Buzzing With Creativity.

I am buzzing with creativity at the moment. I haven't slept earlier than 5am all week because my mind is absolutely racing. This is what my mind is like on any given morning at 4.32am..

"I want it to be morning! I want to be awake and I want to get back to editing. Wow the actors are so good. Oh! I should email Sally with those ideas for the things she's designing for me. Ooooh, meeting with John and Abby tomorrow, I must tell them about that book. Short story idea!... Must write a story about two camels who fight for the right to buy lottery tickets. Do I write it now or after I wake up or in my sleep? I want tea! I want to keep editing! I want to write a long long email to Sally, but she must think I'm insane because last night I wrote her four paragraphs on why Bob Dylan is similar to a good coffee. Ooooh, idea for my feature script. Must have scene where Hank accidently gets breast implants. Hmm, i must comment on Alyson's blog soon. Ooooh blogging idea, I should arrange for all my blogger friends to write a one sentence story about Tiger Woods, using only letters from the first half of the alphabet."

With this in my mind, how can I sleep? I realize it may not seem like creativity, more like insanity. But whatever it is I'm not sure where it's come from. Maybe from Spain, flights from there are cheap right now.

I recently wrote and directed a short film which I am now editing. It absolutely blows my mind how amazing the actors are. There's one particular actress whose scenes are so gripping and emotional that they make me want to cry like the little girl in the shop yesterday after I told her the cast of Twilight New Moon had been killed in a giant car accident.

Another thing that's helped is having positive people around me. I don't befriend negative/destructive people anymore. Whenever I come across these things, I get right to the issues, I tear the walls down. If someone questions or judges me-- I delve right into it, get right to the heart of matters right there with them. That way I don't need to sulk and moan and complain and judge for weeks after, it gets resolved in the moment. I have also recently, after many years of battles and sleeping with each others girlfriends, become friends with my inner critic. I no longer allow the fat chump in my head to make me feel inferior. He has no authority, he's been demoted.

So all that negative, angry, judging horse poop that used to come from my critic, is now positive energy. Or just energy. Crazy energy. I realize now that my critic probably helped me sleep. Either that or he just didn't want me awake.

I want, I want, I want.

I am now poised for a full on journey of screenwriting and directing for the rest of my life -creating films that matter. That make people laugh, think, blog and snog. That's the ball game. People keep telling me the stats, you know the type of thing, "writing is tough. A million scripts are written every year, only three and a half get made and two of them are Twilight movies." I don't care, I didn't get into this work because of my interest in stats. My interest is in Marylin Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin and Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart and Otis Preminger and Cameron Crowe and Gordon Willis and Dianne Wiest and Aaron Sorkin and Natalie Portman and Peter MacNicol and Walter Matthau and in telling great stories. My interest is not in statistics or in being polarized or ruled or dictated to by anyone who thinks they have any kind of say over what I can or can't achieve. You may say I'm a dreamer. I have reason to believe, I'm not the only one.

This week: The Kid In The Front Row Screenwriting Competion winners, the big giant blogtastic bloggety blogthing bloggerology blogness, when a HEAP of my favourite bloggers will all be blogging on the same title and theme as me, that'll be on the 3rd December. If you want to be a part of this, please email me. If you do email me, please include a subject and content in the email, as I am not a mind-reader. If you are a mind-reader, you already knew I was going to write that, which fascinates me. Maybe you've already explained this to me telepathically, but I'm not aware of it.

It's 2.54am in the UK. When I post this it'll probably say it's 10pm the day before as I think this runs on USA time, or Peru time, or something. Anyways, that's all, this-time.

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Thought Of The Day.

nobody will believe in your work if you don't.

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5 Page Screenwriting Competition - Only A Few Days Left!

"I am a writer," he said, and the girl got impressed. "But I couldn't do the competition because I had to work and then I had to clean the cat and then I had to log onto Facebook."

Don't be one of them people. Be the writer you know you are, or be the writer you want to be, or --- if you've never written before...... find that creative soul that's hiding deep within you and let it out, be a part of our competition.

There are THREE PRIZES: Best Screenplay, Funniest Screenplay and Most Original Screenplay. I will also give a few gifts to the winners, namely a few books and DVD's.

Here are the rules.

• Your script must be no more than 5 pages long (6 including the cover page)
  
• The entire film is set in one place - the kitchen.
  
• You must use industry standard formatting.
  
• There are three characters: Anna, Mike and Hank.
  
• Anna wants something from Mike, but there's no way Mike is giving it away.

That's your brief. You can only use those three characters - and at some point, Anna is going to need something from Mike that he won't be giving (it could be sex, a monkey, a wedding ring, who knows, it's up to you!)

Be creative, be imaginative, be daring, and get your script in by December 2nd 2009.

By submitting you agree for your screenplay to be shared with readers of the KITFW blog. I will read every script sent to me.

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Lee Remick in 'Days Of Wine And Roses' (1962 Dir: Blake Edwards)

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ideaaaaaas whereeee are youuuuuu, come backkkkk!

What is creativity? where is it? Who is it? How can I sit there some nights writing away like a maniac and other nights I sit there with pure blankness. I'm not talking about those nights when my ideas are bad or my inner-critic is telling me I'm useless, I'm just talking about those days when it just isn't there.

How can this be? How can the material not be there? It's like working in a shoe factory but being told there's no laces to finish the job. It makes no real sense. One night I can be laying there and BOOM, a genius idea for a story or a script. But on another night.. It's blank. A blankness that is impossible to describe, but I'll try. It's like you're looking down a blank road, waiting for a car to come out of the mist. But you keep searching and searching but it won't arrive.

I'm not annoyed or anything. It's not a problem, an idea doesn't have to come TODAY. It just seems crazy that it can't. If I have a genius idea tomorrow about a disabled camel that runs for President, why can't I get it today instead?

It's like a few months back when I wrote my tea addiction story and the one about dreams - they appeared from nowhere, for no reason. Why? How? Where from? And if I have the talent to write humour like that why can't I do it all the time? Why can't I write one about coffee right now?

I don't need answers, but it just fascinates me. I kinda like it - to be honest, it feels a bit magical. Where in my brain is it coming from? Or does it come from God? And if it does come from God, will he take a commission from my work?

It's a bit like that Elizabeth Gilbert video I posted a while back. She talks about the cosmic creative forces that swirl down from the ether and give you the genius for a moment at a time. And besides, she was talking about Tom Waits and great novellists, not about anonymous bloggers who miraculously have decreasing numbers of google followers.

So, yeah-- I don't really want actual answers. If you said "well, Kid, your creativity is stored in your elbow and only gets released when it hits certain temperatures," I would feel disappointed, because I like the magic and I also like to keep my elbow slightly below room temperature.

It's 4am. I am shooting a scene at 10am. Awake is not what I should be right now. If you see an anonymous blogger filming a scene tomorrow in Central London be sure to leave him a comment.

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