Random Guilt
Something I never understand is the issue of feeling guilty, when you haven’t done anything wrong. Completely stupid stuff, such as… if your buddies ask you to head out boozing. You initially give a maybe, 50/50 answer. In all honesty you are leaning more towards no. Then, in a moment of weakness, you commit a “Era shur why not, I’m up for it”. Quickly followed by you realizing, nay, bob hope, seeing as its a 12 o’clock sober situation on a Tuesday night. In Cork. Which is key. Not L.A. However, your one “Yes” is then guilt tripped on. To the stage that you think you were the one after setting up the whole thing, and you then decided to back out at the last minute. It is great fun. So, if you are an ape like me, you feel guilty for some reason, like you let someone down. Pure dumbness.
On the other hand, it is a good sign. It really is time to focus for me. Seeing as I have the time to do it at this moment, progress really does need to be made with regards to the writing. Especially as today didn’t reach the heights I was hoping for. I didn’t use my burst of energy from last night to the fullest at all. I’ll call it one final day of preparation. Podcasts were playing over and over again all day. A bit of a quantity versus quality issue has arisen though. An hour’s podcast might give me 3 sentences of information that are actually beneficial to me. I think it could be the end of them, too time consuming, even when I only have them playing in the background. I ended up re-listening to a few thinking I had missed out on stuff here and there. I didn’t.
Another thing I realized today, was that the advice I am obtaining from different writing websites throughout the internet, might not be the best thing for me after all. There is a load of info online for writing tips for sitcoms and all that. A load. Too much. It got to the stage today where I was reading contradicting articles, so who do I go with?! What do I do now?!! As if these things are gospel, or a maths equation. Again, pure dumbness for me initially thinking I really needed them before I could get going on the re-writes.
Enough with the structure lessons and all that. What I need, and the key thing for the script, is quality dialogue and a tight story. I can edit it down and re-work it again when I am finished. Parts which have been highlighted already for me need to be changed. I know what I have to do already! What I also realized while reading all the articles today, is that the majority of people who wrote them, never really went on to do much. Not sure about you, but I’d prefer advice from people who started at the bottom, and then did X, Y & Z to get to the top. There were no gurus of sitcom giving out pages of advice.
In fact, two of the best things I saw today, were two quotes from the same writer, Graham Linehan, which were used in a few articles. One was along the lines… “If you think you have a great episode written, read it again in a month, and then decide”. The other “Rewrites sometimes means you have to actually start again from scratch and write a new episode”. Like the podcasts, maybe wading through a few hours reading, for those two quotes alone, might have made it worthwhile? Who knows.
What I need is to get back some random, bizarre events into my life. Or at least get my blog stories from L.A back circulating around my head once again. Who would have guessed that I’d miss the gay gym so much?! A few events occurred today, that would have been perfect if I was trying to write a sitcom about a Joe Soap in a small city where not much really went on. However, seeing as I’m basing the sitcom in L.A, I need to get my mind frame back to there. It helps having the random, odd events occurring on a daily basis to keep the ideas coming. Plus, if nothing else, they provide more interesting and bizarre blogaruus. I feel bad about the lack of them recently. Not sure really why, I’ll just put it down to random guilt I like to feel every now and again. From this day on as well, I will not allow any day to be less than productive to the brim! I am turning into a broken record.
Song on, like the podcasts and articles I read, there was maybe only a sentence or two in that blogaruu of actual significance…
Tags: Foreigner, Graham Linehan, Guilt, Podcasts, Urgent, Writing
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