Procrastination: Friend or foe…

The above image shows my companion of late, Procrastination. Or at least, if he were to manifest in some human form, this is what I think he would look like. A mischievous little bastard and thief of time, chuckling to his heart’s content at my dilemma.

I know I am not alone in my visits to Procrastination’s world, but I’ve lately begun to wonder if it is necessarily  a negative thing to become unfocused. To chop and change from one thing to another, and continually get distracted by stuff that ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a second thought or glance to. And all the while, avoiding the very thing I am supposed to be working on!

I compare it to my mind going on a fantastical journey to the world of nonsense; a maze with never-ending pathways that lead to other places with never-ending pathways!

But is that such a bad thing?

Maybe I need to be in the nonsense place for a while. Maybe I need to give my generally over-active brain a rest from focused thinking ( and from over there – on the dark side!) and let the mind escape to wander through the wilderness for a bit.  A holiday for my imagination, where my imagination is taken to a new realm of seemingly disjointed, random, bat-shit stupid thoughts and experiences.

Dorothy Parker once wrote, “Live, drink, be merry, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow ye may die, but alas we never do.” 

I like it! And it hasn’t all been time wasted, after all…I did get to procrastinate here on Procrastination.  So okay, you mischievous little bastard, you can stay…for a little while!

Character analysis…and the writer’s search for the secret places of the human condition

Fictional characters are anything but.

To write them, I must know them, inside and out, before I can feel empathy for them, and before I can understand why and how they will do the things that I will make them do, and say the words I will make them say. In other words, I must believe that they are real flesh and blood, with all of the wonders and foibles that go along with that. Only then, can I really write them in any meaningful way.

This is nothing new to any writer worth their salt, right? And of these knowing writers, who does he/she choose to analyze the most?

The writer’s self: as Confucius say – no matter where you go, there you are.

We are not just students of the human condition, we are our own subject matter, and it never ceases to fascinate me how we operate. How we relate, articulate, disseminate the world, our lives, our wants, our needs. And what of our secret selves? The histories, the pain, the faded and vivid memories, the disappointments, the yearnings, the unchartered dreams, the joys? The stuff that shapes us; the stuff that we never show and tell. Our interior lives – where the most fascinating secrets exist to influence how we choose to live and the paths we take.

The fictional life is no different. And it is the challenge for the writer to pick away at those layers of being until exposing that space between what is seen in the character’s exterior life, and what is hidden in their interior one. The secret place of the human condition that exposes the reasoning behind every deed and action, and towards those surprises and discoveries that will lead us to chart a compelling arc for our character.

Image is the FREEDOM Sculpture by Zenos Frudakis

Journey of a Storyteller 2: Learning from the professionals, the mentors and the ‘doers’…

Over the years, I’ve attended many filmmaker courses and masterclasses, always searching for the magic ingredients that will give me the template to forge ahead as a screenwriter and someday director. And yes, while I have gathered a wealth of invaluable knowledge and experiential anecdotes from listening to the creatives who have been there and done that…some have been a tad disappointing, unfocused, badly organised, or just not relevant to what it is I am seeking.

Each experience though, has taught me something, and what continually comes to the fore is this; that even the ‘doers’ in this business sometimes struggle, make mistakes, are let down or manage to turn something potentially beautiful into a balls-out mess! And, that while treading your path, you will always encounter your enablers, your mentors, the ones who are secure enough not to pull the ladder up behind them as they carve their own niche, there are also ten more who will shut that door on your unknown, unripened tenderfoot!

Making your way in this business is not easy and it can take a long, long time to see the benefits…nobody knows you while you struggle the lonely road towards developing your voice, coming up with the goods and making the grade…and nobody wants to know you until you do. Therefore, if, like me, you are going to launch yourself into the mire of this weird and wonderful world, it would be wise to seek and find those mentors, and to listen, really listen, to what they have learned…

Most recently,  I encountered two such mentors, both at the top of their game, when I attended a Writer/Director Masterclass with Irish Director, Aisling Walsh (Song for a Raggy Boy, The Daisy Chain, Wallander). The all-day workshop was hosted during the inaugural Fingal Film Festival and there was a double treat for participants when we also got to spend the afternoon with actor Martin McCann (Swansong, Story of Occi Byrne,  Killing Bono, Titanic: Blood and Steel). Martin is not just an amazingly talented actor, he is also a generous one, giving over an entire day to talk about his craft; to share the knowledge, and between the two of these amazing people, they managed to turn the day into an entertaining and insightful experience.

Here are the main points that I took away:

Build relationships: Writers can be shy, directors can be shy, actors can be shy…talk to people…make connections.

Make a short film. Nobody knows your story better than you do. Low budget, no budget, gather your team and just do it.

You don’t have to be technical: Work with the best crew and actors you can get; learn from them.

The energy will come from you: Be a good listener, see things others don’t see, be a decision maker, stay calm.

Three traits you need to have: Concentration. Communication. Stamina.

Learn about Actors. Find out about them, what it is that they do and how they do it. And listen to their instincts.

You can make your film three times: When you write it. When you make it. When you cut it.

Open the door and walk in! Are you going to just think about it? Or are you going to do it?

Right so! Armed now with bundles of notebooks, filled with theory, paradigms and checklists of how it all comes together, it is time…

Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power…

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What is it that you do (or are!) exactly?

Too many times, I’ve met like-minded creatives, writers, to be more precise, but when I ask them what they do, nine times out of ten, they’ll describe some other aspect of their lives…like being a teacher, plumber, or a pen-pusher in a stuffy office, invariably telling me what it is that pays the bills and keeps the wolf from the door…and when I add… You write, right?… my second question is inevitably followed by a bit of word stumbling before a meek sounding Oh yeah, I write all the time emerges…

Maybe I’m asking the question in the wrong way… because in my opinion, if you are a writer, it is what you ARE…not just what you do.

I have my own theory on when someone can call themselves a writer, and here are my top five writer-defining traits:

1. Your day is not complete until you’ve scribbled or typed up something. And every day is the same.

2. You go deaf to the people around you because you are preoccupied with the characters in your head.

3. You have to be alone, a lot, because there is a story bursting to get out of your buzzing brain and onto the page.

4. You analyze human behaviour (including your own!) all the time!

5. No matter how many rejections, setbacks  or interference you experience, you cannot abandon your writing projects.

And even if it takes years to reap the rewards through the publication, production or the award that you have been striving for, unless you are back in the literary saddle the very next day, expressing and interpreting life in your own unique way, then what is it that you do (or are) exactly?

There is no magic formula as to how you do it, but the magic will emerge if you do it,  A LOT!

Haiku…Waiting

 

Blossoming dawn creeps

Essence of self becoming

Swelling captured beats

 

Caroline Farrell © 2012

A book of heads from the curious mind of…

This is the title of the Artist’s Notebook that I kept in 2011, which was part of a project and exhibition curated by Kildare County Arts Services. Forty-four Moleskine notebooks were created by writers, filmmakers and visual artists, and donated to the KCC Arts Service to become part of a permanent touring collection.

The exhibition can be viewed this coming Thursday, 8th March,  at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick from 11am-6pm.

You can see extracts from my moleskin notebook here: http://www.ninnyhammer.net/ArtistsNotebookProject.html

A Solitary Fantasy…

My love of writing is turning me into an unsocial being. I am slowly growing to accept this, but what a dilemma!

On so many levels, we need to connect with the people and the world we live it, and yet, when the muse comes, we also need to be able to shut the world out, even to the point of missing precious time spent with our friends and loved ones.

Of course, if these relationships are solid, the support of our aspirations will be securely at our backs, but it is still a ruthless and yes, sometimes selfish line that writers must balance between the need for solitary writing time, and the need to feed the inspirational requirements to write something of truth and meaning.

And even when in the midst of a crowd, are we really ever in the moment? Or we are sponges, soaking up, what Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes as, the interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serving only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

A favourite quote of mine comes from Maya Angelou: If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities..,

Live in hope.

Of terrible and splendid things…

In 2016, the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising will take place in Ireland. A rebellion that raged swiftly and momentarily in an era when the First World War was raging on (a war that, under British rule, many Irish men had already signed up for and were fighting in…and dying for) and when ordinary citizens of the time frowned upon, and indeed spat upon the rebels on their capture and surrender.

Only after the execution of so many of those young leaders, Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas McDonagh amongst them; teachers, poets and artists, did the general public take heed of what WB Yeats described as the terrible beauty born…and the quest for independence raged on through the youth of the Irish Volunteers…

Through the medium of film and cinematic exploration, there has been little made in the telling of the stories of the male and female insurgents of 1916, Michael Collins being the exception. Interned at the age of 25 in Frongoch in Wales, for his part in the Easter Rising, upon his release, Collins went on to mastermind the guerilla war against British Rule, which resulted in a truce that enabled him to lead a delegation to London to sign the Treaty in December, 1921…a move that divided a nation and culminated in the Civil War of 1922. In August of that year, Collins was dead, and Ireland was changed, changed utterly.

Now, with the centenary beckoning to offer us all a time to reflect on how far we have come as a nation,  it is no surprise, that in the writing world, a plethora of ideas for novels and scripts are circulating already. So, it was interesting for me to go along to an event recently organised by the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, and co-hosted by the Irish Film Board,  to see the five finalists of the UNTITLED Screenwriting Award pitch their film projects.

All exploring some aspect or theme of that historic year, the award to the winning project, a first draft development loan from the Irish Film Board, would be €12,000 for a single writer applicant, and €16,000 for a team, ie, writer and director. In my humble opinion, all five shortlisted pitches, each presented to an audience and in front of an industry judging panel, had potential for support towards further development.

Anne Marie Casey pitched a biopic she is writing with her partner, author Joseph O’Connor…Grace 1916: The story of Grace Gifford, woman, artist and icon of a revolution…the only project to look with any real depth at a compelling aspect of a woman’s life during the period, and one I would definitely want to see!

Hugh Travers gave a very entertaining pitch with his project, The Players :  A black comedy about ex-IRA members who join an amateur drama group to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Jasmina Kallay presented her drama Das Irland: A tale of what if.  What if promised German help had materialised in 1916? and Virginia Gilbert pitched her drama The Boys: Everybody remembers a great teacher but how many are willing to die for one?

The winning pitch came from Jamie Hannigan and Michael Kinirons with their noir thriller Come Monday, We Kill Them All:  April 1916:  A down on his luck smuggler reluctantly agrees to help a wealthy politician find his missing daughter only to become embroiled in murder, conspiracy and rebellion…potentially fascinating…trench coats and tribly hats at the ready!

Each project was very different, and as alluded to earlier, there is a wealth of varied ideas out there that have the potential to create exciting, dramatic insights into the lives of not just the key characters of the rebellion, but also, to be a window into the lives and struggles of the ordinary people who lived through those turbulent times in Dublin, 1916.

Which begs the question…if they could see now what they fought for, what they suffered for, and what they died for, what would those men and women of 1916 think of Ireland, one hundred years on?

Featured Image: The Women of 1916, Cumann Na Mban, sourced from http://saoirse.21.forumer.com/a/

Welcome ladies, to the psychological playground of the horror genre…

As a writer of ghostly and supernatural stories, one of my earliest literary influences as a young teenager came from the classic world of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Later, I became obsessed with the vampire chronicles of Anne Rice, the wonderfully gothic and ghostly tales of Susan Hill, and the everyday magic that lyrically dances from the pages of the novels of Alice Hoffman.

So it is very satisfying now, to see a resurgence in the popularity of the genre as more and more female writers delve into what Helen Dunmore refers to as a  ”psychological playground”. An apt description, and where I am also quite happy to play, literally!

Although I do write drama, I am always drawn back to mixing up the gothic and the dark fairytale with the horror elements, and many of my stories, The Lupii, Evanescence, Iona’s House, Spinning with the Devil,  and of course, Vampire of Arkyne, all stem from this genre.  I can only aspire to reach the levels of the great ladies mentioned above, but I fully intend to keep trying, and to keep playing!

Anne Rice’s latest novel, The Wolf Gift, to be released on Valentine’s Day, will be my next read…

Salutations and Resolutions…

My New Year greeting to all.

Fate will have its way, but for the most part, how it plays out, is up to you…so get down to it and make this your best writing year ever! Have a great one…and to quote Vonnegut…

“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it is so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”

From Slaughterhouse Five.

Nope, me neither.