Tuesday 4 October 2011

What A Difference A Year Makes...


Who can believe it's October already?  What with the recent heatwave in the UK, us Brits have been hard pushed to even remember that Summer is actually over, let alone that Christmas will soon be bearing down on us like a rabid reindeer.  With that in mind I recently checked my calendar and discovered it's only a little over three weeks until the infamous London Screenwriters' Festival kicks off.  Just three weeks left to hone my scripts, perfect my pitches, and try to resurrect what few social skills I might have once had.  It's at once a scary and exciting prospect and one that leads me to remember how it felt to be a complete new-comer to all this last year.

On a completely personal level, it's a fantastic barometer of how far I've come and what I've achieved in a little over a year.  I enrolled on my first screenwriters' course just last summer with little more than a desperate want to see if I could possibly make a career out of my two great passions - writing and film.  It was incredibly daunting but also so amazing to discover that, yes, you really can do this for a living!  It's not a fallacy.  Since then I have done a second course, attended a festival, a masterclass, and numerous seminars.  I've made some fantastic new writer friends, who have made the whole process so much more fun and who keep me going when I sometimes (make that often) start to doubt myself.  I've written two screenplays (not that they're final drafts yet mind you!), self-published my first book and started work on a second.  And then of course, there's the blog, the website and seeing my twitter following go from around 70 to over 600.  I've even been asked to guest post on a couple of websites - the most recent of which is here... http://www.bang2write.com/2011/09/end-is-just-beginning-adventures-in.html (thanks so much Lucy for the opportunity!)

There is a ridiculously long way to go yet and I'm in no way blowing my own trumpet, but I can't help but be proud that I finally found the motivation to chase my dream and, more importantly, keep at it.

So if there's anyone out there like me, dreaming of getting into the industry but believing it to be an impossible hill to climb, rest assured it's all there for the taking.  Get out there, get educated, get meeting other writers and watch it slowly morph into reality.  It may be a long road but the journey is so worth it.

x

Don't forget '25 Random Facts' is available as an e-book on 
For more information check out my website, http://www.ejmack.co.uk , or join me on my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/ejmack.fb 

And finally, if you'd like to sample the first three chapters for free, 
without having to download, go here: http://www.twentyfiverandomfacts.blogspot.com
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)