Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes

I had an interesting night with a friend from my course the other night. He who shall remain nameless is very bright, very incisive and generally has good ideas on a variety of topics. Though he really needs to talk less... You know who you are!! Anyway, it was one of those wonderful conversations you have at the start of a relationship where you both share some stuff and begin to forge a friendship. The trite term is a "bonding session." But this was different. As you know from previous posts I've been struggling with my script for a while now. What's the OC? What am I trying to say? Etc etc. I asked my friend if he thought I should change my story and he said that yes I should, simply because it was obvious to him what I'm writing is not what I want to really write. He proceded to analyse my central character, and by extension me, and the things I haven't really verbalised before. He did it so accurately, he completely caught me off guard, and I ended up getting quite upset. It had simply been a very long time since anyone not only saw through me but articulated it back to me like that. I don't want to go into specifics, suffice to say in the most sensitive way possible, he made me confront a few things I had been dancing around in my writing but as yet hadn't properly tackled. And that after all is one of the reasons I'm here at Goldsmiths. I wanted to exorcise what's been in my head and my heart and produce a worthwhile script in the process. Somewhere along the way that got lost. Yeah there's some engaging, some worthwhile, even some personal things in what I'm writing but deep down I've known for a couple of weeks that I've allowed myself to get steered off course. It's one of the potential negatives of the course. We meet every Monday as I've described to go over each other's work and everyone pitches in their ideas. On the one hand it's great as it offers tremendous support and you end up receiving many good ideas. The flip side is the ideas, though great, are not suited to what you originally wanted to do. And unless you have that clear in your head, it's easy to become diverted which is what has happened. Which is why I've been struggling.

Soooo...

Time for a new story. My mate offered me a potential setting and story which is really very good. It means starting over in a sense but that's okay. It has to be really. I'd much rather fail doing something I believe in than succeed with a script that was at best less personally meaningful and at worst compromised and diluted to the point of it being bland. I need to be as raw and as honest as I was the other night and I need to do that for the next year almost while I write the script. I need to remember what it is I came here to write and to have the courage of my convictions. I need to remember that I have a perspective that is unique to me and that is the greatest tool I have, indeed the greatest tool any writer has.

I've been pushed back to where I need to be by someone I'm very happy to call a friend. It's probably the most important thing that's happened on this course, indeed for a long time. The script is all about repression. And I need to open myself up and write it.