It’s time for a new post

I haven’t had much in the way of writing to talk about lately. I keep knowing I should write, but all I can get is a few paragraphs at a time, at the most.

I have, though, been watching Doctor Who. I’m a bit torn in regards to what is currently going on in this wonderful show. Those of you who know me well enough know that I am completely obsessed with David Tennant and I really don’t want the Tenth Doctor to go so quickly. On the other hand, I really can’t wait to see Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor! Not only do I love Matt Smith, but his appearance also marks the debut of Steven Moffat as head writer for the series. While I don’t mind Russell T Davies’s writing, consistently engaging science fiction plots are not his forte – rather, they appear to be “The Moff’s.”

Easter Saturday in the UK offered up the Easter special for this year, Planet of the Dead. I had some high hopes for these specials, because there would be fewer episodes this “gap year.” This meant that hopefully RTD would get some time to improve his scripts. Unfortunately, this episode was good, but not terribly exciting. I liked Lady Christina de Souza and her flirting with the Doctor. I didn’t like Malcolm. He was too much of a Mad Scientist caricature. Also, the flying bus sent the story dangerously towards cartoon territory.

The nameless swarm aliens in this ep were the first RTD-created extraterrestrial species that I thought were really cool. At least, they looked amazing. They were these flying eel-type things with metal exoskeletons. But they don’t look to be flying anywhere near fast enough to create a wormhole. Is it just Applied Phlebotinum?

Before my brain explodes from looking up things about quantum physics to make sense of the im/possibility of such a thing, I’m going to try and get back into my writing.

Love you chickens!

j

“Well, instead of the Stalinist purges and the divorce and the investigation, erm, it could be about … losing a balloon.”

I’ve typed up a few paragraphs of my archaeology/sci-fi project here and there, but today I’ve mostly been doing a lot of procrastinating and scribbling down something resembling a plot outline for this thing. And when I say “procrastinate,” I really mean “net surf” — even with my download speed cut down to 64kbps for the rest of my billing month, I haven’t found the willpower to close that stupid browser window. I will soon, because I’m really getting tired of websites loading at such a (lack of) speed. It’s entirely my fault too, because I wasted all that quota downloading episodes of Jonathan Creek and Dollhouse. Now there’s also series three of Robin Hood, as well as the eagerly-awaited special episode of Doctor Who coming up next week.

Another thing that has started to take up an ever-growing poriton of my bandwidth usage every month is my occassional viewing of webseries. Recently, the inaugural Streamy Awards, which recognise achievements in this field, were held in LA. A whole swag of these little trophies were won by two of my favourites, The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I follow a few of the cast and crew of The Guild, as well as keep updates on Dr. Horrible-related things, on Twitter. DH was written as a low-budget project to keep people working throughout the writer’s strike in the US, and Felicia Day started writing The Guild to do what I’m trying to do at the moment — to sit down on her arse and write something.

Since the web series is a relatively new medium, there isn’t really any established format. The current trend seems to be that you have a few episodes per series, with each episode lasting anywhere from two to fifteen minutes.

So, I’ve been thinking, “Maybe I could write a web series.” A couple of episodes of several minutes is cinch, right?

Nuh-uh. I keep getting reminded of that episode of Black Books where Manny and Bernard try to write a children’s book in one night. They keep moving their hands to try and start to write something, but the pencils don’t touch the paper. Also, I think it was Steven Moffat who once said that for him, the shorter a project is, the harder it is. You need an interesting story that you need to compress into a tiny runtime. That takes more cutting than your “average-length” stuff.

Still, a webseries seem to be a great idea for writers who are short on cash, have some connections and are desperate to do something!

…

I don’t have any ideas for a webseries yet, LOL.

Love,

j