Watching The Weather Maps

Hello from out here on the roasted Thames Delta.

I'm writing this bit on Monday, while I toggle between lightningmaps and Ventusky, looking for the promised thunderstorms that will break this insane heat. But the cloud cover burned off forty minutes ago, and I suspect I will burn off with it.

I hope you've had a pleasant few weeks. Working in this heat has been a shit: I live in a small terraced house built in 1930 to retain the heat, not repel it, so it's been a dusty old hotbox for several weeks now.  That said, I did get PROJECT WRITTLE written.  As you read this, the contracts should be closing, the person I had in mind for it when I conceived it seems to have agreed to do it, we're making a start on the key-art generation process, and we're just waiting to see if we need to clear one pre-production hurdle before marching forward.  We're probably looking at a go-time of a couple of months from now. At which time I should be able to talk about it in a little more detail.  Which I'm looking forward to, because it's a new kind of thing for me and the process and learning has been interesting.

Talking of learning experiences: thanks to everyone who responded to the poll in the last edition.  I've never had access to that kind of function before, and it was fun to test out.   I didn't realise it would leave a space for commentary - that was not the plan at ALL -- but I did enjoy this note appended to a vote:

Horticultural therapy has, of course, been largely halted by the insane heat.  I'm a pale Englishman, and if I go outside in 40C weather I will simply combust.  But.  Did you know lime basil was a thing?  Neither did I, until I saw a pack of seeds for sale for 99p.  It's absolutely amazing.  Who was keeping this secret from me?  Also, why are wild strawberry plants so stupidly fucking hard to germinate?  I have questions.  But, I am getting out there as much as is safe, plucking the slugs off the vegetable shoots they are murdering and feeding them to the chickens.  You have to understand that chickens are basically dinosaurs, and will bring death to anything smaller than themselves that enters their eyeline.  And if the slugs didn't want to die at the claws of little dinosaurs, they shouldn't have eaten my fucking dwarf pea plants.

...okay, that doesn't sound much like I'm reaching enlightenment here.

It's 255pm.  The rain just started.  Praise Satan, whose armpit I've been living in for six weeks.

It is Saturday, and I'm writing this bit between cutting bits off trees, piling stuff into the compost bins and turning over dry and compacted dirt.  This is all basically the same as writing, only more sweaty.  I've talked before about how taking in information is building the compost bin in the back of your brain - just throwing it all in there and letting it cook down and turn into something new.  Right now I'm working on something that's based on a fact I learned sometime in the 1990s and has only now fallen out of the bottom of the bin and into my hands.  This is why you keep notes, and keep the ideas that didn't grow in a Loose Ideas folder.

Here's a writing prompt for you: someone finds something at the bottom of a compost bin that they cannot possibly have put there.

I also, in digging around, found a reminder to myself to rewatch WAKING THE DEAD.  It''s all on BBC iPlayer, you know.  It's a crime show, ran from 2000 to 2011, about a cold case squad in London with up-to-date science.  So far, so CSI.  But it features Trevor Eve and Sue Johnston, two veteran tv actors who saw the space (and, in a high-end tv production, found they had the sound technicians) to just fucking go for it. Sue Johnston confirmed in interviews that they tended to "wing it" and so you end up with incredibly energetic, natural, tangled performances that draw very textured personalities.  It's a joy to revisit and watch these actors work and watching other actors join in - Wil Johnson and Holly Aird especially.  The list of guest stars is fantastic: Peter Capaldi, Alice Krige, Michelle Forbes, Sean Harris, on and on.  

(The creator of the show is writer Barbara Machin.)

See, writing dialogue changes from books-and-comics to tv-and-actors.  What works on the page doesn't necessarily work in the mouth.  So you study screenwriters, but you also study very clever actors.  Watch how they get their effects.  It's all emanating from a script, of course, but it's adaptation of the script, too.  

Also, here's a new tv drinking game for you.  When a writer has had it dinned into their head that tv is a visual medium enough, they continually write the dialogue line "you need to see this," followed by a cut to the next scene where some people are looking at something.  Take a drink every time this happens.  If you're binge watching any American genre show made in the last five years, call an ambulance in advance. 

BOOKS/NON-FICTION

THE MAGIC BOX

THE MAGIC BOX is a personal journey through a period of British culture that left indelible marks on all of us who lived through it.  "A telemetric folklore of the British Isles."  The above quote is probably as clear an explication of my own formative influences as you will find, and also the below:

I have, on occasion, shown my daughter parts of the things I grew up with -- to share them with her, and also, if I'm honest, knowing her sensibilities... to horrify her.  I am rarely disappointed, and a constant refrain in this house was the yell of "how did you even live through the 70s and 80s?!?"

This is a book about many of the things that made me, and many of the things that made me a writer.

It covers some cinema too, as Young makes the excellent point that terrestrial tv of the era screened a lot of films.  More than it does today, in this time of streaming services and pay per view.  There used to be entire themed seasons of films on tv, and curated strands like Nick Jones and Alex Cox's excellent MOVIEDROME.

(Talking of Alex Cox, there's a film of his I first saw on tv - it was made first for the BBC, and then expanded for a cinema audience, and it's exactly the sort of film he would have presented on MOVIEDROME -- an adaptation of Borges' DEATH AND THE COMPASS starring Peter Boyle and Christopher Eccleston. One for you to hunt down.)

Young does a lot on the Hammer horror films, all of which I saw on tv.  Hammer horror was, as I've mentioned before, my way into CASTLEVANIA when I was asked to adapt it -- I understood that material as Hammer horror, and saw it as a way to write "my" Hammer horror films.  I mean, if you ever wondered why most of the people in eastern European was speaking with an English accent.... now you know.

The book ranges quite far and wide, but hits the expected touchstones, like the terrifying nature of children's television in the period - most notably, THE CHANGES, which disturbed the shit out of me as a kid, especially the first episode, but also the Cormac McCarthy THE ROAD-like scenes of refugees pushing carts and shopping trolleys down an empty motorway while the electricity pylons on the adjacent fields emit a haunted hum.

The full opening of THE CHANGES used to be on YouTube, but I can't find it now.  However, this trailer for a DVD collection from the BFI gets some of the flavour across.

For me, this was about revisiting memories and learning a few new things.  It's also a fine introduction to this weird facet of British culture if you know nothing about it.  Great book.  (UK) (US)

Next up, non-fiction research reading for a project.

Also, note: one of my regular stops for years has been Nadin Mai's THE ART(S) OF SLOW CINEMA blog.  Now there's a print collection of selected essays up for pre-order.

CURRENTLY LISTENING

SPEKTRMODULE

You can listen to the whole thing for free, twice, at its Bandcamp page.  As you may gather from the description, it's probably on the outer edge of what many of you would consider "music."  I find it fascinating.

GOT MORE TIME?

KEEP READING

Linkposts, because there hasn't been the space to do much else:

Strange New Days

Cosmic Dots

Khaal

Floating World Morning

THE MOUNTAIN PATH, Edward A Burger

And that's all I've got this week. Please stick with me while I figure out how to do better here.  In the meantime: the days are getting shorter up here in the northern hemisphere, the wind brings that slight chill warning of autumn in the evenings, but the light is still strong and the sun still shines.  Take a few minutes for yourself out in the air, just to be where you are.  Where the light is strong and the world still turns and brings you something new.  Take care of yourself, hold on tight, see you next week.