Remembering why we write...

Sometimes, writers forget that what we do is tell stories - we get bogged down in getting a project finished, out there, getting feedback, rewriting, honing, filtering, perfecting, getting the nerve out to send it out or to finish it in the first place... What people want is a good story; it might tug at their heart strings or simply entertain them for an hour or two. There has to be no more magical profession than being in the business of doing that?!
So this week, take time away from whatever major writing project you've set yourself and write about your first memory of writing, of reading, your first experience of a film or a play or the spoken word... Tap into the magic that inspired you and have fun with words that don't necessarily have to lead you anywhere.

Dad's Red Dress is starting to get some reader's feedback, and I have to admit, it's lovely to hear that people are enjoying my work! 

It's a beautiful story excellently told...one of the best novels I've read in bloody ages. - Patrick Chapman, author of Slow Clocks of Decay

What a great story, filled with complexity - original and believable, every character so well developed and totally three dimensional. I loved the intricacies of each one, and Jessie is just a delight, I was with her all the way! A beautiful relationship with her Dad, and her little sister! It's wonderful, just wonderful!!  - Caroline Farrell, author of Arkyne and Lady Beth

Very funny and real young-teen novel about a very not-'normal' family. - Claire Hennessey, author of Nothing Tastes as Good

And on Amazon: 

What a great story, filled with complexity - original and believable, every character so well developed and totally three dimensional. I loved the intricacies of each one, and Jessie is just a delight, I was with her all the way! A beautiful relationship with her Dad, and her little sister! It's wonderful, just wonderful!! - Librarians Cellar

Dad's Red Dress is a story for our times, and one that can be enjoyed by all of the family. The characters are vivid, the story is fresh, and the dialogue is sparkling. I can heartily recommend it. - Anon.

A sparkling and rewarding read. From the very first paragraph, I was sucked into the colourful and crazy world of young Jessie Keane. Her exotic family exudes warmth and togetherness. and the reader is left in no doubt that this is a loving and safe environment for her and her sister. However, there is a 'secret' within the family, that is clear from the title of the book, and that secret threatens to unsettle Jessie's life and bring the bullies back to taunt her - again. This serious subject matter is dealt with sensitively by L.J. Sedgwick, and even better than that, it is uproariously funny. I found myself re-reading sentences and entire paragraphs over again, in pure joy. I haven't enjoyed a novel as much in years. - Patricia Groves.

Proof copies -- how real they make it all feel

Cover design by Aoife Henkes. 

Took delivery of a small brown box this morning. Fortunately, unlike the film Seven, there wasn't a severed head inside. 

Instead, I unwrapped three proof copies of my first book, all fresh and newborn and real.  

Cover design by Aoife Henkes

I really wasn't expecting the way I'd feel. It's so real when you hold your book in your hand and flick through the pages, dipping in and out as if you hadn't written it just to see how it sounds. 

And you hope readers will love it as much as you loved writing it and creating these characters and this world....


It's already available on Amazon as an e-book but I should have a date soon for the print version. If you're waiting for the print version, here's a short trailer to whet your appetite.

Twitter: @DadsRedDress               

Www.facebook.com/DadsRedDress/

Writers and self doubt...

What is it about the creating that as soon as we should be jumping up and down and hollering about our latest creation, we start doubting if it's good enough?

I mean, maybe it could be better? Then, absolutely, it could be better! Then, Oh my god, it's useless, what am I doing, what if nobody reads it/ loves it/worship at my feet?

When the draft has been written, the writer starts self-doubting and the writer's loyal companion feels your pain - and the lack of walks while you've been working feverishly to finish this draft... 

I think it's part of the process. It's also why, when you finish a piece of work, we all know how necessary it is - if time allows - to put it into a drawer for six weeks and work on something else. You come back with fresher eyes and see things you'd missed. Or solutions to things that weren't quite sitting right in terms of story or character. 

But then you get ready to publish - and this is my first time doing this... You get an editor, then you re-edit, you find people willing to beta-read it, and you re-edit, eventually you get it formatted and you go through it again for hidden mistakes and on and on. My proof print copies of Dad's Red Dress are due next week and I'm dreading the typos I have missed! 

And secretly hoping there will be none! 

Last Weds I launched the e-book version on Kindle and now have some wonderful feedback from readers, which does something to assuage the self doubt while I work on the next book!

It's a beautiful story excellently told...one of the best novels I've read in bloody ages. - Patrick Chapman, author of Slow Clocks of Decay

What a great story, filled with complexity - original and believable, every character so well developed and totally three dimensional. I loved the intricacies of each one, and Jessie is just a delight, I was with her all the way! A beautiful relationship with her Dad, and her little sister! It's wonderful, just wonderful!!  - Caroline Farrell

And on Amazon: 

A sparkling and rewarding read. From the very first paragraph, I was sucked into the colourful and crazy world of young Jessie Keane. Her exotic family exudes warmth and togetherness. and the reader is left in no doubt that this is a loving and safe environment for her and her sister. However, there is a 'secret' within the family, that is clear from the title of the book, and that secret threatens to unsettle Jessie's life and bring the bullies back to taunt her - again. This serious subject matter is dealt with sensitively by L.J. Sedgwick, and even better than that, it is uproariously funny. I found myself re-reading sentences and entire paragraphs over again, in pure joy. I haven't enjoyed a novel as much in years. - Patricia Groves.

Dad's Red Dress is a story for our times, and one that can be enjoyed by all of the family. The characters are vivid, the story is fresh, and the dialogue is sparkling. I can heartily recommend it. - Anon.

Dad's Red Dress... One sleep to go!

On Wednesday my first novel, Dad's Red Dress, comes out. 

Amazing cover by Aoife Henke 

A few years ago, tired of waiting on other people's decisions and disillusioned at the number of scripts scowling at me from the shelves - even ones that everyone liked but couldn't raise funding on - I started to turn some of them into books, starting with the family features. 

Dad's Red Dress danced into prose and revelled in the freedom of it! 

So what's it about?

Having just moved to Ireland from California, Jessie is determined that nobody at school will find out about her dad's cross-dressing. Not because she minds but because when they do, bullying inevitably follows and she wants to protect herself and Laura. 

This story wanted to be heard. It's a strong story but I've tried to tell it lightly and honestly, from Jessie's point of view. This is her world and she's still finding her way in it. But I've had the idea for it since the early 80s. It first came out in 2002 as a feature script. That was my main form of writing at that stage. It got a huge amount of traction and interest, even a bit of competition from two German production companies who both wanted it and it was steaming ahead toward full production. Key casting was being talked about and then, nothing. 

Jessie wants her family to be normal. Really normal. Boringly so.

Thing is her kid sister, Laura thinks she’s been abducted by the Virgin Mary – twice; once on a motorbike with a pink afro; her step-mum makes nude sculptures and her dad becomes Mandy when the door closes.

Trouble is, she's not really in control of what happens next and things are about to get a whole lot more complicated... 

So now, after waiting over 30 years (scary how time speeds up! My mother always said it did, when you got older and I believe her now!), Dad's Red Dress is available on Amazon here.

You can also keep track of what's happening on 
Twitter: @DadsRedDress

Facebook:  Dad's Red Dress

What to do with the feature script that isn't made...

My writing muse... patient even when I give her devil hair

What do you do with a script that isn’t made?

Or a play that theatres aren't interested in because it's too small/ too different?

This is the issue with so many writers, so many fantastic scripts and so many great stories.

The majority of scripts are never produced, they never snuggle into the width of a TV or cinema screen or grace a large or even small theatre.

They sit on our shelves, making us feel slightly deflated as they increase in number. They go out and hunt for directors, producers, sometimes find them, get optioned, developed, gather awards and commendations, even bought... and still end up back on our shelves.

About seven years ago, after over a decade of working as a screenwriter,  I looked at my family of feature scripts and decided to turn the family features into children’s books. At least then they had a chance of another life. Another selection of rejection letters! At least, even if they weren't published, they could be read.

Scripts written for the screen are not easy to read if you're not used to the form.

Strangely - or not! - adapting them to prose was not nearly as simple as I thought it would be!

The first one, which will be my next book out, seemed straightforward... I added prose around the dialogue and expanded the scene settings and characters... and discovered that I had three or even four Sundays in a row.

What happened during the weeks in between?

In film, that wasn't important. It's a visual medium. You sweep people away into your world and they don't ask where Tuesday went. 

That was a problem.

I filled the weeks in only then the book was too long and flat... The best advice I got, from writer and editor, Claire Hennessy, came when I sent her one of my books to read. Scriptwriters writing novels tend to feel they have to fill in the gaps.

But we don’t need to do this. A book has to be a fun and exciting and moving read. A page-turned. That’s our job.

So here I am bringing out my first book, Dad’s Red Dress...

A mock up of the book - can't wait to hold one!

It has been a nerve-wracking ride getting to this point but it feels lovely to be in control. To be able to put it out there, in a way screenwriters can’t unless they become directors.  So many people have helped me get here and made sure I got to this point – readers in Ireland, Australia, the US, England to start. 

Still I held back because I needed a cover and didn’t know what to ask for. Up steps a fantastic young graphic designer (Aoife Henkes) Another friend, novelist and screenwriter is managing our social media campaign, others who have self-published are at the end of the line to answer stupid questions.

All that’s left now is to let it go and gather friends!(On the stage script question at the top of the blog - you put it on yourself but that's a blog and a whole set of hurdles that can be overcome for another blog. 

Returning to DCU in a new guise

Pity the Masters students of Multi-media and Film & TV studies at DCU! Next Monday I return to my old Uni, nearly 31 years after I left with my Communication Studies degree, to teach the screenwriting module for both these MAs.

When I arrived in the campus back in 1983, it was so new. There were 2000 students in all - we knew everyone to see if not by name - and it was still called NIHED, the National Institute of Higher Education, Dublin. It was a strange hotchpotch of a course - we had 40 hours per week in the first term! Some of it was stimulating, some of it we couldn't see the reason for, some of it offered glimpses of areas we would pursue. We did everything from TV, radio, photography, graphics to psychology, linguistics, statistics and mass communication theory. (And I know I've left something out!)

The course was still in its infancy. The Uni itself was just three years old so the first Communication Studies students had just finished. (It was a four year course compressed into three; we did work experience in the second summer and our thesis in the third.)

But I got to publish my first writing magazine, help set up the drama society and direct my first play (Zigger Zagger by Peter Terson. The cast was enormous; we had three rehearsals running concurrently for three months.) And I went back to direct my own first play just after finishing.

DCU then was somewhere so new that wecould start things and that was fantastic. As was the group in my year, all of us with different ideas of what careers the course would help us into.

I can't wait to go back!

Dad's Red Dress... Coming out soon

I'm in the final stages of preparing to publish my  novel, Dad's Red Dress. Excited and nervous; every time I look at the manuscript, I tweak another line, find another typo, read a sentence and decide it could be tighter/ shorter/ longer/funnier/stranger/ cut! 

But this story has been waiting in the wings and it can't wait to be read... We're holding on to each other, the book and I, ready for the strange dance that is publication.

Cover design : Aoife Henkes

So what is the book about?

Jessie wants her family to be normal. Really normal. Boringly so.

Trouble is her kid sister thinks she’s been abducted by the Virgin Mary – twice; once on a motorbike; her step-Mum makes nude sculptures and her Dad becomes Mandy when the door closes.

And that, as Jessie is about to learn, is only the start…

I would love to keep you in touch with what's happening...either on this blog or via

Twitter on @DadsRedDress

or 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DadsRedDress/ @DadsRedDress

SOME BACKSTORY

The history of DRD is interesting for me and that's why I wanted to get the story right. The germ that inspired me was planted when I was a teenager myself. A man my parents knew was transitioning  -- but, and this shocked my parents, she was also staying with his wife and family.

What horrified my parents equally - but which I thought was remarkably brave and possibly necessary financially - was that she was partially financing the necessary operations with a published diary/ expose of what he was going through in, I think, the Evening Press. I can also remember the paper being closed when I began to show an interest! In one particular two page spread, I read something about part of the jaw being chipped away to create high cheekbones, which sounded immensely painful.

But also, I was a child so I wondered how the kids felt and that's where this story comes from. I never met the woman who inspired me; I've never even spoken to her or her family. That would have felt deeply invasive. The story I created came from inside my mind in ten days in 2002 when, faced with the deadline for a script competition, I wrote what was originally called Jessie Jones is Nearly ten. 

She was, then. In the book, she's 13 and called Jessie Keane.

In it's original incarnation, it was a family film, despite the subject matter, because it was told from the perspective of Jessie, who was nine at the time. (In the novel, she's now 13.) 


Who knows, once the book is out, maybe the film will finally follow?

Feedback/ Bluecat Screenplay Competition 2011

"I enjoyed the subject matter. Sexual identity makes for an interesting story, and here, the writer gives us a story of a man becoming a woman, only it’s from the perspective of the man’s daughter. This is fascinating and complex. This family is full of love. They’ll never stop loving each other. Everyone wants to do the right thing. But still, Jessie struggles to come to terms with her father’s impending change.

"And why not? After all, she is going through her own transformation. She’s becoming an adolescent.  Her life is full of questions. She’s only beginning to discover herself, and yet, she must somehow understand her father. It’s a great set up for the story..."

"I love the way you describe the loading of the truck “swallowing everything up efficiently.” It makes for a much more interesting read than something along the lines of “chairs and tables are stacked in the back of a truck.”

"You seem to have a talent for breathing life into inanimate objects (“Jessie feeds coins into a hungry pay phone”). Descriptions like this all but guarantee you’ll have some engaged readers. The way you characterize Laura as being “not so angelic now” after her veil is snatched is likewise effective.

"Additionally, I really like how you come back to her veil at the very end of the piece (“. . .Laura dressed like a white rabbit, but with the veil”). It helps to present a genuine sense of closure and finality."