January 2, 2014 - Talking is the same as writing...right?

Okay, to be honest, today I didn't actually write anything on this script. A bit poor, given my roaring effort yesterday.

However, I did talk a lot about writing, and I figure that also helps.

I spent the afternoon with my good buddies Trevor and Monica. For the last three years we've been writing a TV show together - an 8 part comedy/drama currently entitled 'Snakebite and Black', about a young Australian girl who moves to London to work in a pub, but finds herself well and truly out of her depth. It's a coming-of-age piece, based on our own experiences, and we are freaking in LOVE with it.

Unfortunately it's been a difficult year, so we haven't done as much work on it as we wanted... but today we got to chat about our plans for the new year, and our goals for this series. Even if we never get it made (it'd have to be a co-pro, and that's a hard thing to wrangle), we're having a ball writing it and we want to see it through. Man, it felt good to be talking about this show again.

When I was reading 'Save the Cat Strikes Back', there was a section in there saying how you should do one thing every day that furthers your career - if it's not writing, it should be networking, pitching, listing ideas, etc. In this sense, I would count today as being incredibly productive - we talked about 'Snakebite', I got to pitch 'Kimberley Rose' to Trevor, and we also talked about some ideas for an interactive theatre piece we want to develop this year.

I love talking about writing. I absolutely love bouncing ideas off other people. To be honest that's probably one of the reasons it's taken so long to write a feature - I've been a very collaborative writer up until this point. Trevor and I have been writing together since we were about 17 years old when we were running a theatre company together (as evidenced by this godawful website - it's crazy that angelfire still exists) and wrote a wonderful film together called 'Pisces, Arise' (which, unfortunately, we totally ruined in production...but I still maintain it's one of the best things I've ever written).

Not having that discipline, or that other person to use as a sounding board, has made it hard to start this feature, I think... and it's also a bit terrifying to step out on your own and see if you really are any good without your creative 'other half'.

I guess only time will tell who the real genius between us is...let's hope this doesn't turn into a 'Red Dwarf' scenario.