Never Surrender
I never know how honest to be with this blog thing. Anybody can pick up on these confessions made in a self-counselling splurge of outtage: past employers, future employers, fellow screenwriters etc. Who knows who might be reading? Anybody? Hello?
I've decided to take my chances anyhow. If there was ever a time for self-counselling....any type of counselling, it would be now. I can always delete the post when I come to my senses. Actually, can I? Ah, sod it.
After my last blog post filled with hopes and ambition for the year, let me primarily say how annoyingly bleak the beginning of the year has been. Rejection after rejection after rejection. Rejected documentary pitches from Clearcut Communications, rejected business idea from the Leed Met Business Concept Competition, rejected short and feature script from B3 Blank Slate and Featurelab competitions, rejected comedy scripts from the BBC Comedy Scheme, producing a 60 second version of 'Groundhog Day' for the Empire competition and missing the deadline by 5 hours (okay, that was my fault).
And then there were the jobs - MTV internship rejection, VH1 and MTV Base development rejections and most recently (ie. an hour ago) a rejection from the Northern Routes scheme for Script Supervisor. Confessedly, the interview didn't go ideal. Goddamn.
There's still hope, though I'm not too sure how much of it. Yet to hear back from BBC Writers Room and Babycow regarding the second draft of the black comedy "Til Jihad Do Us Part" (which was what I primarily pitched for the Spark Scheme). YoYo Media still haven't replied about my application for Development Researcher and maybe, just maybe, Working Title could generously give me a place on their internship....hmmm, not too many competitors there....
So what is going right? I'm getting a little fitter, thanks to training for the Great Manchester Run in May (sponsor me for Marie Curie Cancer Research on the website...coming soon...). The Spark Scheme's going pretty well (as far as I know) and the 'Sopranos-in-the-mosque' TV series I'm co-developing with a few other writers is progressing. I've had a little positive reception from Huddersfield Home FM and may once again step into being radio presenter. I'm making some extra cash from being an extra (thanks Finn - might be on the Spooks spin-off!) and working part-time as a data-inputter at my dad's surgery (yes, it has finally come to this). I'm healthy, I have wonderful friends and family and....
BY GOD, DO I NEED SOME DIRECTION!!!
The Spark Screenwriting Scheme is now coming to an end, and it really is daunting on me that I really have no idea what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my days. Will it really continue to be like this - a long stream of rejections whilst typing away weird medical words that make no sense at my dad's surgery in the dodgy end of Halifax?
I remember when I first started the MA in Screenwriting in 2005 and we were taken on an industry week in London. There was a guy who I spoke to there, the bitterest of writers, who had been writing scripts for five years and was still looking for a commission. Spring chicken that I was, I enthusiastically/naively thought I'd send out scripts within a year and have a commission within two. After the multitude of rejections I've had, I'm now in fear of becoming the same bitter, twisted man that the writer I met was.
Saying that, screenwriting was never supposed to be easy. I must have some talent, or else I wouldn't be on this scheme. But there's only so many rejections you can take until you really start questioning whether it's the right thing for you.
You know something? I don't care.
I didn't waste the last three years of studying an MA, and developing a multitude of scripts as well as hundreds of potential ideas for nothing. Only the strong will survive, and generally to be a screenwriter, you have to be determined/nuts. I'm going to continue doing exactly what I'm doing (though I'll probably go to interviews in a suit from now on - doh!) and send off my developed scripts to as many production companies that accept solicited scripts as possible. There's got to be some producer out there who is on the same page as me. Maybe?
As it's the last Spark residential this weekend, I'm guessing there might be a chance that this will be my last blog entry, so, on a slightly different tangent, I'll use this opportunity to say thanks to Screen Yorkshire for letting me onto the scheme and also to the great guys in my writing group - Mark, Finn, JC and Boff - for the brilliant feedback, not forgetting the 'best' script editor I've had for the past three years, Ann Tobin.
Right, I'm off to apply for the Moxie Makers Challenge and following that, possibly put a few more pitches in for the "Pitch in Time" competition at the Screenwriter's Festival. I might even have time to send in the 'Groundhog day' thing for the Be Kind, Rewind Youtube competition.
Never give up, never surrender.
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