Script Frenzy!

I’m a big stupidhead who has a squillion things to do and absolutely no free time but then also signed up to do this year’s Script Frenzy and so of course I’m really excited about it. My Finnish friend Hanna and I agreed to do it together, so I do feel somewhat compelled to make a ‘good and proper’ ‘go of it’. I swear, I am positive about this. No, really. I am.

Script Frenzy is organised by the same people who do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month in November. I wrote a bit about it back in China.) and it works on the same principle – except with a script, instead of a novel. Obviously. There aren’t many rules, but the main one is that you have to totally start fresh, which means you’re not allowed to work on any drafts, which is perfect for me seeing as how OF COURSE I don’t have any half-written scripts lying around the place. Not like novels though, that’s another story. But anyways, if you go to their website they have a whole plethora of great writing resources for writers and it’s really inspiring and exciting.

(Good poster design indicates cool people
take part in this activity.)

So what’s my screenplay going to be about? Well, I don’t want to give away too much (read: I have no fucking clue how it ends), but it’s an idea I’ve been throwing around in this dustbowl brain of mine for some time now. A comedy, about a boy whose childhood illness renders him wholly responsible for keeping his crumbling family together – he’s a young man with a kook plan and it involves drugs and also some sex and maybe just a wee little bit of rock and roll.

I hope you’re interested. I’d love some encouragement. If you’re into this sort of thing, then you should also sign up! I think you still can… surely? Also, Celtx is the software I’ll be using, so I suppose I’ll let you know how that goes as well.

Also, I’m going to (try to) begin making that cabin thing I was talking about this Easter long weekend too. I have this grand idea that I might sit in it and write this script, but I anticipate that might be a gross overestimation of my structure-creating skills. I mean, no, technically I have never felled a tree before. Doesn’t mean I didn’t google “how to build a cabin”. In truth I just ended up at Cabin Porn. So then I ate some Mint Slice and looked at pretty cabins in Scandinavia for ages. Then I got really excited thinking that maybe one day MY cabin would be on there! Then I got real and got down and so just watched Hot Fuzz and at the WHOLE pack of Mint Slice. It was a good night in the end.

I wasn’t sure how to end this post then my dog barked and I looked up to see him and saw that yet again, something kook is occurring in my house. The first banana harvest from the banana palm! Is hanging from our staircase balustrade! 

Just another sunny day in Brisbane town. 

The Whisky Diaries - day 11

Okay my apologies about the absence yesterday. I have an excellent reason. Not quite as good as the gigantic snake one, but almost. Here it goes: I ate a whole pizza then we watched the third Aliens movie and fell asleep.

I know! Good excuse, right!

So here's what I wanted to talk about yesterday:

 

 

 

 

It's our little collection of things! You know, when you're staying by the beach for a long time and you just kind of pick little interesting things up as you see them and then put them on the table on your balcony. Well this is our motley collection so far. There are shells and coral and a big seed thing that fell down in front of us one day, and my personal favourite:

 

Doesn't it look like a small bone! Like the femur of a child or something. I saw it yesterday while I was running along the beach at dawn and it really struck me. It seems to be some kind of plant matter, but for the rest of the run I couldn't stop thinking about how little we know about the ocean. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle explores this idea a bit too, maybe that's what got me thinking about it. Anyways, I was thinking about how maybe all these things that wash up on the beach are actually the remains of a gigantic civilisation living deep underwater - and they know as little about us as we do about them. And when they get rubbish landing in their cities they all just think it's some kind of baffling but natural bi-product of the strange things that happen up on land. And like we don't realise these shells and coral and unidentifiable things are actually parts of them and their life, they also don't realise that about the tons of crap that humans put into the ocean. 

Yeah it sounds crazy, I suppose. But humans know more about space than we do about the depths of the sea. They even reckon maybe there really is a gigantic squid/monster thing down there too. Who's to say this isn't the bone of some kind of sea creature? Not me. 

This is my other favourite:

I think if I could get a close/better photo you might be more impressed, but essentially it's just this piece of coral kind of stuff that gives you creepy prickles on the back of your neck when you look at it for too long. It has the appearance of minuscule honeycomb kind of holes in it and then lots of strangely perfect round holes that do and don't go all the way through it. I'm serious when I say it's creepy. Seriously. It really irks me so I never look at it for too long.

And that's all! The pizza was SO TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and later I'll tell you all about the Aliens quadrilogy. This is embarrassing, but for some reason I thought it was a trilogy? But now I see there are four, and it's just because I missed seeing one of them when I was younger that I thought there were only three... The third one that we saw last night was totally new to me. Anyways, more about that later. I'm going to have some jam on toast for breakfast!

  

to do #2 done.

Ahhhh so although I didn't get it done "before I go to bed" I did eventually get it done. Well, sort of. I didn't get a chapter or scene written specifically... I kind of just planned out the whole thing. But that's okay, right? I mean, that is an acceptable level of productivity? I think it's almost okay. Almost.

This is what an 'almost okay' level of productivity looks like:

It seems a lot more impressive here on my desk in front of me. Maybe you'd be more impressed if you could feel the sheets here like I can? See all the blood stains on the pages from the paper cuts I've suffered through. See the empty ink cartridges from my fountain pens like corpses in my bin. It's all just too hard, isn't it?

I dunno. I've been watching a lot of Supernatural and hearing about friends being successful. I've been meeting people from strange countries (eg. Romania) who speak to me for hours (literally several hours) about things that I didn't know I didn't know. It all makes me sit down and really wonder what I've done with my life since I got out of school three years ago, then remembering that I've been GOING AROUND THE WORLD DOING BADASS SHIT.

Playing some Kansas helps, I guess. You know, you feel down then listen to some classic American rock until you remember what a hardcore motherfucker you are.

solving that December dilemma

Alright. My thinking cap led me to a hot bowl of noodles in the alley beside the university. I thawed as I sat in amongst the slosh, the steaming tomato slices burning my lips and keeping me from slipping into (even deeper) hypothermia. After the bowl was polished off, however, I still had not cleared my mind as to the December issue. So then I walked to the McDonalds on the other side of the university and sat down with a big mug of black coffee (ironically, McCafe does the best coffee within walking distance from campus) accompanied by an Oreo McFlurry. Still nothing. So I read some more of The Great Shark Hunt (I have only ever read this book whilst sitting in that McDonalds) and about two hours later I felt like another McFlurry.

And as I was licking the spoon of that second McFlurry, the thought came to me. It was a long-forgotten memory from a sentence within a TED video I watched about a million years ago. Apparently, somewhere in the great internet universe, there was a group of people that got together and for one month of the year, began and finished a novel. I remember now! Yes! It was brilliant! 50’000 words in 30 days! And they all did it together for enthusiasm and motivation. Alright this is it.

I hurried home because I was so excited about this idea and because it is apparently now cold enough for the fountains to have frozen over, and as soon as I got inside I ran to my laptop. Less than a minute of googling later, and I had found what I was looking for – National Novel Writing Month. It was everything I thought it would be. Just a group of people who wanna write, getting together and doing it. It’s all about quality over quantity, and based on the assumption that editing can come later. This month is supposed to be about getting words on paper. Hardcore levels of writing. Exactly what I thirsted for.

I soon came across an issue – national novel writing month is, in fact, November.

Fuck.

Oh the irony. That I should motivate myself and become so excited at this prospect on the first of December. I think that is just cruel. The universe put a roadblock in my brain so that I couldn’t have thought of this brilliant idea just one month earlier. I missed it in the most extreme possible way. It’s like converting to Christianity on boxing day. Damn it. Goddamnit.

The good news is that these cool people also do a script writing month in April! Its called Script Frenzy, and I’ve signed up. (Notice that cool new badge on the right-hand-side of the blog.) I’m super excited about April now, and already thinking of ideas. You can list your location and even meet up with people in your area who are also taking the challenge, and have picnics together. I mean, the whole thing is just awesome!

So what about now? What about December? I told Hanna about my disappointment at missing the November novel month, and she came up with an excellent point.

‘Why not just do it in December?’

So yeah – that made sense. It’s a great idea, and I don’t really have an excuse, so I think I might just start trying to write it. The novel, that is. You know, actually write each day in a way that links together to create a big story. 

At the moment I seem to write in chunks, none of which could ever possibly come together. I have ideas, of course. Ideas that have blossomed in this cranium since arriving in China, some of which are about China or have been inspired by my life and time here. Ideas that I have since scribbled across pages and pages of loose A4 printer paper, and scrawled all through Moleskines and typed all over vaguely named Word documents. What a fitting way to end my time here – to begin writing a novel about it.

So, in classic Bri style, I’ll be starting on the second of the month. Almost got there for the clean start, but not quite. Hahaha. I’m going to try and bring all the ideas together and make something of it. Without the help of the whole NaNoWriMo program, I do not expect to, or plan to, make it to the 50’000 words by the end of December. But when it comes to novels, I’m given to understand that the beginning them is the only thing harder than ending them. So what the heck? Just give it a go? Right?

‘What the heck’ it is. I’ll let you know how it’s going. Not too often, but often enough to keep me motivated. Maybe once a week? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how it goes. I have some pretty kook shit running around in my head already, but it’s almost 6:00am now and I haven’t been to bed. That might be another reason for this sudden newfound energy and commitment! Huzzah! Lack of sleep! I was determined to solve the December problem before sunrise on the 2^nd. Hahahha silly pragmatics. But thanks to winter, it's still dark outside, and this problem is solved. Shazam!

In case you were wondering, I will also still be eating a lot of delicious local food. That is still definitely something that I will be doing. Beginning in about an hour with some tasty street-food breakfast omelettes!

Yeah!