Evinden update

Time for an update on Evinden, I think.

Current word count: 77,905
Current page count: 221

Start date for project: 11 April 2001, allegedly. This is the oldest file I have archived on the computer relating to the project - a file called 'Ideas.doc'.

Rather terrifyingly, that means I've been working on this damned book for seven bastard years. Seven! That's quite clearly utterly ridiculous - there are children out there whose entire lives encompass seven years, and yet I've somehow managed to take seven years to write a book; in fact, to write half of a book, it's nowhere near finished yet.

One thing's for certain: if Evinden turns out well and I write more books, I dearly hope that they prove to be rather less ponderous in their creation. Of course, Evinden went through a bit of a funny early development in that it was originally to be a screenplay and had an entirely different structure, before before restructured in (I think) 2004 as a novel.

Still, with James providing spiffy feedback and a few select other people having read and enjoyed the book, I'm rather more spurred on to finish the damn thing than I ever have been before. The Eastercon 2008 convention also rather invigorated my writing spirit - I couldn't help but think this is where I want to be. Once I got used to the lingering nerd smells and the Klingon guy, anyway.

Reading over this Ideas.doc file is really quite enlightening, reminding me of where I was coming from in the first place. While it's changed vastly and become infinitely more detailed, some of the early notes make for an amusing list of "Fantasy Clichés 101". This was back in the days when I hadn't read any fantasy, and before Fellowship of the Ring hit cinemas. A different age!

Check it out:

Basic ideas/concepts

• Magic
• Sword-fighting
• Flying (flying characters, or flying vehicles?)
• Hero’s Journey
• Epic
• Huge, towering cities
• Demonic creatures
• - invasion?
• Dark/light? How ‘serious’ are we getting?
• Mythology
• History
• Flawed characters
• Characters have past connections
• One character appearing to several, drawing them together?
• - Mentor/wizard character?
• Must protect somebody?
• - on a journey?
• - both physical and mental?
• - Extending swords?
• - must have!
• - huge variety of extending cool weaponry!!!!!!!!
• - Girl from above rescues Cut from work?
• - City perched atop clouds (hidden)
• - Waterfalls!
• - Cut can save his people from the tyranny of the Telladors.

Not a particularly auspicious start.

I'm really not sure what I was thinking calling the lead character 'Cut'. I mean, there's no way a typo could have made that one embarassing, eh?

The wise words of Mr Gaiman

Neil Gaiman wrote an interesting thing in his journal recently:

"The worst thing in writing something for someone else, and I've found this several times over the years, especially in movies, is where you talk to an editor or an executive and you think that you're talking about the same thing. Then you go away and do what you thought you were talking about and hand it in and find that you were quite wrong, and while you were describing (say) a romantic comedy with ghosts in they were buying a scary ghost story with perhaps some love in, and nobody is happy and the project is doomed."

A very similar thing happened on a film project I've been working on since last Autumn. Having wrestled through four incarnations of the script, plus another two written by other people, we seem to finally be getting somewhere. Unfortunately my scripts were rejected, but that's how it goes sometimes (though that actual rejection process was...interesting, to say the least!).

So, yes, we're now on track, it would seem, which is rather damn exciting. The team is slowly coming together and some of the people lined up to be working on the film are awesome.

The project will be announced officially soon, at which point I'll be able to say more...

In the meantime, time to write some more of Evinden.

s04e01

Battlestar Galactica is back with season four. Remarkably, it is still extremely good. In fact, it remains quite clearly the best thing on television - at least in as much as I am aware. It's also the best sci-fi for about two decades, irrespective of TV or cinema.

So say we all.

Creative madness!

The creative process is a pretty bonkers thing, especially if you're attempting to work in a group, with everyone bringing disparate and conflicting ideas to the table of what the finished article should be. As part of a film project I'm working on, this week has seen the most intense example of that process I've ever seen.

Remarkably, given how slow and ponderous I tend to be when writing creatively, I've completed three screenplays in the last four days. One was in collaboration with another writer while the other two were off my own bat. They're shorts, of course (I'm not that fast), but that's nevertheless the most creatively prolific I've been for a while.

It's partially helped by it being related to a larger project, of course, so that, rather than it just being for my own amusement, it's also intended to provide a solid foundation for the work of everyone else. Whether it gets to that stage or not remains to be seen, of course - I'm very happy with the third script, but I know other members of the team have their doubts.

It's an interesting exercise, to throw yourself into a script only to have it torn apart by peers. Painful, yes, but it most cases it does end up with a better final result, as long as you can pull yourself back together and look at the task from another angle - which is exactly what I did with this third script, abandoning the structure and characters from the earlier interations and retaining only the setting and themes.

I call the third script 'Katabasis', which is a vague attempt to sound intelligent. As I understand it, Katabasis has multiple meanings, all generally along the lines of 'going down' - most commonly with regards to going from the centre of a country to the coast, or a descent into the underworld. All quite apt, for numerous reasons.

You'll no doubt have noticed that I've not dropped any specifics about the project or the scripts - alas, until the project is officially announced that's the way it has to be! But with luck I'll be able to say more soon.

In other news, it's suddenly started snowing again. Time for jumpers.

If there's one thing that can't be rushed...

I discovered something on Friday, much to my chagrin. Video, it would seem - yes, even YouTube videos - simply cannot be rushed. We were due to announce the winners of the FXhome VideoWrap competition, the selection process of which had taken a little longer than expected due to the excellent calibre of the finalists. After we had selected the overall winner and runners-up, I put together a spiffy article with mini-reviews of each with which I was perfectly happy.

Then it hit me. This had been, primarily, a YouTube competition, announced and managed through that distinctly low-fi phenomenon. We really, really needed to announce the winners through a YouTube video, not just a well-written news piece on our site.

In an attempt to make the announcement video interesting I unwisely opted for the 'throw everything in there' approach, and ended up with a bit of a mash-up involving a greenscreen, a greenscreen suit, a floating Holly-style head and wavy, dis-embodied arms, not to mention some slightly ropey motion graphics.

Needless to say, I wasn't overly happy with it, but that's the way these things go sometimes. It's a shame, as a lot of people that entered the competition clearly put loads of effort in, so I hope they don't feel we skimped on the announcement. Still, the decent prizes hopefully offset that.

Next time we'll make sure to put together an astounding announcement video that will amaze everybody. YouTube competitions are remarkably good fun, we've all decided.



Nothing like hundreds of people around the world watching you prat about. :)

p.s. In other news, lots of hugely exciting things going on at FXhome at the moment. Of course, I can't actually say anything about them yet due to contracty things....but soon, soon!

Orbital 2008

We just attended our first convention! Or 'con' as everybody calls them, which was at first slightly worrying. On Friday we jumped in the car (after completing Leiali's Integral Cleaning Regime, that is) and headed off for a lovely long weekend break at....Heathrow. Not exactly the number one choice of holiday destination, but thems the breaks.

The drive down was surprisingly trouble-free given the Bank Holiday weekend (I was continuously expecting a gargantuan traffic jam to rear its head, and with every passing minute that such a creature failed to appear I become increasingly convinced that it was simply biding its time) and we arrived at the Radisson Edwardian hotel in good time - just in time, in fact, to get completely lost in its labyrinthine corridors, occasionally resembling a well-lit Shelob's Lair (look: a fantasy reference!).

After checking in (after locating reception) we carefully consulted our maps and started to discern a kind of reason within the architectural madness. Leiali became instantly excited when she spotted Neil Gaiman lurking in a room, mostly disguised by a slatted blind but clearly given away by his big, Gaimanish hair that really refuses to be hidden.

And thus commenced the panels. These usually took the form of about 4 people seated behind a desk talking at the overly-nerdy audience, before opening the debate to the floor. Almost all the panels were excellent, with particular highlights focusing on 'politics in young adult fiction', 'the use of mythology' and 'fantastical London'. Gaiman's solo talk and reading was also absolutely superb - he's a remarkably natural public speaker for someone that should, by all rights, be a quiet, bookish writery type.

Plus points:

+ Neil Gaiman & China Miéville (both frighteningly clever)
+ Graham Sleight & Roz Kaveney
+ The Canadian author whose name escapes me, but who was spiffy
+ Excellent panels
+ Very well organised event
+ Unexpectedly bumping into: Nat from Canterbury, Nik from the sci-fi writing course and Leiali's old mate Jo
+ Leiali finally managing to track down the elusive Joe Abercrombie in the bar (of course), making up for a false positive the first night (another tall guy with a Himalayan nose)
+ Really, really friendly atmosphere
+ Easy drive there and back (despite all the snow!)
+ I'm feeling properly inspired to get on with my book again!

Negative points:

- Lots of super-nerds = bad smells, nose picking & eating and other unsavoury habits
- Bizarre temperature changes in every other room, which would have deeply concerned Egon Spengler
- The guy that wasn't Joe Abercrombie
- I want to be on the other side of the panel

Simon attempting to 'act'

Guess who this is:



Yes, that's right. It's me, being a tit!

A rather amusing (near) end to the year at work. This week is finally a little bit quieter than the last few, so I've had time to do some more interesting stuff and start to get everything back ship-shape.

Nearly Christmas woo!