The best friend and harshest critic trick

I’m a big fan of professional script readers. In my short experience they have been invaluable (I rate Euroscript but that’s only out of a shortlist of two so far). Yes they can be expensive but if you’re going to go through the painful process of criticism then its much easier to hear it from someone who knows what they’re talking about. And who really needs food??

However, I am also lucky that I have another critic whose opinion I value and who comes absolutely free. This is my best friend K. Personally I think this is pretty amazing.

Like everyone I suppose I sent out the first draft of my first script to all my friends and family in the blithe belief that I would get nothing but adulation and admiration back, making me feel all warm and happy about myself. I didn’t want criticism (despite claiming to the contrary). I made this very clear to my mother who dared to hint that the lead character was “a bit inconsistent”. Through studied silences, clipped answers and swift changes of topics she soon learned that her role as mother was to tell me I was the cleverest person in the world and THAT WAS IT. She soon caught on.

My husband wisely declined to read it at all. Although that didn’t stop him describing a script about the suffragettes as “Judy’s lesbian play” to all our friends when they came over for dinner. I tried to explain that it didn’t actually include any lesbian scenes and he shook his head sorrowfully and said “well really that’s a problem isn’t it?”.

But by and large everyone else played by the rules. Thus I was in a state of glowing pride when my best friend rocked up one day, script in hand….covered in red ink!

The hackles went sky high and I immediatley started evaluating how easy it would be to cut her out of my life.

She sat me down in a chair and very gently began feeding me the biggest praise sandwich I’ve ever had to digest in my life- ripping apart my heart’s own with honeyed but deadly words. My silences, my studied looks out of the window did not have the slightest impact at all- she’s never been good at taking hints, blast her.

But finally she said something that forced me to pay her more attention. “After all I would have thought that I am pretty much your target audience for this. And if I don’t get it then I don’t think anyone else is going to.”

Hmmm…she was right. K and I had grown up watching and dissecting films together (much to the annoyance of anyone who made the mistake of coming to the cinema with us) and we loved exactly the same type of films for the same type of reasons.

This forced the first doubt into my mind and it soon ate away at me and forced me to go through her pages of red ink and think about each one critically and objectively. She was largely right about all of them. A professional script reader soon confirmed it all as well.

So for this reason I sent her my second draft, confident that praise would now gush forth. A night after I sent it to her she was on the phone, telling me she didn’t like it as much as the first draft and for all the following reasons. As the silence from my side grew deafening she finally said: “Well I’ll just let you have a think about that for a little while. I’ll give you a call in two weeks.”

Sure enough after two weeks of me fuming that she had no idea what the hell she was talking about and who the hell did she think she bloody was, the film critic for the New York Times??? I soon started to reflect and again- damn, damn, damn her- she was right.

Thus she is the only non-professional script reading person who gets to read every one of my drafts. She’s the only one who’s opinion I take seriously and she’s the only one who, when she gives praise, I actually believe.

And we are still best friends.

Which all things considered I think is a bloody miracle…and means I’m possibly one of the luckiest writers in the world I guess.

Speaking of writing I guess I should actually get back to it. Am off to our soon-to-be-sold cottage in the country now for three weeks where I intend to do lots and lots of writing…amidst intensive potty training and selling furniture. Should be interesting!

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An ethical conundrum

pic cap:zeusandheraonflickr

Yay! You’ll all be pleased to know that I’m back on track. Well actually I doubt any of you care in the slightest, but I’m very excited to be back on track.

I have got my “Persuasion” obsession out of my system by writing at high speed, with numerous spelling errors, a first draft of it. First draft is perhaps over-egging it a bit. I just wrote it all down and printed it. I haven’t even read it through and I don’t intend to- that will just drag me back into the abyss of obsession again, I know it. This way every time I look at at it with its nice neat title page winking up at me I get a deep sense of satisfaction usually followed by a sigh of contentment. Amazing how these things clear the brain and allow the focus to return back on my sensible project on which the inspiration stream seems to flowing pretty well on at the moment.

So all good on the land of the Himalayas at the moment. Except…well except for a little, niggling, ethical issue I have that keeps nagging away at me.

The sensible project happens to be based on the stuff I write about as a journalist- which is social work in case any of you are interested. It’s not a secret amongst work colleagues that I write screenplays in my spare time but none of them know that I have since embarked on this particular project (do you think it’s a problem that none of them have even asked??).

So when a retired social worker rang up saying she’s written her own script about social workers she was immediately referred onto me to offer advice and help and tips. I began feeling a mite uncomfortable. She and I are on the surface writing very similar scripts. I haven’t told her that and I don’t really feel inclined to. But it’s kind of compromising my ability to offer her any feedback.

My good and bad angels are at it over it. It’s a dog eat dog world out there they whisper. Why should I give her any tips that might mean she has a better chance of getting her script looked at over mine? Don’t be silly, they chide, the actual scripts are markedly different and if you have confidence in your own script you should believe that yours is better than anyone else’s anyway, besides where is your sense of the brotherhood of the aspiring screenwriter….and so it goes on.

I’ve already tried directing her to some professional script readers but she doesn’t want to pay and to be fair, she doesn’t know why I am reluctant to offer any critique myself.

Do I give her some surfact comments but say she’s better going to the professionals? Do I be as honest as I can, as helpful as I can and neglect any self-interest? Am I that worthy and selfless?

Hmmmm…..

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Writing with the head or the heart?

I know this is a popular and long debated issue amongst screenwriters and I hesitate to mention it again…except….well except that these things are always so much more pertinent when they crop up in your life and give you a resoundingly good slap across the face.

My dilemma is this- I work full time in a demanding job. I am mother of a young child who has an aversion to sleeping and we are all currently living under the roof of my mother-in-law.

Or to put it another way- life is a bit tricky at the moment.

I get almost no time to write other than a stolen 20 minute lunch break and maybe one or two evenings a week. I am currently writing something that I feel quite passionate about, that has some good and new things to say (I hope) and seems to have an interesting enough hook that it sparks interest when I pitch it to people.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately it is also bloody hard work. It’s a television series and I’ve never written one before so I’m starting from scratch again. It’s got a number of interweaving story lines so it’s taking a lot of thought time and excessive use of the delete button at the moment.

As mentioned in another blog, I’m also heading to Australia permanently in less than a year. I feel I should be aiming to finish said project before I go.

Here’s the rub. Recently while my child was sick (and was using me as his bed for both days and nights) I watched the two most recent adaptions of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (2007, 1995). I have watched them before but years ago. This time however they annoyed me deeply. So much so that I was driven to read the book again. Then I was even more annoyed and felt the most compulsive urge I’ve ever experienced to sit down and start writing my own adaption. Persuasion is one of my favourite books- I couldn’t believe they had massacred the character of Anne so horribly…twice!

And now I can’t bloody stop!

It’s gushing out of me. It consumes every spare thought and moment and meanwhile my sensible project gets ever more dusty in my drawer. I keep trying to force myself back to it but it’s just so much hard work and Persuasion is just so much fun. It’s the most delightful script I’ve ever written and I am very much in love with it.

But, like dating the rebel with a wandering eye, it’s also assuredly a pointless exercise. Who on earth is going to accept an adaption of Persuasion from an unknown writer. Who’s even going to look at it as an example of my writing? Adapting Jane Austen smacks of unoriginality and/or arrogance. And it is highly likely that there are already modern film adaptions currently in negotiation or filming as I type.

Every way I look at it, there is no point in writing it except for my own gratification and where is that going to get me?

I hate myself for it but can’t stop. I feel like the little girl in the red shoes who knows she needs to cut of her feet but fears the blood that will result.

Ok, maybe slightly overdramatic but then I’m a very tired worman with a Jane Austen (Persuasion) obsession. I need some slack!

(pic credit: Pixiebebe and BBC)

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