in case it rings bells, the title is a misquote of the cuttingly clever lyric ‘There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face’ taken from the song Life In The Fast Lane by The Eagles…
Because I’m living life in the fastest of fast lanes.
Not.
It’s 2pm, I still haven’t showered, shaved or dressed. I’m sitting on the couch, I’m still in my bathrobe and I’m up to my arse in sitcom scripts and BBC templates for TV productions.
The horses will get today off.
By the way, wasn’t it nice of Soph to pop in and say a few words yesterday?
Back to the writing.
It takes a punishing amount of dialogue to form a single half-hour sitcom episode; far more than a chapter of a novel, or even a graphical scene.
But, strangely, sitcom dialogue doesn’t have to flow in the way that literary dialogue does.
There is a… (don’t want to say ‘art’)… there is a knack to writing TV sitcom scripts; it’s such a different form from lit. prose/short stories, and slightly alien at first.
Anyway, it’s now 4.30pm so you can see that I haven’t been giving exclusive concentration to this post for the last couple of hours!
But in other news, we have found the missing-for-a-week HSBC Online Banking dongle, so I can now login and pay myself once again.
Yay.
Now then, all I’ve got to figure out before I start writing the next scene, is how to make a suicide funny…
And before I go, here’s some brilliant wordage on writing for television from James Henry, a talented chap who I would consider to be a ‘proper’ scriptwriter (well, he’s responsible for – amongst others – Bob The Builder, Smack The Pony and Green Wing):
Thing is, of course, sitting about on your arse all day is perfect training for career in writing scripts (less so for acting, sadly). Further useful skills you could learn in this valuable period:
1. Sighing heavily.
2. Looking things up on Wikipedia, getting distracted, finding yourself spending an entire afternoon on the history of Transformers.
3. Trying various condiment combinations for toast (peanut butter plus brown sauce = yes, cheese, marmite and sliced raw onion also = yes, but with repercussions).
4. Watching a lot of Lady Gaga videos, and starting to think she really might be a lot smarter than that Poker Face song initially suggested.
5. More sighing.
6. Buying stationary stationery, until you have an entire shelf of A4 notebooks, all of which have only the first three pages written in, but which can’t be thrown out, because there’s also some AMAZING D&D maps scribbled in one, can’t remember which.
7. Looking for spare change down the back of the sofa.
1. Good for relaxation.
2. Good for education.
3. Good for delectation.
4. Worries me greatly. You are clearly unwell. I suggest you relax using whatever means neccessary (maybe eat a steak, your red blood cell count must be low, you goddamn vegemite you).
5. Try signing. Dexterity and communicative – ooooh!
6. I don’t know what D&D is.
7. Good for the bank balance.
Basically, stick with it, but don’t punish yourself. You’re not a Catholic, after all.
yes writing needs research which leads you off on a bizarre tangent i think alot of us feel that and for some strange reason time goes very slowly here in this place on the page – you may feel you have only written a few words whilst pondering on ideas threads then suddenly you realise that that quick half hr you intended is suddenly 2 or 3 hrs and you might have been up first and first to start working but the rest of the planet has overtaken you in the washing dressing organisational race and you havnt had your breakfast properly anyway theres no point now its brunch 🙂 those toastie bags are a godsend 🙂 as is coffee the lubrication for the brain cogs
No mention made of pens?! There are so many great and highly individual pens that can be purchased from a variety of stores (it’s worth visiting them all, just in case). You never know which is the one that will unlock your creativity. It might be a fineliner. Or one of those rubber-grip barrelled ballpoints. Or a Jotter, even. You just never know.
So many pens. I might have to see if I need a new pen actually to help me write. It’s no good writing if you haven’t got a nice new pen to do it with.
Should be no. 8 on the list. Pencils can be no. 9.
“Buying stationary”. Granted you probably stand still when at the cashier, but surely movement is involved in the entire process?
You’ll be pleased to know my wife spotted the spelling error and chastised me appropriately. It is now fixed.
Ash, the thing is, not all of us have a workrate that matches yours. Some of us are only human. Be gentle with us vegetarianists. 🙂
Ali, time of day works with/against me too. Mornings are high productivity, afternoons much less so!
Jonners, pens is good. Pens is very good. But I (and I’m guessing, like James) do most of my timewasting online. YouTube and Wikipedia are the biggest time-drains known to me. But pens too… Oh my. Do you know how many pens I have in my laptop bag? Nine. I’ve just counted. Five ballpoints, three fibretips and one marker. Oh. Pens…
Allister, sometimes when I go shopping movement is an optional extra.
Hi James. Fixed here too but with a trail, for the pedantic. Thanks. p.s. Sophie is my built-in, perma-spell-checker.
I think Lady Gaga is a genius. Possibly an evil one.
Thanks Paula. And just for the record, I think she’s a genius too. Not sure about how evil she may or may not be. But, because I’m a boy, I’d like to see how she looks without clothes. Erm…