progress and ideas

Martin, per usual, came up trumps today with the nifty little progress bar code he wrote to track my projects. Thanks babe!

Yesterday I paused writing my current script to begin a new short story. I was a little ahead of my schedule deadlines on the script, and I fancied a switch to prose. I wrote half of the short story last night, and hope to complete it by tomorrow. Then I’ll return to the script.

The short story idea is one I’ve had for a long time, but I became enthusiastic about writing it yesterday. (At some point I’m going to write about how writing for screen has affected my prose style, but not quite yet. I need to ponder upon the subject a bit more first.)

I have an ideas file, in which I stash bare-bone thoughts, snippets of details, and full-blown concepts that have popped into my head over the years. It’s broken down into categories such as films, novels, short stories, etc.

I try to remember to update this file regularly, because I get new ideas all the time. Some roll around in my head for ages, and others enter and leave rather quickly. If I don’t write them down then it’s likely I’ll forget them. An idea that seems like a disaster one month, could be the perfect breadwinner in a year’s time. It could solve a problematic scene in a script, or add a needed twist to a tale. It’s all fodder for the creativity stock-pot that simmers on the back-burner.

If you write, and you haven’t created one of these files yet… hop to it right away! Whenever I peruse my file I’m always astonished at the ideas that have completely escaped my memory.

That’s why people invented hard-drives (and for heaven’s sake back everything up!)

Never delete data!

You never know when you’ll find a use for it. Sure, it might end up being random bytes on your computer for years, but memory is so cheap these days it doesn’t matter.

It’s a lot more important than your World of Warcraft ID, for instance…