How the story began

I mentioned I have been writing a script. Where it came from and how, I haven't yet gone into here, something I mentioned back in this post. But the reason posts have been slow is that I am finally really getting somewhere with it. Characters, research, plotting and, now, finally, actually writing.

Well, where it came from is a story I want to tell here. How a once-lowly animator has people looking for a screenplay. But it all happened in so many unconnected pieces that putting a form on it would be trickier than writing the actual script.

But I wrote a beginning. And then I didn't post it. Why didn't I post it? Well, I'll get into that after this post, not posted earlier in the year:

This post is the most productive thing I've done all day. I am consumed by worry. It takes over. It prevents any sort of concentration. And it makes me feel ill.

This happens. It used to happen more and I guess I should take it as a good sign that the feeling is not as familiar to me as it once was. Small things would build up in my head and become big things. They'd eat at me. Sometimes, my fears would be completely unwarranted and I'd feel like a tit for spending so much time worrying. Other times, I had damn good reason to worry.

And, sometimes, the act of worrying in itself would create circumstances that would realise all my fears.

This time, it's a meeting. A meeting in which I am going to disappoint someone who has been very supportive I took too much on. My life is too busy and my brain is too small to contain everything. Something has to go. And so I have to meet to say exactly that - that thing you wanted me to do, well, I can't make it happen. Not now, at least.

It's too hot in here. Why is it so hot?


That's the post. I was worried because what happened was that I had dug myself into a hole. I was so busy last year and just kept on adding more and more work like some sort of masochistic nut. And I applied for some local funding to write a script. And I got it. Yay. And I worked at it and worked at it and worked at it and, eventually, realised a few things:

a) My writing was shit.
b) I knew how to make it better.
c) I couldn't ever make something of this story because the problem I had identified in 'a' was so fundamental to how I approached this story, it could never be saved. It was always going to be rubbish.

I tried my damndest to turn it around based on 'b', but I knew it wasn't going to happen. So I had to bite the bullet - I had to meet with the funders and tell them why I couldn't write the script I had convinced them was good. Why I would have to give back the money and leave it there. And the post above is the one I wrote that afternoon.

As for why I didn't post it, well, I decided at the last minute to see how the meeting would turn out. And it turned out with them saying, well now that you've realised you can write a better script, just write one from scratch. And so that's how this all began.