Dear all,
It's taken me 11 days to feel up to writing, but I was amazed to wake up this morning and feel human. Getting back into old habits just takes some time.
The first few days was like wading through the slough of despond, and I only really got out of it by insisting my sister drive me around to find a hula hoop. After scouring the island, I managed to find one I could sort-of use a bit. It's a bright pink monstrosity which lights up red - but only when also playing the nastiest, 8-bit tinny rock you ever heard. It was dirt cheap, and after switching it on you need to give it a kick before it works. But thoroughly worth it: glow hoops are the most terrific thing in the universe, better than Peter Davison in a pile of kittens. Much better, oh yes.
Friend 3 is sure the music it plays is the theme tune from a previous World Cup. Euch...
The only real problem is it's very light and very small, and thus hard to use. To combat this, I've wound metal wire around it a-la-electromagnets. Solved the weight, but it's now murder on the hands. I think I can suffer through it, though - if I tried getting a proper hoop it'd get stuck on the island, like that marvellous poster I've been keeping a space for in London for two years.
Once I dreamed I had star maps all over the bruises on my hands. Because of the mess it makes of my digits, I really can't hoop and play the piano on the same day; piano is winning. I'm currently collecting in-world songs from movies and telly to perform - geektastic. I've discovered the notes B, Bb and C just sound perfection in my voice, and am shifting the key signatures of all the songs I know to include them. Sneaky, but it's like my singing has suddenly leapfrogged into excellence.
What am I up to?
I'm putting a lot of work into the Naked Flame Letters Project - which I haven't touched since it was 30 pages long last summer. It is now 96 pages long. God, I need to get a life, but the idea of it all getting forgotten is just so painful to me that I can't let it go. And I think in 30, 40 years time, everyone will be glad of it.
I'm beginning to have difficulty with it though. I've stupidly left all the irritating letters till last - interminable romantic correspondances, plots which I know bear little resemblance to any sort of canon, and things which are too damn upsetting to touch. One of the problems of digging it all up again is it's like revisiting your most private, your most intense diaries and then attempting to prepare them for public consumption. About four years of my life was spent in that state of mind, so imagine the experience of hearing a song which takes you way back - being dragged backwards is always unpleasant, even for a nice memory - and then imagine it booming at concert volume.
Still, I'm close to being finished. I've started dragging people around and making them help, explaining references I don't know, explaining motivations. It's difficult, because everyone else goes back into old modes as well - complete with frustrating secrecy. It's hard to break through such an ancient mindset and say - look, this is for the future, when you can't remember what you're not telling me now. But I've no right to put it in so many words. It's not like I'm putting everything in. It's not like I can't tell you where the omissions are. Besides, it's a satisfying response too - for reasons explained above, the Flame just eats my brain and swallows me up whenever I get reminded of it, so mentioning intense times and watching other people flounder uncomfortably, and be unable to find the words, makes me feel less nuts.
So I'm managing about an hour a day, quite enough to be in that state of mind. Much of the drama is still quite upsetting. In particular, a long-running unrequieted love plot was propelled by one of the parties certainties that he could not marry the gal in question without putting her in danger from his family. Today, I turned up a letter from the family which, after months of misunderstanding, boiled down to "you could have married her, you berk, why couldn't you just ask?" - by which point, of course, it was too late. It might have been manipulation or lies - who knows, quite a staggering number of letters are appended with my notes on what was really going on. But it just raked the heartbreak up all over again. I found another, last letter from someone who was about to die on my account. Sort of. She didn't mind death, she said. She was sure she was standing in the way of her sister and her husband's true love. They were quite ill (my fault, I think) and sad (my fault too, I think), but nevertheless I was the person they wanted to confide in last.
I keep promising to update the Doctor Who game. I expect to get around to it. For oldtimes sake, I'm also promising to create "Commute-ocalypse", but I wouldn't hold your breath. Most of my gaming energy is going on a new project. There have been, like, eight different permutations of the Blake's 7 game, my favourite being Friend 4's rejigged Snakes and Ladders - except there aren't any ladders, and the last six squares all contain snakes. Part of the problem is the shadow of the Doctor Who game, which is so brilliantly bonkers - all the better elements evolved accidentally, but it now seems shoddy to write a game any less than its high standards. Doctor Who also has the benefit of a very, very formulaic structure, an obvious perspective to play from, and an obvious set of objectives. How to enshrine that characteristic blend of awful luck, double crosses and sudden turnarounds without it being either frustrating, or turning into an RPG? Ideally, it has to encourage devious, backstabbing and outrageous behavior - even more devious than the Doctor Who game gets. And is there any point, considering the number of people who will ultimately want to play it? But I feel this new version has "it", and could get pretty crazy. Here's to playtesting.
Frankly, anything is better than this.
In the ludicrous, pointless category, I've volunteered to write a script for a Doctor Who fanproject. It has disaster written all over it: the series is set before the Doctor left Gallifrey, in his school days, the type of thing people have their own elaborate headcanons about. And it's hard to have much faith in a premise which involves the Doctor crushing on the Rani, and the Rani fancying the Master. As far as I can tell, the Doctor and the Master are both smitten with the Rani, and one another; and the Rani thinks the whole thing is hilarious. I'm not sure the "showrunner" has much beside hyperbole, but the experience of writing something to a deadline must be healthy. And I have a terrific idea, in part inspired by conversations with Friends 3 and 4, in part by Brazil and in part by the Maughan Library. Something like:
The Doctor can't pass his final year unless he pays back his library fines, which amount to eight billion dollars, five hundred and twenty two credits or the equivalent of eight years servitude on Zeta Six. Luckily, with a whole bay of unattended TARDISes and a little innocent larceny, there's no reason he can't return them before they were ever late and be back in time for tea...
..but on a planet where all documents need to be signed in triplicate (by yourself, from past, present and future), it's not long until the School Council want a word with him. With the Doctor on trial for the first time in his lives...
...and that's where my synopsis stops. I'm trying to pack everything I learnt from the amount of telly I've been watching into it. I need a subplot featuring either the Master and the Rani to be going on at the same time - thank you Robert Holmes - and sympathetic, memorable minor characters to make the world feel real - thank you Holmes and Boucher. I need to make sure the whole thing has a strong plot and doesn't rely on angst and character woobing (thanks for nothing, Chibnall), and that the characters get shat on at least every ten mintues and frustrated at every turn (I love you, Terry Nation), and while we're at it, St. Davies, make sure good guys have their moments of spiteful, unflattering humanity. And an underlying theme/moral/point to make it into an emotional experience (thank you Moff, for making me miss it)
Enough to live up to? My main problem so far is I have two great ideas (trial + library) but they both have to involve the Doctor. It'd make better plot if one of them could be devolved onto one of the other characters.
Lots of television. No movies yet, but I'm going to the library on Monday. Doctor Who is back to being the happiest of happy places. I'm overdosing on Queer as Folk. Getting back into Supernatural. I was amazed to view what, on available evidence, is - wait for it - the darkest ever episode of Blake's 7. I'm sure it can get worse. I love that show.
All told, it's good to be back.
It's taken me 11 days to feel up to writing, but I was amazed to wake up this morning and feel human. Getting back into old habits just takes some time.
The first few days was like wading through the slough of despond, and I only really got out of it by insisting my sister drive me around to find a hula hoop. After scouring the island, I managed to find one I could sort-of use a bit. It's a bright pink monstrosity which lights up red - but only when also playing the nastiest, 8-bit tinny rock you ever heard. It was dirt cheap, and after switching it on you need to give it a kick before it works. But thoroughly worth it: glow hoops are the most terrific thing in the universe, better than Peter Davison in a pile of kittens. Much better, oh yes.
Friend 3 is sure the music it plays is the theme tune from a previous World Cup. Euch...
The only real problem is it's very light and very small, and thus hard to use. To combat this, I've wound metal wire around it a-la-electromagnets. Solved the weight, but it's now murder on the hands. I think I can suffer through it, though - if I tried getting a proper hoop it'd get stuck on the island, like that marvellous poster I've been keeping a space for in London for two years.
Once I dreamed I had star maps all over the bruises on my hands. Because of the mess it makes of my digits, I really can't hoop and play the piano on the same day; piano is winning. I'm currently collecting in-world songs from movies and telly to perform - geektastic. I've discovered the notes B, Bb and C just sound perfection in my voice, and am shifting the key signatures of all the songs I know to include them. Sneaky, but it's like my singing has suddenly leapfrogged into excellence.
What am I up to?
I'm putting a lot of work into the Naked Flame Letters Project - which I haven't touched since it was 30 pages long last summer. It is now 96 pages long. God, I need to get a life, but the idea of it all getting forgotten is just so painful to me that I can't let it go. And I think in 30, 40 years time, everyone will be glad of it.
I'm beginning to have difficulty with it though. I've stupidly left all the irritating letters till last - interminable romantic correspondances, plots which I know bear little resemblance to any sort of canon, and things which are too damn upsetting to touch. One of the problems of digging it all up again is it's like revisiting your most private, your most intense diaries and then attempting to prepare them for public consumption. About four years of my life was spent in that state of mind, so imagine the experience of hearing a song which takes you way back - being dragged backwards is always unpleasant, even for a nice memory - and then imagine it booming at concert volume.
Still, I'm close to being finished. I've started dragging people around and making them help, explaining references I don't know, explaining motivations. It's difficult, because everyone else goes back into old modes as well - complete with frustrating secrecy. It's hard to break through such an ancient mindset and say - look, this is for the future, when you can't remember what you're not telling me now. But I've no right to put it in so many words. It's not like I'm putting everything in. It's not like I can't tell you where the omissions are. Besides, it's a satisfying response too - for reasons explained above, the Flame just eats my brain and swallows me up whenever I get reminded of it, so mentioning intense times and watching other people flounder uncomfortably, and be unable to find the words, makes me feel less nuts.
So I'm managing about an hour a day, quite enough to be in that state of mind. Much of the drama is still quite upsetting. In particular, a long-running unrequieted love plot was propelled by one of the parties certainties that he could not marry the gal in question without putting her in danger from his family. Today, I turned up a letter from the family which, after months of misunderstanding, boiled down to "you could have married her, you berk, why couldn't you just ask?" - by which point, of course, it was too late. It might have been manipulation or lies - who knows, quite a staggering number of letters are appended with my notes on what was really going on. But it just raked the heartbreak up all over again. I found another, last letter from someone who was about to die on my account. Sort of. She didn't mind death, she said. She was sure she was standing in the way of her sister and her husband's true love. They were quite ill (my fault, I think) and sad (my fault too, I think), but nevertheless I was the person they wanted to confide in last.
I keep promising to update the Doctor Who game. I expect to get around to it. For oldtimes sake, I'm also promising to create "Commute-ocalypse", but I wouldn't hold your breath. Most of my gaming energy is going on a new project. There have been, like, eight different permutations of the Blake's 7 game, my favourite being Friend 4's rejigged Snakes and Ladders - except there aren't any ladders, and the last six squares all contain snakes. Part of the problem is the shadow of the Doctor Who game, which is so brilliantly bonkers - all the better elements evolved accidentally, but it now seems shoddy to write a game any less than its high standards. Doctor Who also has the benefit of a very, very formulaic structure, an obvious perspective to play from, and an obvious set of objectives. How to enshrine that characteristic blend of awful luck, double crosses and sudden turnarounds without it being either frustrating, or turning into an RPG? Ideally, it has to encourage devious, backstabbing and outrageous behavior - even more devious than the Doctor Who game gets. And is there any point, considering the number of people who will ultimately want to play it? But I feel this new version has "it", and could get pretty crazy. Here's to playtesting.
Frankly, anything is better than this.
In the ludicrous, pointless category, I've volunteered to write a script for a Doctor Who fanproject. It has disaster written all over it: the series is set before the Doctor left Gallifrey, in his school days, the type of thing people have their own elaborate headcanons about. And it's hard to have much faith in a premise which involves the Doctor crushing on the Rani, and the Rani fancying the Master. As far as I can tell, the Doctor and the Master are both smitten with the Rani, and one another; and the Rani thinks the whole thing is hilarious. I'm not sure the "showrunner" has much beside hyperbole, but the experience of writing something to a deadline must be healthy. And I have a terrific idea, in part inspired by conversations with Friends 3 and 4, in part by Brazil and in part by the Maughan Library. Something like:
The Doctor can't pass his final year unless he pays back his library fines, which amount to eight billion dollars, five hundred and twenty two credits or the equivalent of eight years servitude on Zeta Six. Luckily, with a whole bay of unattended TARDISes and a little innocent larceny, there's no reason he can't return them before they were ever late and be back in time for tea...
..but on a planet where all documents need to be signed in triplicate (by yourself, from past, present and future), it's not long until the School Council want a word with him. With the Doctor on trial for the first time in his lives...
...and that's where my synopsis stops. I'm trying to pack everything I learnt from the amount of telly I've been watching into it. I need a subplot featuring either the Master and the Rani to be going on at the same time - thank you Robert Holmes - and sympathetic, memorable minor characters to make the world feel real - thank you Holmes and Boucher. I need to make sure the whole thing has a strong plot and doesn't rely on angst and character woobing (thanks for nothing, Chibnall), and that the characters get shat on at least every ten mintues and frustrated at every turn (I love you, Terry Nation), and while we're at it, St. Davies, make sure good guys have their moments of spiteful, unflattering humanity. And an underlying theme/moral/point to make it into an emotional experience (thank you Moff, for making me miss it)
Enough to live up to? My main problem so far is I have two great ideas (trial + library) but they both have to involve the Doctor. It'd make better plot if one of them could be devolved onto one of the other characters.
Lots of television. No movies yet, but I'm going to the library on Monday. Doctor Who is back to being the happiest of happy places. I'm overdosing on Queer as Folk. Getting back into Supernatural. I was amazed to view what, on available evidence, is - wait for it - the darkest ever episode of Blake's 7. I'm sure it can get worse. I love that show.
All told, it's good to be back.
16:50 |
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