Hello there, to all my friends and enemies.
It’s been two months since I wrote one of these. Where have I been doing in that time? It’s classified by orders of the Icelandic Committee for Planning and you may find out in fifty years but until then the secret stays with me and the Icelandic Committee for Planning.
But as I have been gone for two months I thought I’d send out a quick update newsletter so people know I wasn’t killed during my classified mission on behalf of the aforementioned ICP (not to be confused with the Insane Clown Posse).
Updates:
So what have I been doing over the past two months? Living life mostly, but in regards to writing not loads but a little at least. I continued to work on the short story collection I had begun writing last year, coming up with a few new ideas and planning out others but then took a break over Christmas. When we hit the new year I seemed to hit a bit of a creative slump, not a writer’s block but more a motivational block. I just didn’t feel like writing, so I didn’t. I played games, exercised, and did some reading and watching movies. Most people who know me know I’m a massive fan of film so that is no surprise that I spent a lot of time watching them. I’ve also been catching up on episodes of the Team Deakins podcast which is always a great listen. While listening to that podcast and then watching movies I felt a motivation to write coming back. But it wasn’t motivation to write a comic book or even to write another short story for the collection. I started to get a desire to write a film script, I also had an idea rattling around my brain for a story that could work as a book but I kept envisioning it visually and it became more and more apparent it should be a movie. But I’ve never written a movie script before, so I’d need to learn and practice. But I’d also never written a comic book script before I did so I knew the only thing that could stop me was me.
I knew it made no sense to jump straight into writing a feature length script with no experience or even idea on how to write one. So I decided I’d write a couple of short film scripts to get the experience and also read screenplays to learn how they should be written. I doubt any of these will ever be anything more than a script but they only have to be scripts for me, to help me practice and to send to people for advice and opinions. I wrote a short story called Mosquito last year and decided I’d adapt that into a script as well as another idea I had which is inspired by my NoSleep story My Girlfriend is a cannibal. I’ve spent the past while reading scripts and beginning to write Mosquito. I’ve read the Adaptation script written by Charlie Kaufman because he’s one of the best screenwriters alive. I’ve also read most of the 2018 Suspiria script and I have a few more scripts that I plan to get through. To be honest this will probably be an ongoing thing for me, there is no better way to learn in my opinion. Though my Goodreads stats at the end of the year might suffer since they don’t have scripts on there to log!
If you are interested in reading scripts, you can find a myriad of film and tv scripts on the site OutstandingScreenplays. If they don’t have a script you are looking for you can also just Google “[movie name] screenplay” and you’ll be able to find a PDF of the script (I’m not sure how legal this is though, I’m hoping very legal).
So that’s my plan for the foreseeable. I’ll be watching movies, reading scripts and writing scripts to get practice (alongside playing Yakuza 7…). As for my short story collection I’ll of course still be tipping away at that but the plan for that was always to have it as a side-project. Something I do when I get a burst of creativity or when I hit a slump with my main project. As for comics, I’m currently doing a lettering edit for Osaka S.P.D. #3 and I’ll be sending that off for lettering by Rob soon. I have ideas for my next comic book project but none of them are screaming at me to write, so I won’t rush that choice. I’ll make it when the time feels right.
Alright, it was a short one today to get back into the swing of things. My quick recommendations are watch The Quiet Girl or any Takeshi Kitano movie and go read some movie scripts if you think it’ll be your kind of thing.
Okay, stay hydrated, stay safe and as always keep it sexy x
- Andy