Pitch

A three to five minute pitch for the London Screenwriters' Festival. I've chosen my crime drama Wonderland as I think it's my best work to date and also my best chance of getting an agent or producer interested.

Now to practice and practice and practice and practice and practice.

I must be prepared.

Is anyone else pitching at the LSWF? How are you preparing; any unique ways?

Balance

The London Screenwriter's Festival 2010 kicks off on Friday and I'll be preparing myself over the next few days ready for three days of intense networking. But how do I strike a balance between all the talks I want to be at and networking? To figure this out I had to decide what was most important to me, meeting up with friends, listening to speakers, or networking my arse off trying to get an agent and get producers interested in my work?

To make the best use of my time and money I have decided to concentrate on the latter. Finding producers to buy my work and getting an agent to help me with getting more work is my priority and everything else comes second to that. I need to make a success of my career and myself, and start making a living from writing.

I will attend a few talks, and I won't ignore my friends, but my main focus will be giving my career a damn good boost, after all producers and agents are coming to look for talented writers so I have to mercenary and make the most of the opportunities presented to me.

I will only get out of this weekend what I put into it over the next few days.

The Snowball Effect

I quite often read Noel Clarke's blog, mainly because he tells it like it is and doesn't pull any punches. His last post - The Snowball Effect - is a great insperational piece about how you only ever get anywhere by hard work and the World does not owe you a living, so you have to knuckle down and get on with it. This is what he has to say about his first job, Metrosexuality.

Weirdly though, I thought that was it. Like a lot of young actors do, I thought that was it, and once you were in you would just be doing films and TV whenever you wanted. I never really thought about the rejection after rejection, after rejection, after rejection, after rejection, after rejection, after rejection, that you get as an actor. Truth is 90% of actors don’t work. - Noel Clarke 2010

But Metrosexuality was a start even if some of his friends didn't think so. Some of his (so called) friends deserted him because of the sexual aspect of the show and they didn't want to associated with 'that' actor on the 'gay show'. This didn't bother Noel as he knew none of those so called friends who told him not to do the job were going to pay his wages, so he forgot them (my words, not his) and got on with the job. Of course it was a successful show and catapulted him on to other things. If Noel had not done Metrosexuality he would not be where he is now, and he is very aware of this.

Read the post, you'll love it.