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So, as an act of motivation I was thinking I might start putting up some of my old scripts with a bit of commentary. I'm hoping it might help me get back into a script-writing mentality. I'm still working through the novel revision, but I'm beginning to think it might be healthy for me to have another project on the back burner.
Oh Sara, you saucy minx.
Wheee!And experimenting. Bear with me.
Bakery Script - 1st Draft (Full Screen)
Love is Strange - 1st Draft
Not given up yet. But yesterday I:
- Worked. No Josh, so I had to get in extra early to get the new comics out on the shelves and get as much of the filing done as possible. Started at 7am and worked through lunch so was able to finish at 2.30pm, which wasn't bad at all. Good morning too: got the filing finished by about 10.15. Otherwise did the Marvel advance order adjustments and worked on the till.
- Happily my throat continues to feel better. Since we last spoke I've been hit with a dose of tonsillitis, for which I am now on antibiotics. The last few days I've felt a notable improvement each day, to the point where I no longer feel it's necessary to be popping nurofen through the day. As someone who's not a fan of pill-popping, that's a good thing.
- Went home, settled in a little, and then sat down to play Mass Effect, which I've just started in the aftermath of Dragon Age Origins. Going from one sprawling RPG into another might not be the smartest move I've ever made, but DAO has given me a real taste for games I can sink my teeth into. Happily, given it's a sci-fi game, the setting and interface are quite refreshing after months of fantasy tropes. Mustn't let it dominate my days off, but at the same time it offers good value for money at a time when I have none.
- My novel revision has been painfully slow. Keep falling off the wagon for one reason or another, all of which amount to excuses, really. There certainly have been legitimate reasons for not getting it done first thing in the morning, but none for why I couldn't shunt the time to later in the day. If I'm going to get this done, I'll need to adjust the attitude that evenings are somehow out of bounds.
- Began the slow process of sorting our South Africa trip photos. Seriously, we've got around 2,700 photos to get through. Many of them will wind up being deleted as a part of this process, but between tagging and labelling everything, the going is slow. We spent about an hour on it all told. I think I'll use this once it's done as an experiment in Picasa Web Albums.
- Read Hope Larson's new graphic novel for teens, "Mercury". It's a dual-thread narrative about a girl returning to her home town after a few years away, alongside the story of her family in the 1860's, whose lives are disrupted when a stranger comes looking for gold . It's an enjoyable read, touching on first loves, fitting in, the relationship of mothers and daughters, and a bit of good old fashioned melodrama. Certainly something I'll recommend.
- Watched the pilot of Firefly. I've been of a mind to watch Serenity again lately, and I figured that I'd watch the whole series again, with the film as the capper. I've only watched them once before, and it was a little disjointed, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. Funnily enough, the shorter length of the season makes it all the more appealing. Anyway, I still enjoyed the pilot, although I do find Whedon's tough guy dialogue a little hard to swallow. His knack for humour and drama still hold up very well, every time someone wants to sound hard, it's cringe-worthy. They sound like teenagers who REALY WANT TO SOUND TOUGH. And it's about that subtle. As per the first time, Adam Baldwin is by far the most enjoyable character, as bastards usually are. Looking forward to the rest.
- And then I did rest.
(Just keep your cool, Andrew. no one will notice. Just keep on as though nothing's gone awry...)
Hey, good to see you all! Again. Just like every day since I recommitted to doing this every day. Yeah! Whattaya know, yesterday I:
- Well, on Monday night I had a bad dose of food poisoning, which took me out of action all Tuesday as well. Tuesday, my day off. Sucks, bro. Anyhow, the upshot of all that is that yesterday morning I was feeling pretty wrecked. A long night of vomiting had left my abdomen feeling a little worked over, and I was generally a mess of aches and pains. Stomach felt okay though, so bonus there, although it must be said I was feeling a little queasy by the end of the day. Pretty much all better now, though!
- Needless to say, didn't get a lot done in the morning. Read the latest Economist Technology Quarterly.
- Worked. Bank holiday weekend meant the delivery was delayed a day. Did a bit of library stuff, which I haven't looked at in a while, only to discover that there was some pretty pressing stuff. So caught up on that, did some work on shop shift-around planning and did the new comics logging after Nat went home ill. Spent the late afternoon packing library deliveries.
- Came home and flaked out. Watched Heavy Metal Britannia, which was a very pleasant watch, don't get me wrong, but was ultimately a bit of a puff piece. It started better than it went on, but felt incomplete and sightly unsatisfying. Gave me some good Spotify tips, though. I've got the prog rock one lined up to watch as well, which I've heard a lot of positive things about.
- (Hey, I'm writing this with my netbook perched on my lap. I have, I can honestly say, never done that before. Not that it's a life-changer for me, but I'm just sayin' is all. I'll tell you one thing: it's typo hell.)
- Watched a few Daily Shows, which I've now started following regularly, as opposed to occasionally catching it on More4. I've taken to just watching the pre-interview segment unless the subject looks interesting. I love the first two-thirds of the show, but the interviews generally fall a little flat.
- Watched a Nurse Jackie. Boredom is starting to crawl into the edges of my Nurse Jackie experience. After an intriguing start, it just feels a little repetitive now. Still enjoying it, but watch yourself, Nurse Jackie! Don't make my shit-list!
- Read a bit of Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box, which had a scene that was almost identical to something I had in mind for my ghost story from years back, then went to sleep.
Believe it or not, I did actually do one of these yesterday. I even posted the bloody thing, or so I thought. But lo and behold, no sign of it this morning. Instead I have an autosaved draft of the first paragraph. Bah! Anyway, other than writing things that have been lost to time, yesterday I:
- Carried on my first pass over Small Perils, the NaNo novel. It's not the final title, but it's better than constantly referring to it as "the novel". I'm behind on the first lesson of the revision course I'm doing. Each new lesson is emailed out a week after the last (in my case Monday evenings), and my second is languishing in my inbox. But that's okay. On the forums there are people still working through lesson three, six months down the line. But the first few lessons involve complete readthroughs each time. Plus, I've not been great about making the time for it. Or getting the actual manuscript printed out, which I only got done on Monday. Interesting process so far, anyway!
- Worked. New comics day. It's weird now that we do the filing downstairs, I don't actually spend that much time on the till on a Thursday. I'm going to try and be up there for lunch time (12-2), just to keep up contact with our regulars. I'll also be there at the end of the day I would assume. Still, it is nice to have that extra time in my week.
- Headed home, where I intended to play some Xbox, as Alex was out. Instead I had one of those frustrating evenings where time shot by and next thing it was around 11.30, and all I had done was watch an episode of TV Burp and a few trailers. Annoying.
- And that was about it! Really unimpressive day, I'm afraid! Well, I guess they can't all be winners.
Like a lagging bullet, "yesterday" I:
- Worked. I got in early, as Josh and I were heading to a graphic novel workshop for London librarians. We jumped in a cab and headed out to Whitechapel, to the Idea Works there. Idea Works, by the way, was apparently an abortive attempt to rebrand libraries for the 21st century before a new marketing guy came along and decided that “library” was actually a brand after all. No doubt hundreds of thousands of pounds later. Local government really is like a sucker on the street corner with his bag hanging open. Anyway, very modern place, all quite nice inside.
- We did a GN workshop last year which was a bit of a disaster. Well, not really on the whole, but I gave a speech that completely fell apart thanks to my nerves, so I was a little anxious about having another presentation this time; a ¾ hour one, no less. It went fine though, mainly as I was just rabbiting on about stock. Also, we had a smaller group discussion in the morning which made me feel a lot more comfortable with the people there. So the day went quite well, all told. Certainly made some good progress winning people around to specialist supply for their GNs. An got to knock off at 4.
- Went home. Fully played the Trials HD demo, which now leaves me wanting the full game. Highly addictive. Sat down and worked out how I’m going to juggle my money over the next few months. SA has left me and Alex pretty skint, and now I have to make a student loans payment to NZ IRD as a apart of my amnesty agreement. So that’s another £700 down the tubes, leaving me a serious shortfall of cashflow for the month. Looks like a bit of subbing lies ahead.
- Started rewatching Flight of the Conchords, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Still good.
- Played around with the two leading desktop digital comics applications: Longbox and Graphic.ly. Both are in beta release (0.5 & 0.2.1, respectively) and both still have plenty of issues. My machine is getting a little long in the tooth, but the lag in both programs seemed a little ridiculous. Still, that aside, my initial impressions are that Longbox seems to have more features available (most as yet locked in beta), but Graphic.ly has a much nicer, leaner interface. Longbox is, frankly, ugly. It’s too busy on its home page, the net result being an initially very confusing entry into the program. Both are quite buggy, and Graphic.ly had a persistent crashing problem for the first 6 or so times I tried to start it. So, lots of work to do on both. I’ve got the complete Miracleman as cbr files, which Longbox will allow me to import into my library, so the next step is to try reading those to see just how bearable the reading experience is. Not sure if I can import to Graphic.ly. Not obviously, anyway.
- Watched the first episode of the new season of Nurse Jackie. It was fine, but completely skipped by the big threads of last season’s cliffhanger. Not a promising start. I hope this doesn’t mean they’re going to string things along even more.
Damn, doing these things every morning really does tie me in to wi-fi spots. Anyway, yesterday I:
- Once again forgot to print out my manuscript for revision, so stalled my course somewhat. I did get onto the forums for my workgroup, however. People doing the course are split into groups of 30 or less, for support, feedback and so on. So although it felt like a cheat, technically it was still course related, right?
- Worked. Spent nearly the whole day working on this book list for the GN workshop next week. Finalised the list, gathered images and copy, edited copy to fit the blurb size I need, formatted it up in Quark and outputted to a pdf. Done! Now I just have to hope we have all the books in stock for next Tuesday so I can take them along.
- Alex was out, so I played some Dragon Age for an hour and a half or so. I've hit that satisfying point you sometimes get in this kind of game when you're at a sufficient level where there's very little challenge in the places you're travelling through. Most fights are dispatched with very little trouble and no-one in your group has died for some time. Then you enter a new area and the difficulty curve has suddenly swung up a few notches and you're all dying every few combats, and you have to start thinking strategically again. Good fun. But frustrating enough that I stopped at 9.30.
- Faffed about on the internet for a while, then went to bed, watching another couple of Twilight Zone episodes, neither of which was particularly good. One was about a man whose guardian angel tries to improve his life by changing his oddball ways, only to discover that he'd rather be a kooky, likeable failure than a dull success. Atually, for the early-mid sixties, that was probably a pretty subversive message for mainstream America. The other was about a woman who goes to a department store for a particular item, only to discover that she is in fact a living mannequin and has been out in the world and forgotten who she is. Turns out the mannequins in the store take turns at living in the world for a month. Anyway, there are a couple of creepy moments in this one, but it's just not that good.
- Went to bed!
