A bit about me...

This is the first time i've done anything like this so please bear with me. Don't really know what i'm going to say so i'm just going to launch in and start saying something.

Okay, so i'm studying for a Masters in TV Scriptwriting at DMU. Even getting on the course was a huge shock for me. My degree is in Geography and Media, Communications and Culture and I didn't do much creative writing of any description, let alone screenwriting. I'd been writing fanfiction for several years and i've always loved making up stories and writing fictional prose and a bit of poetry from a young age. I was trying to work out what to do with my life when I found the masters course. I wrote a couple of scripts, applied and here I am. So that's my educational side.

I'm working in a betting shop to fund my course, I'm whats known as a Manager's Assistant, this means I can be in charge of the day to day running of the shop, opening up, closing down, and all the fun inbetween.  I have come across loads of interesting people and have a whole load of stories from my time there. You want to read one? Okay.

So on monday one of our regular customers came in, lets call him Alfred, he's quite old but likes to potter about putting the pens back in the pots. He sits down on one of the chairs in front of our main screen showing the best racing, I look up a little while later and he's fallen asleep. Maybe an hour later he suddenly jumps and looks around. He slowly makes his way to the counter and asks me for the time, '20 past 4' I say, he nods and looks around the room. 'You've got no clocks in this shop' my manager just stares at him, right behind him is a very large digital clock. We also have a digital clock on the corner of our main racing screens. My manager turns to another of our regular customers, lets call him Roger, and says to him, 'go and show Alfred where the clocks are' Roger replies in his trademark Carribean mumble, 'I not show that fool, why I gotta show him? You show him'.  By this time Alfred has wandered away and is picking up used betting slips from the floor completely oblivious to everyone around him. We do worry about Alfred, he doesn't seem very well.

So thats, education, check, vocation, check, what about my family?

First thing about my family, we're all nuts, but in a good way. Second thing, my family inform my writing a whole lot more than I care to imagine. I've seen family members go through quite a lot over the past few years, Anorexia, Alzhiemers and a unfinished battle for a diagnosis, final contenders are M.S and Lupus, neither are very pleasant, especially at a young age, I wish it was neither but that is life, taking the good with the bad. That particular family member is an inspiration to me, the way she is just getting on with it, she is being so brave.

I use writing as a way to cope with what is going on around me, writing is my therapy and my love. It is my way of escape and my link with reality. To be able to make a living doing something I love so much would be a dream, a dream which I hope I can make into a reality.

So at last we get to it, writing. My first assignment for my MA was to write the first episode of an original series, I chose to do a crime drama. I wrote it, handed it in, got a report from one of my peers and wrote a report on their script, rewrote my episode and handed it in. Then it was sent to a professional from the industry, turns out it was Alison Lumb, producer of several episodes of Silent Witness - she worked out who the murderer was quite early on. Since reading her report on my episode i've set to work restructuring the main plot and surrounding plots, my single episode crimes seem to have taken a life of their own and become a double episode. I've gained more suspects and more bodies - you should see my search history, makes me look like some kind of psychopath, all these ways of killing people and searches for suitable murder weapons! Anyway, my next step is to try and work out my opening 15 scenes.

As part of the course we are having a read through of the first 16 pages of each of our scripts by professional actors. I need to get my opening scenes planned and written in one week - eeeek! I best get writing...