Punky is off to Cork Conference...

We're off to talk about Punky in Cork!

Specifically, Gerard O'Rourke, producer, Monster Animation, Aimee Richardson, who brought Punky to life, and myself have been invited to take part in an “Arts for Living” Conference will take place in CIT's Cork School of Music (Curtis Auditorium) on Wednesday 27th June 2012.

The Conference runs from between 9am and 5pm and looks like a really interesting day. We three will take to the stage for half an hour to talk about how Punky came into being, why it had to and what impact it has had internationally, locally and personally.

The focus of the Conference is to explore how national and international arts projects are being developed by and with persons with a disability. Really looking forward to being there and it's a thrill to be asked to speak!

Have a look at the site in case you have a chance of attending:

http://irishperformingarts.ie/index.php/events/performances/arts-for-living-conference

How to Write & Sell A Feature in 6 Months...

Interesting article, if a little heavy on the 'you have six months to live' aspect that I'd be too superstitious to use in case I made it come true. And if I had only six months, my bucket list would be other stuff... but...

Basically, Carson Reeves says that if you can convince yourself that you have only six months left, you can write a commercial script that you feel passionate about and that you will sell... Mind you, not living in LA might be a disadvantage when it comes to making all the phone calls he suggests (around 200) but still, the principle and the meat of the article are stimulating...
http://scriptshadow.blogspot.ie/2011/11/article-how-to-sell-script-in-six.html

Let me know what you think!

Do you have other methods to achieve the same goal?

Blue Skies ... Too Distracting?

Not sure.

Once I'm deeply involved in a piece of work, I don't even notice the sun is shining. Then I look up and feel guilty that I'm wasting it and, as we all know, we can't afford to waste good weather in Ireland.

Certainly not good, warm, sun killing-grass sort of weather.

But then deadlines guilt hits in, even if they are my own deadlines and not being able to tell if I've made any progress - which is often the way when you're in the middle of a project. When you can't see the wood for the squirrels and bison nibbling on the top branches and pooping all over the keyboard.

Vivid imaginations may be more of a distraction than sunshine.

I can write any number of doggerel rhymes about poker-playing flies and and tap-dancing snails when I'm meant to be writing something else that needs to make some sort of sense.

Thought of tying myself to the seat but then decided to make a coffee instead.

Then lunch.

Then had to hang washing out to catch the sun. Clothes just smell better when they've been dried outside. Memories of living in Australia flood back so I have another coffee to help me focus. And chocolate. Lots of guilty chocolate.

Then I want to sleep so I sit outside and read the newspaper.

And all the while the guilt builds up.... And up.... And THEN the work gets done. Heaps of it. All in a flurry and anyone who distracts me then has to step into the unfocussed lens of my fictional world to get attention. I could be in the middle of some tumultuous storm and I wouldn't know unless the computer died. (Though I would probably have to turn the light on in my shed).

So, on the whole, sunny days aren't the distraction at all.

Life is.

WULFIE is DONE!

Six years after inception, WULFIE is ready to go.

Out into the world, to find a creative and talented publisher who will bring him to the World of Kids With Imagination who like fun stories...

It's just under 28,000 words long, in 25 chapters; aimed at children from six to nine, but also younger kids because it should be a fun story for the parents to read aloud.

Wulfie started life as stories I made up for my daughter when she was this age... Our laundry basket is even named after him although it is neither purple nor a wolf and is, unfortunately, unable to change shape despite the effort of people to stuff more clothes into it.

I would love to get feedback if anyone out there would like a book to read to their kids... Or to read to your inner kid! Feedback from an earlier draft included the comment that the language reminded them of Roald Dahl -- yep, I am HOLDING onto that bit, nursing it so it grows in strength and verity...

Roald Dahl gave tips to children's writers once that I wrote on a scrap of paper and pinned to the wall. I have no idea where the list is but it did mention to make the adults meaner than mean and to ensure every story featured chocolate.

My story features chocolate. Lots of chocolate cake!

Which reminds me, there's a cappuccino chocolate Swiss roll sitting in the fridge that I promised myself and my daughter a slab of as soon as I finished. She has been waiting patiently, albeit with little visits to my shed to remind me that it exists and is VERY, very tempting.

Got to go eat cake!

For kids with imagination: WULFIE, the first book

“Once upon a time there was a little girl called Libby. Her family didn’t like her very much. She tried to be nice to everyone but it wasn’t much use.”
“You’re not telling it right.”
“Am too…”
“Are not! Should be ‘Once upon a time there was a Big Bad Wolf...’ Every good story has a scary start. You should start with Rex being eaten.”
“Once upon a time, a little girl called Libby bopped The Big Bad Wolf on the head with her notebook and told him to mind his own toenails.”
“If you’re going to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“All huffy and snooty and GIRLY.”
“This is my story Wulfie… You’re just in it.”
“Oh,” said Wulfie and shrank a bit. He did this when he was upset. Or sad. Or feeling unloved. It’s much easier to feel unloved if you can curl into a ball and fall asleep in someone’s pocket.

Despite stated intentions to work on a stage play - which sits in pieces on my kitchen table, promising to be funny - I have found myself drawn back into the world of WULFIE and his pal Libby, aged 8. It's a book for 5-8 year-olds, based on an animation series I developed, which was based on stories I made up for my own daughter when she was about 7.

I had already honed the first three chapters so that they were ready to go out but then I asked my sister and niece to try them out on my little great nephew. It is such a fantastic help if you can get people to read your work before you send it out. But based on initial comments (there was mention of a similarity in the writing to that of Roald Dahl to which I am clinging with glee), I decided, just in case he likes the first three chapters, I need to have the rest of it polished up too.

The next reader is in Canberra. Apparently, so long as it doesn't mention the slaughter of cows, it has to be an improvement on the last books he got!

Polishing, in the case of WULFIE means reading it aloud, pretending to be anywhere between the ages of five and eight. But that's not too hard. As plenty of my friends will attest, I haven't really ever grown up, not fully.

It also means having fun with language and image and rhythm, making sure it all fires along at a good pace and is playful to read. Not talking down to kids but making sure the story will carry them along and keep them turning pages.

I'm not sure of the beginning yet. I'm not even 100% sure I'm starting this series with the right story. But I am certain that it will be worth sending out when I'm done.

I hope!

I have finally finished rewriting my comedy with romantic aspirations, The Perfect Man....

Feels very strange not to have her sitting on my shoulder whispering strange and fearsome mutterings!

I'm wondering if, by including the word 'Perfect' in the title, I have added an unfortunate jinx to the script. Something to live up to that most of us can't.

I know that the rewrite was not going well at all while it's working title on my computer screen was 'Perfect'. I tore it apart, tore it apart some more, took all the characters out into their own individual files and tried to put it back together again. And again. And again. It was a case of five steps forward, then a pummel to the stomach and I was ten steps off to one side clutching a hairy monster of a sequence that wouldn't work. And feeling as if I was underwater. I could see how I wanted it to be.... I just couldn't work out the steps to get there.

Then I reverted to its original title, 'Sleep Tight Snow White' for the duration of the rewrite. On the computer screen, it was saved as simply 'Snow' and it became do-able again.

Now she has gone out to readers, who will hopefully have time to read and love it (yup, I'm not looking for much) and then I'll know how to make it better.

But for now, she's off my shoulders, I am trying not to think of her- it's hard, she's been trailing me for months, if not years - and I am feeling physically taller. It's odd. And it won't last. It'll only last till I get bogged down in the next rewrite of another script that is glaring at me from the shelf. Or I get feedback and try to make sense of it so I can work out how to make it better. Sob.

Which is why I'm turning my attention not to another script, not for a week or so, but back to my pre-teen book about my lovely little and occasionally huge-as-a-house purple wolf.

Happy scribblings.

What Broadcasters (DON'T) Want... # 3

Since we all know the joys of getting notes we don't want on scripts that we want to be perfect, here - again from Alix Wiseman, Head of Sales and Acquisitions, Aardmann Animation who spoke at the Media Focus in Animation seminar last month - are the 'dislikes' she has come across.

1. Too many songs - they're expensive to dub.

2. Narrators - apparently French broadcasters hate narrators in animation

3. Fantasy-based shows. They want the shows to be "relatable".

This may be why a storyline I wrote for a series that was produced was rejected as being too culturally biased. I had been given the title of the episode which involved "... and the North Pole". I wrote a piece with Santa in it, only he'd moved to the South Pole because no-one loved him. When the central character finds him and tries to make things right, all her magic backfires because she's at the wrong pole. Magnetically.

So all her spells have the opposite (devastating/ comic/ chaotic) effect. But it wouldn't be acceptable in Asia or something; too culturally-specific.

4. Excessive violence in boy-skewed shows.

5. Anthropomorphic vehicle shows. Apparently there's a fatigue in the market.

6. Inappropriate content.

Here we come to p.c. gone mad. I developed something once where I was advised that poison could not be put out for a mouse in case some child watching tried to eat mouse poison. Or climb in a window. Or climb a tree. If you think about it in a positive or whiskey-fuelled mood, you could say it forces us to come up with something more brilliant/ creative/ inspired. But there are many other moods to have in between...

And here's the truly mad one:

7. Poo.

The American broadcasters will not accept the depiction of poo in an animated series. It cost Aardmann thousands to digitally remove every poo in their first series of Shaun The Sheep. (http://www.shaunthesheep.com/)

The poo, she was told, was a deal breaker. Series 2, apparently, has no poo.

Not one.

Not even the whiff of a poo hiding behind a burlap sack.

Sad.