I Hate NY

It’s 3.00pm on New Year’s Eve, and guess what? I still don’t know what I’m doing to celebrate, or if I even want to. This happens every year for me. New Year’s Eve = Indecisive rubbish. I can’t remember the last time I had a spectacular time on NY’s eve, or if I ever have. There’s so much pressure pending on going out and getting so drunk that you end up in bed for the first week of an expectant new year, and it doesn’t seem worth the bother.

I’m not going to do that tonight. I’m getting over a nasty cold, my friends are dispersed in too many different directions that it would be impossible to chose one specific party to attend and the miserable weather is one more good reason to stay in. The anticipation to NY countdown just doesn’t cut it for me; I’d rather be at home watching a good film with a take away. Which is exactly what I might do, with my flu-riddled boyfriend snivelling and coughing next to me. Great.

Another reason I don’t dig NY is that I’ve got a lot of catching up to do work-wise. I’m heading back down south on Tuesday, and desperately need to tie up loose ends and pack. I have to get my business cards printed, (I’m still waiting for Luke to come up with a caricature of me to put on the cards that does justice to my features without making me look fat or demented. I know it’s only a sketch, but it wouldn’t hurt Luke to accentuate a few of my features to make me look more beautiful. If he doesn’t produce something I’m happy with, I’ve got some arty photos to use…

But I hope I can use one of his pictures because he’s got great talent and having Luke’s work on my cards will give both of us a bit of harmless self-publicity. If I ever get round to writing a children’s story, I’ll definitely ask him to provide the illustrations.

Back to NY - the sooner it’s over the better, and then I can get my head and hands back where they should be: in a book or on my laptop. I’ve tried so hard to keep up with my ‘to do’ list over Xmas, but the time has galloped past and chucked me at the starting line again. I’ve read a few books, composed letters, written a 3000-word story, but that’s the extent of it.

I was going to send off my work experience letters before Xmas, but realised there wasn’t a stapler at the house to staple my CV’s together. Then, before I knew it, Xmas had descended and if I’d have sent them off, they’d probably be lying on office floors ready to be chucked away with the rest of the Xmas junk mail. So, I’ll send them on Tuesday and keep my fingers crossed. I’ve written to ten companies, and I’m hoping that I’ll at least get one positive response.

I’ve just finished reading Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! Which is a one-stop-shop scriptwriting machine. Snyder is one of Hollywood’s most prolific scriptwriters, he’s had over a dozen movies put into production and earned millions of dollars from it. I met him at a seminar in Penzance, where he single-handedly taught us the best way to pitch, structure, write and re-write a script. It all seemed to make perfect sense, and reading the book helped to reiterate everything he went over in the seminar.

Armed with my new found story structure tools, I’m ready to start writing my own script. If I stick to Snyder’s ‘beat sheet’, and Robert McKee’s slightly more complex formulas, it should be fairly simple. I’m already applying these principles to all types of story I write; these principles are nothing new – just new approaches to the time-old tradition of storytelling.