Tag: writing

Notebook addict

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments

Notebooks

It is quite amazing how much stuff I have collected during my 3 years in London. I arrived with two bags, but my possesions will now fill quite some boxes. One of those boxes will contain some notebooks …

I like notebooks. I buy them as souvenirs in places I visit: the two ones with hearts on it are both bought in New York for example. Or if they have really funky colours I will be tempted. Or when the paper has nice patterns on it.

My problem is that I have turned into a serious notebook addict and during packing I found …

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The girl and the interview

thegirlinthecafe 9 Comments

The lovely Bloglily has published an interview with, ehrm, me about writing.

In stead of typing it in a long email I scribbled the answers in my notebook, took pictures of it and sent it to her, you can find all of it on her website.

It makes me realise that I really should start picking up my pen/laptop and get back into doing some actual writing soon. I miss the thrill.

Hello

thegirlinthecafe 14 Comments

Wall-E - what do I know?

I know it has been a while.

Apart from a flu I also had some serious thought about closing the doors here for a while. I have no inspiration whatsoever at the moment. There is not much exiting to write about and it feels like the plot is seriously lost on this website. I also know I am stilled pissed off about my film crash and it somehow blocks me in writing a new script. I know I need to get over it.

But then …

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Fess up Friday and 4 more

thegirlinthecafe 9 Comments

  • It’s popping up everywhere now, and it is intriguing. Feed your feed (or just a stack of words) into Wordle and see how beautiful words can be. (Unfortunately the page won’t let you save it as an image, but you can save it as PDF and blow it up and put it on a t-shirt. Or something. Actually I might go and do that. Or on moo cards.

    The words above are words from my feed, which means that these are recently written words on this weblog.

  • Let’s get the fessing out of the way then. I have not written anything this week. But I have worked hard and serious and determined on the pre production of my short film. More about that later, but I now know that it will take about 5 days to shoot. Which is a lot!
  • The weekend will again be a coastal one. At 5.30pm I will take the train from Waterloo to Weymouth where I will stay the weekend.

    Tomorrow I will be joined by a good friend and we will go and admire the long legged lanky grooviness of Bill. Portland Bill. We will also play frisbee!

    Extra bonus information: Weymouth is also the location where they have shot a lot of the exterior scenes for The Boat That Rocked.

  • I want an iPhone when it is able to send an MMS. I am actually someone who uses that quite a lot! How can they launch v2 of the iPhone and still not have this function (all other phones can do it!) implemented? I don’t get it.
  • May your weekend be sunny.

Fess up Friday plus four

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

  1. OK first the fess up part of this post:

    Well at least I made a postcard! And on this postcard I wrote a couple of words! Does that count?

    I hope so.

    To my defence I can say that at least I have opened the script in Final Draft and looked at it. I didn’t type anything, I looked at it.

    And when I sat in the cinema this week, watching Caramel, I suddenly wasn’t sure that I wanted to write the story I was planning to write. Not right now anyway. I need some more time to think. I want a more happy story.

    So apart from the occasional badly written boring blog post here – it’s not going very well, no …

  2. I have booked a 24 hour trip to Denmark next weekend. I am going to sort out the boxes that are still stored there, and for which I pay way too much money to have them stored. They are nagging in the back of my head constantly. So I am going to be strong and will drive most of it directly to the Red Cross. The last bits that I want to keep I will throw in a bag and bring with me to London. I haven’t seen those boxes for 2 years now, so it’s about time to close that chapter.
  3. I have brought my own lunch to the office for a whole week now. That hasn’t happened for 20 years or so. It takes some extra minutes in the morning but it:
    • saves loads of money, sandwiches are about £2.50, and those are the cheap ones
    • means you don’t have to wait for the sandwich man to come and save you from a rumbling tummy, you can eat whenever you want
    • is more healthy
    • makes you feel 12 all over again. I even bought a lunch box for it.
  4. I saw God of Carnage for a second time yesterday and it was still good, but the first time was better. Need to remember that only very few plays need to be seen twice (Shadowlands) and even fewer (The Vertical Hour and everything else with Bill) as many times as you possibly can.

    One does not really get tired of the twinkle in the eyes of Ken Stott though.

  5. Yes you can send the above card if you like.

Fess up Friday and some random bits

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments
  • I saw this over at Bloglily, and also on The Public, the Private and Everything In Between. And I have decided to join. It’s an idea from the literate kitten and the idea is that you every Friday will have to confess why, in my case that is, I again haven’t done any writing. And if I ever get my act together again to actually go and do some writing – I will use the Fess up Friday to pen down that I did!

    I haven’t picked up a pen (or rather haven’t touched Billy Mac for writing purposes) since I finished my feature script, and that was some months ago.

    It’s not that I don’t know what to write – I do.
    It’s not that I don’t have the time – I do.
    It’s not that I don’t know what to write it on – I do.
    It’s not that I don’t know which cafe to go to to write it – I do.

    Then why is it so hard to get started?

    I am going to try to write a tiny little scene before next Friday, just to get started.

  • I just finished my second Henning Mankell book: Sidetracked. I love his Kurt Wallander books (they are detectives), they are very well written and very clever too. (The BBC is making some of them into a drama series with Kenneth Brannagh playing Wallander, which I think is a good cast)

    I also loved Firewall, which I bought on the Isle of Man for £1.50 in a lovely second hand bookshop in Peel. Both books will now go on to readitswap it. And I have just swapped one of my other books for a third Mankell book which is on its way to London.

  • Planned for the weekend:
    • watching a film: either Gone, Baby gone (Ben Affleck’s drama starring Casey Affleck) or The Waiting room (Brit rom (com)). Will catch the non chosen one later next week.
    • Back to the coast. Again. Southern has this great ticket called the downlander which let you travel through the south east of the UK all day for £12.50. That’s a very good deal. You need to book it 2 days (no more no less) in advance though, and print your own ticket.

      I am currently considering to either go to Bognor Rigis or Littlehampton. If there are any other tips I would love to hear them!

Have a good weekend.

Imagine

thegirlinthecafe 3 Comments

Imagine, New York

  • Yes that’s New York. Which I kind of have an ongoing love and longing for. This picture is taken in November 2007, on the same place as this one. It’s peace, rock, passion and imagination in one.
  • George Clooney is in town, now that doesn’t make my heart beat any faster, but I am amazed by the attention he is getting (drinking tea with Gordon and all …). Seems like the whole of London is swooning for him. Come on, he is just an actor.
  • On Sunday however, now that we are with “just” actors, Daniel Craig will be in town too, to promote his new film Flashback of a fool. Now my thoughts on Daniel are quite clear: he has one pair of incredible blue eyes. But I am sure loads of women (and men!) are going to want to see this film with a trailer that is as “revealing” as this one. I will say no more … And ehrm, yes, I want to see the film too. Not because of that scene, but because he is such a great actor. OK, also because of that scene.
  • The sad news, from a Bill perspective, is that the release of Valkyrie has been moved to 2009. That means no Bill films whatsoever in the cinemas this year. Waaah!!

    2009 however will be an amazing year with no less than 4 Bill films coming out! (G-Force, Underworld: Rise of the lycans, Valkyrie and The Boat That Rocked). I can’t wait!

    And for the record – he is not “just” an actor.

  • My script is finished. Wow. Only took me about 2.5 years to write it (from the initial few word – there have been long breaks during that period though), which is kind of shockingly long!

    I am prepared for the gap that will appear in front of me, now that it is (temporarily) off the list of “Things I want to do in my life”. I have enjoyed writing it though. Will it ever be turned into a movie? I couldn’t tell – chances are not high, but where would we be without hope. And imagination.

  • So what’s next? The next script! The story has already formed itself a bit in my head and after a short break I will start writing it. It will be a romance/drama. Still with funny stuff too, of course.
  • I have booked a holiday. I will visit the Isle of Man for a week, starting the 10th of May. I think the Isle of Man is going to be the new Bornholm for me. And if it is half as good as that I will make it a yearly return. Apart from the amazing coast, the wonderful nature, the peacefulness and the fact that it is a small island, it has 5 light houses! Time to dust off my camera I guess.

To climb a mountain

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments


Last Monday I put my teeth in it, it was quite heavy to chew and it took a couple of days to get back into the writing groove. But I am in it, and spend most of the weekend in a cafe in Fulham, together with Billy, Milky Way Tea, the soundtrack of DIRL and the will power and persistence to finish this script.

I had several problems to solve in the script and it felt like an impossible task, something like climbing the Mt. Everest. This weekend I was relaxed enough to take one step at the time, and it is very close now, actually, it is so close that I dare to say that it will be finished this week.

Now “finished” sounds very final but scripts never are. With finished I mean that it will be in a state of which I am happy enough to send it to some friends to read. To get some comments from the real world.

So that’s how I have spend my weekend: writing in a cafe. There isn’t much I’d rather do.

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I didn’t know I was looking for love

thegirlinthecafe 10 Comments

Billy Mac(k)

I swear. True, and I am quite sure, ever lasting love.

From the moment I decided I wanted him, truly and utterly wanted him, until the moment where he actually sat down on my lap, I guess only a few hours went. I met him, had a very brief talk with him and that was enough. He swept me off my feet. Completely. I invited him to join me on my cafe visit. We have spend all afternoon together and pages full of script were written without any effort.
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Story telling – a lesson learned

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments

Big Bill on Leicester Square
Big Bill

Look who I ran into yesterday, on my way home from a weekend in screen writing class. I felt like my brain had been in the toaster for 2 days, was completely knackered, and needed some fresh air so I decided to walk a part of my journey home. I ended on Leicester Square where the yearly Christmas fun fair was in full flow, I suddenly remembered that I had seen him there last year, and yep, he was there again this year too, Big Bill. We had a little chat about the year that past and my brain felt a lot better when I walked on, on my way home.

About storytelling, there is an important rule in story telling:
Let your characters do things which the audience does not expect. Surprise them.

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It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day

thegirlinthecafe 14 Comments

Chance Street

I remembered this very well when I woke up this morning. And I was very tempted to stay in bed a good bit longer, in stead of packing my things and go to class. But that would be a weak thing to do, and whatever would happen, I would probably learn something from it one way or another, so I went.

I made sure to have a rescue plan in place though, I bought a ticket for Shadowlands for Monday. That way, when I would come home Sunday evening, utterly depressed from another disastrous weekend in screen writing class, I would be sure that Charles Dance would lift my spirits with his remarkable performance on stage.

So … I guess I wasn’t ready for it at all, but I went anyway.

If you like to know how my writing is going, step in. If not, come back tomorrow for something else.

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There are things to say

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Coping Strategies was special and touching and I am happy I saw it. I saw the first of only 2 cinema screenings and the cinema was filled with people who either were connected to Yarrow or had been involved in the making of the film itself. The film (28 minutes) is about Shahid, a young man with learning disabilities, who breaks free from his doting mother for a new life of romance, independence and indulgence. Bill Nighy makes a short guest appearance as his social worker. The film was both funny, touching and surreal.
More about the short shoot and giving a presentation »