Me, me, me, me, me.
I don’t look very guilty, do I? That’s because I just don’t do ‘blogger guilt’. It’s been over two weeks since my last post, maybe three or four since I wrote anything of any substance. I guess it was inevitable, given that the election was bound to end, and my leg was bound to unbreak itself.
Some bloggers seem to beat themselves up over this kind of thing. I think it’s because they build up momentum, they see their visitor metrics go up, and the can’t bear to watch them drop back off again.
Personally, I’m not so bothered. I’m not really in it for the numbers. Besides which, I have enough obligations in my life not to be busying myself inventing any new ones.
To say I don’t feel obligated is not to say I don’t feel committed. As I noted way back when, it’s like Syd Field says: talent is a gift, but writing is a responsibility. I guess the blog’s here for the times when I need to write, with no other outlet. Happily for the last week or two the day job’s been giving me more than enough to think about on that front.
I checked my passport on the way out to LA last week and counted back eight US visas in just over two years. Of all my visits, this last one proved to be the most enjoyable, and arguably the most productive – I guess that remains to be seen.
I was travelling with Dan Skinner, whose job title escapes me, but whose essential role at PPC is to provide creative leadership across a large portion of the business. He’s also somebody whose ready to get his hands dirty where lesser people might be busy washing theirs, meaning he’s a pretty good guy to have around in any situation.
At the other end, Dane McMaster, who effectively IS our LA office. He’s been busy recently setting up the Monty Python channel on Youtube, and was still smarting from the discovery that, within days of uploading the last of the 30 hours of original Python footage he’s encoded, Youtube had switched to their new widescreen format.
Our task was pretty straight-forward: five scripts, each none more than five or six pages in length. Dan and Dane are both experienced screen-writers, whereas I suppose I was there representing the money, and bringing fairly extensive knowledge of the subject matter (not to mention all the creative insight harvested from browsing HOURS of period reference material on Youtube.)
I post brewing off the back of what followed, but I figured I’d start by getting this odorously self-indulgent, little wittering out the way, just to clear the air. And to let you know that, after all that time spent trawling the imaginary annals of Youtube, it looks like maybe they’ve finally got my number:
December 14th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[...] I posted recently about a trip out to LA to work on some short scripts, as part of a project I’m working on at the moment. There’s not much I can say about them at this stage, but I do have the following observations about the process of writing as part of a team. [...]