Living Life in Tickle Belly Alley

Contests

2011-10-24T12:44:00.000+01:00

Contests? Do you enter them or not? Do you think they are worth the money or not? I've always had a healthy attitude to them and I've always done well out of them too. To date my successes (and by that I don't mean out and out wins, I mean good places) have been:

Red Planet Prize (2007 announced 2008)

PAGE International Screenwriting Contest.

WriteMovies

CBBC New Writers Contest

WildSound

Prequel to Cannes

and now BAFTA/Rocliffe - which is still on going but I've been placed along with 24 other scripts reading for the final 3 selection.

But what does it all mean and, really, is it worth anything? I mean, none of the scripts involved have been optioned or made. There are writers out there with no contest results to their name making films all the time. Well, I suppose for me it does mean something - else I wouldn't waste my time entering. For me it means that I can populate my writing CV which would otherwise be empty with information that a prospective production company can use. It tells them that my script has been through a detailed process of reading by a professional reader; analysis and feedback; is formatted to industry standard and, finally, is worth another read.

Prequel to Cannes was the turning point for me. So convinced was I that the script was being laughed out of the contest that I threw in the towel. To come second was an enormous boost to my confidence, made me pick up my pen again and the support Rosie has given me has been wonderful and now I'm looking forward with excitement to the network event in March. But what if you don't win? How does that feel? Well, I've been there too and it sucks. You put your heart and soul into a piece and it doesn't make the cut. Don't let that deter you - enter something else but be choosy about your picks. I truly believe some contests are worth more than others.

Like work experience is invaluable to your professional CV - be it paid or voluteering so I truly believe contests are valuable to your writing CV. As I said, it tells potential employers a lot about your work even if they haven't seen it.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/13620745343/

http://www.prequel.biz/

Some links and things.

2011-09-08T16:30:00.000+01:00

I love history and archaeology and I'm a passionate evolutionist, especially when it comes to human evolution so I'm posting links here that caught my eye:

Did our early ancestors come out of south Africa?:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2011/september/sediba-human-ancestor-could-shift-our-origins-to-south-africa103049.html

A Roman Gladiator school found:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14795756

Scottish treasure trove revealed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-14761114

Chinese horses and chariots:

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/09/remains-of-horses-and-chariots-found-in.html

Iron Age hill fort:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-14735689

Tombs at Stonehenge

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14733535

Early domestication of horses:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14658678

It's all about family (or faaaamilly as Peggy Mitchell would say)

2011-08-07T09:15:00.000+01:00

My big bro came up this weekend with my sis-in-law and niece and we had a great time. It's easy to feel isolated when you move away from what you know and I've been here for 11 years now and it still feels alien to me. I don't drive which doesn't help so I rarely venture outside of the town unless I'm forced too through work or taking my daughter to London for exhibitions at the BM.

Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town. Now, that's not the same as being 'the' oldest town, just some dude wrote about it way back when the the Roman's were here and the idea's stuck like glue. Well, that was until the council decided that they would change the longstanding by-line to 'more than Britain's oldest recorded town' in an attempt to be a hip and trendy kind of place where people drink their coffee on the pavement, y'know.

Trouble is successive acts of purging the town of the old and bringing in the new have led to a town devoid of it's heritage. I took my family out for a look round and I was embarrassed by the lack of 'old' to show them. Instead we got the night time urinal that rises out of the pavement so the drunks don't pee in doorways (they still do). The SOS bus that hands out water and emergency blankets when too much alcohol has been drunk and the patrons of the many establishments can't stand up. It's not Canterbury or York or Bath where the heritage is respected. It's like the town is ashamed of the moniker 'Britains' oldest recorded town' and is doing it's hardest to deny it.

In the end we went to Suffolk for the day on Saturday - to Sutton Hoo and the Suffolk Punch horse stud (my niece is a qualified equastrian type person). And it's not just me refusing to assimilate to the locale. I asked colleagues, life long Colchestrians where I could go around the town and they were all stumped too. I know that I would have probably found some gems if I'd done some digging. We're not a total cultural desert but it just seemed so hard to think about and it shouldn't be.

Yes, it's not the done thing to live in the past but when we as a country no longer produce and manufacture on the scale we once did then maybe the past is where the money is. Tourists come to see the old, to indulge in the fantasy world of 'gone-by' and we shouldn't be ashamed of cashing in on that. There are plenty of examples in this world where old and new can live side by side and co-exist in harmony without having to swing one way or the other. It's just ashame that my home town of Dover has never had anyone in charge with the foresight to see that and Colchester has suffered at the hands of those who want to rip out the history and replace it with things like this:

http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/3035/New+building

We have to hope this building does what they say it will do and bring in 500k extra visitors a year.

In which I ponder...

2011-07-27T06:40:00.000+01:00

Last night I did my firt public guided tour in an absolute age. Let's give a little backstory here...I began working in the tourist industry back in '88 at the age of 23. My first gig? My beloved Dover Castle where I stayed for twelve years until giving birth to my second child and downsizing to part time work in a (wait for it) funeral directors. When I moved to Colchester I managed to get a job with the museum service here and have worked in one of the country's oldest castles for 10 years now.

At Dover Castle guided tours were something 'off menu'; not given as standard but a few of us did do them for interested visitors. They were fun, informal things. More a conversation than a lecture. Then the Wartime Tunnels opened and proper tours began and they were okay too; constantly evolving, less talking and more pressing buttons to listen to some out of work actor ramble on. When I came to work in my present job guided tours were done by Blue Badge Guides, revered creatures who had passed the historical equivilent of the London cabbies Knowledge. I elected to do the education tours - for school children usually under the age of 12. And that killed it for me because so few of us did it and because it became a daily thing and because the teachers had invariably no control over the kids it killed the love I had for imparting knowledge. It became a drag. A chore. A very 'unsmiley face'. So I quit that role and went back to being just a museum assistant.

Then I wrote a long paper on the keep at Colchester castle and thought that it would make a cool guided tour. Do it after hours, get in those who were really interested in the structure, have some fun. Last night was the night and what fun! I came home fired with enthusiasm. Filled with a buzz. Wide awake and very bushy tailed. But like all highs there then comes the low. The sugar rush is followed by the drop and the drop came in an email. Now, I think if I'd come to this email not feeling so up then the down wouldn't have been so hard but you know when you have the feeling you can DO ANYTHING because of one success, it's hard to take in that maybe you can't!

The email was from a production company, sent before the crash and burn phase of the writing. Disappointingly it appeared the person who sent it hadn't read my original email and, rather than just walking away, I replied with a thank you but a correction and within minutes he came back to me. I know he was being nice. I know he was probably giving me the heads up but it got me pondering. Basically, he said (and I don't doubt it's true) that as an untested writer I have a gnats chance in hell of getting anyone to produce my trilogy of radio programmes. In fact that's pretty much what he said. Then he said that my theme which was historical and a story of one part of the early 20th century women's movement 'had been done to death' and what BBC Radio 4 commissioners wanted was stories written today about today. And I thought, why should that be? Why should my work be less valid to anyone because I'm new. What if (and clearly I'm not saying I have)I had something truly awesome and no one wanted to see because I'm new. What if you had the same? How does one get someone to see what you have if no one is willing to look at anything unless it comes with a cast iron guarantee. I know, of course I know, that any company that says it will read anything will get thousands of scripts most of which will be dross. But what of that one person (and that's not me) who has a gem, who can't get it past someone like the man who wrote me and said he wasn't even willing to look at it because I was new?

Is breaking into the business luck? I know of writers that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Is it who you know...again a writer who happened to work with someone who had a relation high up in the broadcasting food chain. Is it a willo-the-wisp thing, intangable? I don't know but I do know that it's frustrating and I'm glad I've taken a step back from it because it's so easy to get consummed, to let it consume you. Being part of the 'newbie' scene even after all this time and success in things like the Red Planet Prize is like swimming with piranhas, all fighting over small, not very regualar opportunities to stop being 'new' and to get even the tiniest break so that someone like that man will take me seriously. Being professionally read. Being peered reviewed by recognised script industry people. It's not enough. It's just not enough. Where is the person willing to take the chance and do they, in reality, exist?

On a good note though my winnings from Prequel to Cannes is on it's way and I've decided to put it towards my new laptop fund.

Funny old thing this non-writing - redux

2011-07-09T19:37:00.000+01:00

So, I gave up writing because I wrote a script so close to my heart that when I got some bad feedback it felt personal. That's the reason for me giving up writing. Never ever have I ever taken feedback personally. I've always seen it as a useful tool for making my work better and just a week or so before I'd have some excellent feedback which had really enabled me to look at and polish a pilot script I was writing. So, why this? Why now? Well, as I said, it was a personal script. I don't mean the story was my story but I'd used situations from my past, memories, people (with the names changed) I'd grown up with and recalled with fondness. I just looked at the feedback and felt that at this stage of the game I shouldn't be getting low marks for characterisation (even though I got top marks for dialogue). So I quit.

Then, today, I had a fab day at the museum's once a year fun day. I dressed up as a Victorian and helped a colleague to take photographs that would be printed in sepia for the 'old fashioned look'. It was great. Really good fun and all the members of the public who came along enjoyed being dressed up as ladies or gents or servants.

When I got home there it was. My script, which I was sure had been laughed out of the contest had made second place and it seemed that the judges had had a tough choice - re-reading the synopsis, treatment and the feedback and yet, despite the feedback, I'd beaten God knows how many others to second place.

I was so over the moon. I cannot tell you.

Will I start writing again. Yes. But first I have other things I want to do and secondly, I'm not going back to the merry-go-round of the online writing community - not all the way. I appreciat them and admire them but I'm going back to how I was doing things before when I cared less about all the minutiae and more about writing from the heart and with passion. When I did that I succeeded far more than failed.

Don't get caught up in the detail - write and write from the heart and love what you write.

Funny thing, writing

2011-06-18T18:27:00.002+01:00

Well, here's the reason I gave it all up. How do you continue when you have the only...literally, the only one of it's kind piece of work. In the world. And no one wants it because they don't see that it's a good investment. I'm talking about the project I did on the keep of Colchester Castle. It took a year of solid research looking at all the previous documentary evidence and linking it into how the castle has been repaired and rebuilt and reused. Bringing it all together into one definitive document. There is no other document like it. The visitors to the museum, number around 90,000 have no book to take home that will give them the info if they are interesting in the building. Yet today we got knocked back. Again. Because the publisher didn't think the it would sell.

The web page is doing well - since March it's getting regular hits...now over 500 from America, UK and Brazil.

So the question I want to know is...who do you have to sleep with to get the only book of its kind that has a guaranteed market and people who want to buy such a beast, published?

https://sites.google.com/site/colchesterkeep

So, the non-writing thing....

2011-06-15T20:04:00.000+01:00

is odd. Part of me really, really wants to write and part of me is holding out. I've redecorated my daughter's room. Got around to writing the 'script' for my guided tour of Colchester Castle and generally poodled around.

Last weekend I went home for the day - sounds like I'm in some kind of special home but I'm not, just stuck here waiting. I love my home town. It's a bit run down and there's not much employment but it's my home town and one line of my family have lived there for over 300 years so I guess it's in the bones.

The shameful thing about it is that the town has so much prove history from the Bronze Age (they found a boat capable of cross channel. Iron Age. Romans - fort, bathhouse and mansio. Anglo-Saxon - church, major cemetery site and medieval - the most glorious castle in the world. Ever. And yet the town council sees fit not to exploit this wealth for the tourist dollar. They make noises. Put up signs. That kind of thing but nothing punchy. Nothing that demands the tourists follow the trail and visit my home town. Sure they visit the castle in droves but very few ever get into the town. And why would they? It's runs down, deprived and get beyond the seafront, drab. That's the shame of it because my home town has the potential to be so much more than charity shops and pound shops.

Where is this place? Dover. In Kent. Look it up.

Deleted back to the Stone Age

2011-05-27T17:58:00.000+01:00

I've deleted all posts. This is now a clean slate blog based on life after writing.

Hi, my name is Lisa and used to write spec scripts....now I don't....I don't write at all.

So, what do people do when they don't write.

I'm about to find out.