon boyfriend. I act in it which is supremely embarrassing. But I’ll be blogging about this in the near future, some invaluable lessons learnt.

Where I’m From- This is my attempt at a documentary. This project came about by accident. With the purchase of my new camera me and my friend Jim decided to wander around the local castle to test run it. We got some great footage, then I stumbled across this opportunity

www.texasmonthly.com/2011filmcontest

I recommend anyone to go for it, it’ll be immense fun, although it does mean more editing for me.

I’m in love- A film I won’t have to edit, phew. This is hopefully being directed by Leigh Jones, the second film I’ll have made with him after The Fear of Living. This one is more of a surreal comedy, a bit smutty too. It’s a cracking little script even if I say so myself, but we were meant to be filming Saturday and one of our actors had to pull out. Hopefully this can be organised soon and will come together.

Planet Failure- This project is probably the oldest, it concerns a script myself and Richard Holland began writing years and years ago about two wannabe writers on the Dole. It is now our intention to transfer these scripts into another format, maybe a comic?

Lack of tweets make Jack a dull boy

Since Friday I haven't been able to tweet. every time I do it comes up with an error message. I'm doomed.
So much mindless rubbish I want to share but can't. These ramblings may form some coherent mass at some point explaining how sad it has become that i need to share this brain spewings of a weirdo.

Finally, I could of tweeted some real news the other day. I was actually filming a new short film, I hope you'll get to see it soon.

I'll update you as much as I can, but unfortunatley not on Twitter at the moment.

Screenwriter Geek: Is this enough?

What I learnt from yesterday was never to post stuff on a Saturday night. My phrasing was all laid back, and lazy. Writers WAITING to breakthrough? Writers don't wait to breakthrough, they try to breakthrough, a constant stuggle, that's what leads to the question of whther you're doing enough to achive that.

So for complete transparency, here's what I do (or try to) writing wise.
Firstly, a feature script per year.
A TV or radio hour long drama script, could be stand alone could be a pilot for a series.
A half hour sitcom.
Two of three short scripts or stories.
Hopefully after that I'll have time to write another random project, in the past this has been a kids TV pilot and a web series.
Alongside this I also like to dabble in scripts with writing partners, this can be fun and bring out different parts of your writing as well as being a good learning activity, e.g. picking up writingtips from the other writer.

So, there's my writing timetable, schedule, workload, whatever you'd like to call it.
What's yours?

Screenwriter Geek: Am I doing enough?

A constant question for writers waiting to breakthrough is the following: 'Am I doing enough?'

I have discussed this question many times myself with other writers on twitter. The trouble is that there's no answer really.

The question comes from frustration at not breaking through, so you pile pressure upon yourself to do whatever you can to breakthrough, but then you're not sure exactly what to do to breakthrough; which of your ideas to commit to, how to promote yourself, when to give yourself some downtime, watch some TV or whatever you do to relax. These constant questions can overcome you. Especially when you're applying that pressure, maybe because of a job that also takes up a lot of time that you're trying to escape from.

The only answer I have to the question is to ask yourself why you write? The reason I write is because I enjoy it, and that pressure can sometimes impede on my enjoyment. I know if I don't write I feel like gnawing my arm off so I will always write, so I've decided to try and remove that pressure of the question 'Am I doing enough?' and just enjoy my writing.
Promotion of myself and networking on the other hand is an area where I need to improve and ask myself 'Am I doing enough?' This has begun with me booking myself a ticket for this years London Screenwriter's Festival in October.

Finally, this question of 'Am I doing enough?' leads to how can you measure if you're doing enough, Danny Stack answered this question in the latest UK Screenwriter's podcast which can be found here:- http://bit.ly/d0DKlZ

Within it Danny Stack states that to monitor if you shouldn't give up writing or not, the best thing to check is that you're getting positive steps along the way, everyone gets rejection but as long as this is interspersed with little triumphs you know you're heading in the right direction. I apologise to Mr Stack for paraphrasing him there, but I believe that this also answers the question of whether or not you're doing enough.

Now, get back to that script.