Silence willl fail

Previously on The Biro of Destiny... our protagonist is working hard to finish a 30-minute script, before taking a much longed-for break from everything. Can he achieve his goals?

Well, I achieved one. Pennycakes is done, dusted and delivered as a university assignment, with the grade due back at the start of next month. Next step on that road is to look at it as a commercial project and see if I can tart it up a little. As soon as I put it in the post, I had about 15 new ideas for it, so it should be promising.

Didn't quite manage to have a break though. I lasted up until about the 12th of June, at which point I discovered that the Guardian's Summer Short Fiction competition had rolled around again. And the deadline was only a week away. I decided that the smart thing to do would be to pour myself heart and soul into writing something for it, and the end result is a story called 'More Than Trees'. I was happy with it and I sent it off to a few people to read. At about 9pm on the night before the deadline, one person emailed me to tell me that they hated the ending. So I stayed up late on a school night writing a brand new one. I think it's not half bad, and with a bit of tweaking it could really be something.

Ah well. Honestly, I was bored off my skull during my break anyway.

Since then I've been in Ireland, trying to draw creative inspiration from the green and blessed land on which many poets and dreamers have found inspiration (okay, actually I was just drinking a lot, but it's the same thing really). I've got something now and I've started working on a 60-minute. Which shall be all edgy and dark and stuff. Pennycakes was quite cuddly and gentle, so I'm looking forward to do something which will hopefully be very unsettling. I'm aiming for the rather oarsome-looking Red Planet Prize which closes on July 31st. Might be a bit tight, but the 60-minute script is something I want to do anyway.

And there's more. It's short story competition-season with loads of interesting competitions (good luck to those entering Bridport, I know there are a few of yo). The one that caught my eye is the In The Write Light competition, where the prize is a few days stuck up a mountain in Spain with Nell McCafferty. I honestly can't think of anything I'd rather do.

Oh, and finally Write Here, Write Now came and went. Ah well. Vicki and I will attack Black Gate Tours with a mallet and a hammer some time later in the year and see what we can do with it next.