Gill Kirk, writer

Tag: writing

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • High Tide Winter Retreat

    6 December already? How did that happen? Terrifying. So I’ll ignore it and pretend I will easily make the year-end deadlines I’ve given myself… Let’s deal with the Now instead.  Am back a day or so from the excellent High Tide winter retreat in Halesworth, Suffolk.  Sixteen brave scribes [wrighters, rather than writers, we hope]…

  • Quickies

    Oh, it’s the end-of-year madness, which, like all other things seasonal, comes early. First of all, a massive grins all round as Venue Magazine released its judgement on the year’s best bits, rating May’s 24 Hour Plays at Theatre Royal Bath, run by the great Shane Morgan at Roughhouse  as 2nd best play of the…

  • And Breathe…

    Wow. Draft 3 of Anaesthetic for Birthdays has hit the director’s in-box. Water’s Not So Thick has gone into rehearsal (with a superb cast). I’ve left the house, reacquainted myself with the family and email. Not the real, paper-filled in-tray, mind you…..

  • Quality control

    I’m in one of those “funks”, as 1950s girls’ books used to call them – a mental fuzz, blur, mash or mess where I can’t see the woods for the trees or the good for the bad. Yes, it’s Draft Two time. The story so far: draft 1: too many pages of too much talk…

  • New happenings and challenges

    Since the last posting, there’s been much merry activity. …The added challenge is that I had a baby at New Year and so am learning to juggle the feeding with one hand and writing with the other. To be honest, I’ve totally given up on that, and bought myself some excellent dictation software: this could…

  • Keep the Buses Coming!

    I have been extraordinarily fortunate the last few weeks and months to have great people working with my scripts, and I’m learning (I hope) a great splodge of stuff as I go.