Gill Kirk, writer

Writing Life: insights, updates, and craft

  • Gnash, gobble, splat: the sounds of a new script hitting the genre wall

    It is a fine thing to get the teeth into a new script. Delicious, clean pages. Fresh bodies waiting to spurt, the splatter marks on the walls giving us the story to decipher, like CSIs of dramatic fiction. Does that make the writer a bitey vampire or besplattered detective? Either way – and I suspect…

  • Thanks

    2012. Not what I thought at all, interestingly. I’m clearing up the office, prepping for an exciting year ahead, and putting old posters, reviews and script notes in their proper place (this only happens once a year). I don’t like the weekend papers at this time of year – that “reviewing” thing, even dressed up…

  • Muscle, sinew, brain surgery

    I’ve spent the last few months at the lathe. Honing, smoothing, cutting myself, wiping the blood off the creation… It’s been very interesting. 2012’s been a year of muscle, driven without a doubt by the rigour of Channel 4’s 4Screenwriting course, which I was fortunate enough to get a place on this year. Every sinew…

  • Vim, vim, vim

    I know. Shame on me. August? That’s the last time I was here? Alas, no. Twice I’ve got excited, blogged merrily away and the darn thing would not upload. So this will be short – just in case. I have, nonetheless, been busy. The spec screenplay has undergone a complete rewrite (this is my 4Screenwriting…

  • Writing, kids and all that jazz

    No, I am not in Edinburgh, catching all the top acts de nos jours (damn). I am working. Uhuh, as per that list in the previous post. I have one more week left of Daddy DayCare (teacher husband) where I can type all day. The pressure is terrifying. Before marriage, step-kids, baby “etc”, I’d do…

  • Get creative on yo’ ass

    The other day, I remembered that 2012 is going to be an exciting year. And then realised we’re 7/12s of the way through. Apart from making me feel like my brain is falling has fallen through a hole in my saggy toddler-mum trews and lies spat on, in a wet puddle alongside the rotted tendrils…

  • Devoted & Disgruntled Roadshow: massive

    There’s a thing called Devoted & Disgruntled (D&D). It’s for theatre people who love theatre but also get pissed off with it from time to time. It’s a forum, an open space where you gather, raise issues, talk about them, share them. It’s real and online. It’s also on the road. Right now! I spent…

  • Absurd journeys

    Black Barn at LOST is now over. This dysfunctional circus family, scary siblings, pyromania and (understandable) reclusivity is – for now – a thing of the past. Theatre company tidy carnage did a great job with a sterling cast: Cameron Crighton, Helen Cuinn, Eilidh McCormick and Scott Reid, directed by Alice Butler with a superbly…

  • Black Barn 15-17 June

    Black Barn – it’s getting closer….15, 16, 17 June, LOST theatre, London You think it’s just you. That footstep. That scrabble. That…breath? You shouldn’t be scared. You’re all grown-up now. Come on, come with us. Let’s go inside. Look: the door’s open.” As you might have read below, I’m v excited about this project with…

  • In a dark, dark house…

    Did you do this rhyme at primary school? “In a dark, dark house, there’s a dark, dark, door. Through the dark, dark door, there’s a dark dark room. In the dark dark room, there’s a MONSTER!” I’ve loved the creepy and the uncanny since I could read. And – in a relationship that keeps banging…

  • What Dali can, Su-bo can’t? Artist / audience gap

    An artist works, gives their sweat and soul to communicate something in a form that is somehow different to the everyday-expected. The audience engages, pays, comes, listens, studies. Different activities. If these two then disagree on the art, whose opinion matters more? Which one defines the “art”? When there’s a jarring chasm between what an…

  • Knots: undo, remake, procrastinate

    Today’s one of my two days a week to write, toddler-free. And this is the state of my desk. I’m halfway through my first draft of the C4Screenwriting pilot/spec script and found some mega-weaknesses. I’m now trying to weave some irn-bru strength girders through the plot, with the help of Massive Attack’s Heligoland (a haunting…

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