Having a bit of a mindfuck week

My emotions have been all over the place this week. I'm heartbroken over the terrible tragedy in Poland, which I don't think I can even really comprehend, but still makes my chest hurt and my eyes tear up every time I think about it.

At the same time I'm psyched that we actually found three possible houses this week, after so many that really didn't work.

I'm nervous waiting to hear about the contract we signed yesterday.

I'm upset that I'm massively behind in Script Frenzy, with only 34 pages where last year at this time I had 70. Ideally I'd like to have 52.

But I'm happy that what I am writing is working well. I just finished a kick ass action scene that involved hiding a very old woman behind a shrubbery then beating up a stalker....

And of course I'm totally freaked out as part of this script is set in Hungary during the war and I'm following some Holocaust twitterers who are saying what was happening on this day x number of years ago. It's all so grim.

Script Frenzy

I'm massively behind on Script Frenzy, although not nearly as much as I was this morning, when I only had 12 pages. I'm up to 18 now, slightly better.

Read this great post from @capricaseven, who writes about dialogue and how to make it sparkle. Words cannot express my great love for her. http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/node/3591673

Very short post

I finished my script in the wee hours of the morning, winning Script Frenzy. And I'm leaving soon to go to see Neil Gaiman doing one of the Pen World Voices Festival of International literature events. It's a couple of hours drive so I should leave quite soon.

Script Frenzy 2009 Halfway Mark

I'm slogging along on my script for Script Frenzy. As I may have mentioned it's about a girl called Zed who was raised in a secluded compound, either on an island or in a canyon, depending on what page of the script you're on (remember first drafts are great for changing your mind about what's going on). Her grandfather is the one raising her and he realizes that when he dies she'll be alone with his corpse, which will soon rise.

He builds her a robot called Beau, then leaves, so that she won't have to put a bullet through his skull. She goes in search of him and discovers there are no zombies. He's delusional and most of what she thought about the world is wrong.

I'm more than halfway finished in terms of page count but not really in terms of story. Mostly because I haven't really had the chance to figure out the story. Is it a mystery? A girl lost in a strange world story? A whoa, your parents are really alive and deal with that story? I've tried a couple of different paths and am still not quite sure.

At one point she kidnapped a young child because his parents hadn't taught him how to fight zombies. I still think this is a funny idea but the real world implications are pretty serious and I imagine she'd end up somewhere pretty bleak like jail, a foster home or a mental institute while her robot friend is dissected so that doesn't really fit the whole comedy theme.

Of course she could encounter some real zombies but isn't that a little predictable? So many choices, so few days left in April.

Script Frenzy 2009

I am taking part in Script Frenzy. I woke up with an idea a couple of days ago. It's about a girl raised to believe that the zombie apocalypse happened when she was very young, and that zombies killed her parents. But actually her grandfather, who is raising her, is delusional. We'll see how that goes. I'm on page eight.

No idea

Script Frenzy starts in a couple of days and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I should be more prepared but I've been brain dead for some time. I started taking some new medication in August and I feel like it's making me dumber. It's great for migraines but not so good for sparkling repartee. Hopefully I'll settle on something before the deadline.

Meanwhile everyone but me is on antibiotics for either ear infections or strep. Even one of the pets has an ear infection. Hopefully that will also all clear up and we'll start April with a clean slate.

Script Frenzy

I'm nearly finished with Script Frenzy. I hit page 100 today and have just a few scenes to wrap up. The bad guy got his comeuppance, the kidnapped child has been returned, the mother is grateful and our heroes are tired but happy. Now we just need to say goodbye, send everyone home and explain to their respective parents where they have been without them being grounded forever. And of course we have to repair some of the damage said kidnapped child caused.

Then fade out. I'm super pleased because it went so smoothly. Some of it was the easiest writing I've done ages. Some of it was awful, needing me to promise I would quit if I just wrote one more word, but I average five pages a day and am going to finish more than a week ahead of schedule.

Then I think I'll think about editing the book I finished in February. Was it February? Maybe. I don't really remember. The rewrite on that is going to be ghastly. But productive I think.

Cullen and Chris are getting ready for finals, which are coming up in the next couple of weeks. Cullen is writing code and Chris is furiously building a robot.

Here is a picture of my rat, Delirium, suffering from true red eye. She hasn't quite figured out she's meant to sit on my shoulder while I type, which was Paws' job. I wrote three books with Paws on my shoulder giving me advice if I remember correctly. Delirium tends to dive into my shirt and stay there. Here she is hanging out on Cam's leg as he tries out the camera I just bought.

There's a rat on my head

The low point of the day was our older cat Titan getting sick with no warning. Usually he retches for a bit, allowing us time to scoop him and throw him in the sink. Instead he just sat up, from where he was doing his job keeping my feet warm, and threw up on my foot. My bare foot. My bare foot resting on my nice sheet. My bare foot resting on my nice sheet on my bed...

The high point, um, I suppose it was somehow managing to knock out another five pages of my script, bringing me to 65. Now I just need to decide if my proposed solution to the chimera problem would annoy my audience.

And now the rat is trying to type. She managed an n, good for her.

I'm almost afraid to say

Script Frenzy is going really well. It's the easiest writing I've done in months. I'm on page 35 so far, which is about five pages a day. That's not bad when my entire notes for the plot consist of "chaos ensues."

http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/user/25188

We've also been stricken with a stomach virus. It's at times like this that I really wish we had more than one bathroom...

Into the frenzy

Don't expect much in the way of posts for a bit. I picked up another weekly column, which is sort of not a column, it's the Smorgasbord that runs below Quality Time in the BrokerUniverse newsletter, and it's taking more time than I thought it would.

Script Frenzy moved up to April, from June, and I'm going to give it a shot. I've got a little over five pages of this thing about a little boy who wants to buy his mom the perfect Mother's Day present but confuses the words chimenea and chimera. Throw in one of those shops that vanishes when you try to go back again and there's bound to be some trouble.

So I reckon between the book (part three of Kitta, working title One Ring to Annoy Them All), the script, the two columns, the day job and the family I might not have much spare time for a little while.

Oh and SAG is having a costume gala event to celebrate our 75th anniversary so I've got that to think about. That's in June I think.

I probably shouldn't be taking part in Script Frenzy but I love writing scripts. They're so much fun. And easy, hoo boy, are they ever. I see my scenes in my head as I write anyway so putting them down in a visual media is natural for me. I also like writing in the present tense and I tend to be spare with description anyway (I've written entire books and never told anyone what the protagonist looks like) so I love it when I can pretty much skip it.

But don't worry I shan't vanish yet. I had a post about Fergie I was thinking about yesterday and today Google delighted me with their April Fool's post. More later this week, I promise.

One last thing

Halfway there

I hit ten thousand words today. I can't believe how quickly this story is going. It's going to turn out to be far too complicated to be a script I think

http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/user/25188