Having to end it...

Thing is, I knew this wasn't going to work right back when he came on board. Well, Colonel Ginger Nuts has to go. He just isn't cut out for children's shows.

And it's not a pleasant conversation.

Never should have happened in the first place. I said the project was shit. Said it from day one. And, in cases like this, I hate being right. So now it's taken well over a year to get to a point where the realisation kicks in that this man will never turn it into something good.

Now, it's up to other writers to try to make this into something other than a train wreck. And someone has to explain to this guy why he's not going to get to work on this show he created and will never see in its current form ever again.


I hope it's not me.

How many drafts?

I'm rapidly losing the will to live.

The reason I didn't want to write on this project was that I thought it was utter cack. Why would I spend my effort trying to turn something awful into something slightly less awful? Seems like a losing battle.

So I'm not writing it.

But, by the looks of what I am being given to read, nor is anyone else. I need to not even be aware of this project's existence. I need it to go away.

Go away piece of shit project with your shit writers. Go away.

Writing...

I have had something I needed to finish for quite some time. A draft of a screenplay that some people are waiting on. Actually, that's not quite true. It's not that I needed to finish it. I needed to start it. I'm so far away from finishing it that there's no point in worrying about that bit yet.

So I locked myself away at the weekend to attempt to get some momentum going. It took my at least a day before I got back into it and knew who my characters were. It doesn't surprise me how difficult I was finding it. It's not something you can just jump into.

It almost requires a journey even to begin. Me, in my own world, walking slowly step by step into the world of the story. There's no train. No quicker route. It just takes time.

But I got there eventually and have finally managed to make a start. That's good.

I don't have this difficulty with children's shows. I can just jump in and, withing an hour, I'm there. Characters and stories are living for me. The mind of a child comes more naturally to me.

But to pretend I ever really made it to adulthood and try to get inside the heads of adults? Well, that's just hard work.

Being an adult must be rough.

The hard part

I have so many projects I want to progress. I'm not saying they're all good. Actually, I'm not saying any of them are good. In fact they're likely all complete cack. But I have a lot of them.

The problems are, firstly, progressing them to a stage where I'm happy with them. While the ultimate goal is to see a show sold or made, or a book published or whatever, what I consider to be 'finished' is to have a damn good proposal with every element representing the project as best it can. Actually getting the time, keeping up the motivation and just getting it right make this a very daunting process. And it's so easy to wander on to the next idea.

The next set of problems come if that stage is ever reached - how to sell it. That's a whole different set of challenges and one I've been through many times.

But that first proposal stage is a tough place to get to. So many ideas. So many stories. So many characters. Too many. Far too many. It makes it very difficult to focus. My mind is shooting off in so many different directions. I just can't finish anything.

I guess that's one major reason all those rejections a while back really stung. I had managed to get a project to that proposal stage. It took a serious amount of hard work. Like, it totally made my brain tired. But I did it and was very happy with the result. And all I ended up with was a pile of stock rejections, a lot of wasted months, wasted paper. Just wasted.

And, since those rejections, it has been all the harder to get the motivation to bring the next project on.

Thing is, I've been here before. I pushed several shows early in my career. Made many mistakes. Faced many rejections. But eventually, I had a success. That's great, right? Well, yeah, okay maybe. But it seems to mean little in terms of selling something else.

Anyway, enough of that. I just want to progress some new projects. Finish them. Get proposals. Have someone like them. And make some shows. Or publish some books. Or manufacture a time machine. Any one of those will do.

But focus is a real problem.

Where are the animation writers?

This is something I wondered when going through the blogs I read. I can find loads of blogs on animation from the drawing end, animators, cartoonists and so on but just one on animation writing.

And yet every show has a team of animation writers. Where are they? Why aren't they talking about their craft? Where are the animation writers' message boards?

I love writing. I have nothing but admiration for writers generally, especially comedy writers. I think that writing well takes skill, talent and a knowledge of the craft that most people will just never get. And there are some fantastic writer's websites and blogs out there. Just not from animation writers.

So, if writers in other forms have a web presence, it can't be due to my first thought which was - maybe they're just solitary creatures, as many writers are?

Is it that they haven't a real interest in cartoons? They're just hoping to get the paychecks in while they hawk that movie script around? Are they ashamed of what they do? Or maybe it's that a huge amount of cartoons are dictated by producers, broadcasters and the interests of global co-productions so the writers are hired as little more than typists. In that scenario, there's damn all to talk about. But, really, I just don't know.

I know a couple of animation writers. I'll ask them. If you know any or can track some down, ask them - why are they invisible?

Astro Andy's Miserable Life and Hopeful Death on Planet Doom

See? See what a great show it would be?

You see, according to experts, the way to write a good cartoon for young children is this: you give them an age-appropriate character they can relate to and then give the character a problem to overcome. It doesn't matter so much if the character succeeds or not. If the character does solve their problem, the viewer will feel a sense of empowerment through that and, if the character fails, the child will feel superior in the knowledge that they would have done a better job.

It's all about child empowerment. This is what sold Bob the Builder - child empowerment. If you earwig on broadcasters or distributors of shows for vey young children, you'll hear that phrase a lot. Effectively, they mean telling children what they want to hear. That they don't need parents, for one thing.

So Andy here has a problem: he's going to die in an hour. The children can relate to him because he's only five. Perfect story structure.