I'm still here!

Yes, hello! I've not written anything up here in a while, so I thought I should just confirm I do still exist. Or at least I did the last time I checked.

So, the big wide world of writing! It's all still there, buzzing away in my head and in a million different Word documents! And now, a bit of it's on paper for once. I did something horribly frightening that I would never normally do, the other day - I wrote a plan for my novel! A plan? Someone as spontaneous and mad as me, PLANNING something? Has the world gone mad? Well, yes, but that happened a while ago and is completely unrelated to me writing a plan.

The reason I decided to grab a pen and notebook and do some old fashioned note-making, was because I was slowly starting to realise that the story I was writing may not be a story at all. I had certain scenes and elements all forming themselves and ready in my head, but I didn't know how I was going to get from one scene to another and I didn't know where this whole story was going. And so, lo and behold, three and a half pages of bullet points, to guide me through my writing! I'll admit, writing out a massive list of bullet points and then realising you're only on the second one is a tad daunting, but at least I know where I'm going with this story now. I have a rough beginning, middle and end, I have big dramatic scenes in the right places, and hopefully it will all work out wonderfully!

So, with my trusty plan and my story now into its second chapter, I think I can give you all a good plot summary! This is the sort of thing I would write in a blurb for the book (and will probably have to write when I come to doing a blurb) and should hopefully give you all a better understanding into the twisted ways of my mind...

On the night that Drake Strider wakes up, screaming, from a nightmare, he doesn't know that across town all of his friends have experienced the exact same dream. Nor does he know that his life is about to change forever.

Drake and his friends quickly start to discover that they are developing supernatural abilities. Powers to move, control and destroy objects within the world around them. Powers that prove to be a danger both to themselves and to others. Powers that have attracted the interest of a sinister organisation.

Soon, Drake and the others find themselves victims, on the run from people who would happily see them all dead if it meant they could harness the abilities the teenagers have gained. In a desperate struggle for survival, the teens must face both the threat from their pursuers and their ever-changing, conflicting feelings for each other. Life isn't easy when everything's changing.

"You have a careers appointment booked"...

Why is it, most of the time, whenever people ask me what I want to do as a career, I say I don't know? I know perfectly well what I want to do as a career, and that is to write scripts and novels. But, nevertheless, I probably have many distant relatives, whom I have met at obscure family dos, that think I am clueless about the future!
So, the title of this post - I suppose I should explain it. Earlier this week I had a "careers appointment" at school. What's that? It's a large building where people under sixteen go to learn and earn qualifications, but that's not important right now.
Oh, what's a careers appointment? Basically, anyone in year ten/eleven in my school can have them (or it might just be year elevens) and you go to this meeting with the school's careers teacher/advisor (I'd better not use names, just in case!) and discuss career options. At some point in our school lives, students in my year had to fill out a form giving four career options we would consider, so that was used as a starting point in the meeting. Of course, on mine were author and script writer.
And so, I finally had a serious conversation with someone I don't know particularly well about what I want to do as a career. And yes, we looked at the negatives. The fact that screenwriting is very competitive and many writers only do it as a part time job, but we did look at how it would suit me and what it was like, covering positives and negatives. And, strangely, despite all the negatives, I feel far more confident about going into screenwriting than I did before. Maybe it's because for one of the first times, I've actually looked at it as a serious career, rather than just something I want to do. The negatives almost make it seem more possible!
So I think the meeting went well. I got some good script-related websites out of it as well, which I'm in the process of looking through. Found out that the standard script format is called "mastershot" format, which won't realy help, as I already knew what the format was, but at least I know another name for it now (I'd previously heard it referred to as just "the standard script format"). And, out of all this, as you can probably guess, I'm now in a writing mood!
I know I should work on my book more, because that is something I can publish and earn money from. And I can do that regardless of age. But all I can think about are the fan film scripts for me and my friends' Doctor Who series! Which is annoying, because I want to start episode 3, because I know how it's going to start, but I don't know what happens after the first scene! I'll have to think on it...
Also, in Who news, I've got the script for episode 2 down to 35 pages, which is a massive decrease! How did I do it? I... brought the font size down... no great editing feat there then!
Keep watching the blog for updates! If I ever get round to working on my novel again, then I will hopefully explain more about it on here.
Take care people!

And another thing...

No, not the latest Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy book, it's just the name of the post.

The mentality of having to want to write something does make English "Creative Writing" coursework annoying! I always go into coursework like that thinking "I'm going to be the best in the class at this! This is what I'm best at, I have to be the best!" But I never feel I've produced particularly great pieces of writing at the end. Yes, my grades are good, but that's because I'm one of the nerdy bunch and just include what I need to in order to get better marks, such as writing in a professional manner. But with schoolwork, I have to write something I don't really want to when I don't really want to.

Why don't I want to do it? It is writing fiction, shouldn't that be great? The problem is that because I have to do it I need an idea. Usually I need one within the ten minutes we're given to come up with one in classtime. I never want to write if I don't like the idea behind the piece of writing. And I never like the idea if I was forced to come up with it in ten minutes. The best ideas are ones that just come to me naturally. When I'm not trying to think of ideas. Of course, these are usually inspired by something. It is very rare (but not unheard of) that an idea just pops into my head. This can be incredibly annoying when I want to write something new! That's odd too: usually the idea comes first, followed by the need to write, but sometimes there's a need to write and later you'll have an idea that you can fit to it.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything I say. Sometimes I'll have a stimulus to stick to for a piece of writing and think "I can't wait to write this one!". Sometimes, usually when doing scripts, I'll try to think up an idea for a story and come up with something, because I have to, and find it is a rather good premise for a story. Another key thing about writing: despite what your English teacher says, there are NO set rules!

Introduction to the blog

Hello there! Welcome to my world!

This is that really awkward and slightly cheesy post where I have to explain who I am without sounding too childish. Hopefully you're all familiar with this sort of introduction, so bear with me!

My name is Andrew Gladman, I'm 15 years old and starting my final year of secondary school. I'm also a keen writer. I spend most of my writing time on scripts for short films, but I'm also currently working on a novel for publication, which I can't give too much away about! Sorry! Occasionally I also write stories just for fun of it; however, I don't tend to do this because the other forms of writing I do are also for fun, even if they have the secondary purpose of being published or used for an amateur film.

In this blog, which has been inspired by Russel T. Davies' and Benjamin Cook's book "The Writer's Tale" I want to talk about the process and joy of writing. I doubt I'm the first to do a blog like this and hopefully I won't be the last!

One final thing: I'm not a chav and this is not a chavvy blog: if I make any spelling mistakes please correct me! If you can comment on Blogger blog posts. I haven't used this much before...