
With some excitement I can announce the coming of Cooperantem Audio.
It's a new platform for original audio drama, set up by Chris Brittain, M Sieiro Garcia and myself.
We'll be releasing series and one-offs later in 2013.
And that means we've all been doing a lot of writing.
I've gone through some unfinished projects and finished them, so at editing stage are a one-off 45 minute play (a straightforward drama, although with slightly skew-wiff reality and some Welsh mythology) and a horror short, again with some mythology - although made up this time - hopefully for Halloween.
Otherwise, I have written two and three quarter episodes of a mini-series for preschoolers, "Mr Mostyn's Box of Magical Noises". As there may only be one more story, it will truly be mini at this rate!
Red Sands Investigations II is still on the back-burner for a while, although I did write more during Nanowrimo. It was a scene based in a cafe, and with cat-loving owners in mind, I wondered whether they could actually run a cafe full of cats, and was amazed and delighted to find that such cafes do exist in Japan. And now in Red Sands, too.
Taking part in Nanowrimo (albeit at a reduced rate of words per day) was, as ever, fun and also enlightening. I would heartily recommend it, alone, for bringing a social aspect to writing. Every time, taking part teaches everyone something new. This time, it was that I find prose much, much harder to write than dialogue now.
Writing is not simply writing - and the skills for writing novels can be quite different from those for writing audio, or poetry or anything else. Books are wonderful gateways into worlds and I would love to write one, but for the moment it's audio that has that immediacy, action, that challenge of succinctness that's so exciting.
I think I'm also finding a pattern in things I love writing about: mythology, whether real or invented, intruding on 'normal' lives; phony, melodramatic end of the pier history, be it fortune-tellers, conjurers, music hall performers, etc. ; alternate worlds; and mystery of some form, with a real-world backdrop. Thinking about it, I've not really grown up from my young adolescent days, being knocked sideways by the creepy mythical rumblings and time-slip adventures of Alan Garner, Penelope Farmer, Catherine Storr, Gillian Cross and E Nesbitt, just for starters. And Philippa Pearce's 'Tom's Midnight Garden' remains my favourite book of all time.
They say 'write what you know', but perhaps it's more 'write what you want to read'. Or listen to.
So that's where I'll be aiming from now on. Whether it works out or not, then at least the process will be enjoyable, and that's what counts.
It's a new platform for original audio drama, set up by Chris Brittain, M Sieiro Garcia and myself.
We'll be releasing series and one-offs later in 2013.
And that means we've all been doing a lot of writing.
I've gone through some unfinished projects and finished them, so at editing stage are a one-off 45 minute play (a straightforward drama, although with slightly skew-wiff reality and some Welsh mythology) and a horror short, again with some mythology - although made up this time - hopefully for Halloween.
Otherwise, I have written two and three quarter episodes of a mini-series for preschoolers, "Mr Mostyn's Box of Magical Noises". As there may only be one more story, it will truly be mini at this rate!
Red Sands Investigations II is still on the back-burner for a while, although I did write more during Nanowrimo. It was a scene based in a cafe, and with cat-loving owners in mind, I wondered whether they could actually run a cafe full of cats, and was amazed and delighted to find that such cafes do exist in Japan. And now in Red Sands, too.
Taking part in Nanowrimo (albeit at a reduced rate of words per day) was, as ever, fun and also enlightening. I would heartily recommend it, alone, for bringing a social aspect to writing. Every time, taking part teaches everyone something new. This time, it was that I find prose much, much harder to write than dialogue now.
Writing is not simply writing - and the skills for writing novels can be quite different from those for writing audio, or poetry or anything else. Books are wonderful gateways into worlds and I would love to write one, but for the moment it's audio that has that immediacy, action, that challenge of succinctness that's so exciting.
I think I'm also finding a pattern in things I love writing about: mythology, whether real or invented, intruding on 'normal' lives; phony, melodramatic end of the pier history, be it fortune-tellers, conjurers, music hall performers, etc. ; alternate worlds; and mystery of some form, with a real-world backdrop. Thinking about it, I've not really grown up from my young adolescent days, being knocked sideways by the creepy mythical rumblings and time-slip adventures of Alan Garner, Penelope Farmer, Catherine Storr, Gillian Cross and E Nesbitt, just for starters. And Philippa Pearce's 'Tom's Midnight Garden' remains my favourite book of all time.
They say 'write what you know', but perhaps it's more 'write what you want to read'. Or listen to.
So that's where I'll be aiming from now on. Whether it works out or not, then at least the process will be enjoyable, and that's what counts.