Finding the Writer's Voice

About a hundred years ago, I applied for this. On Friday, I got the following letter from TAPS:

Thank you very much for your submission for the above course. Due to the sheer volume of submissions received the shortlisting process has taken longer than we anticipated and we thank you for your patience.

The standard of the scripts we received was higher than ever and it was a genuine pleasure to see such quality work. The uniformly excellent writing made it a real challange to select the writers to proceed onto the next stage. It has been a long process and we have created a shortlist of the best scripts which will now be read by our Artistic Advisory Board before being considered for development.

I am please(d) to tell you that your script has made this shortlist. Once the Board have decided on the six they wish to develop we shall let you know their decision.

...which is nice.

The script I submitted for this script was demented (and I have that on good authority), so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Three Days In and It's All Going Pear Shaped...

2008 has gotten off to an absolutely cracking start, courtesy of some pathological bad luck:

* Man-sized flu from Christmas day onwards – believe me, I was iller than a skip full of Beastie Boys CDs.
* The gear box on my car gave up the ghost. £1136 later, it’s fixed, but it looks like I’ll have to sell an internal organ to pay for it – what’s the going rate for a liver these days?
* New Year’s Eve – hooray! New Year’s Day – food poisoning!
* Dentist’s appointment yesterday. I hate the dentist even more than my mother hates the Krankies.

With all this in mind, I thought I’d better get my METLAB script in before my PC got hit by a stray meteorite.

I’ve also decided to go for the TAPS Finding the Writer’s Voice thing, so we’ll see how that pans out. According to the TAPS guidelines, it’s advisable to apply for funding through ScreenSouth. Right, sounds good to me. After downloading the training bursary application form from the ScreenSouth site, the first thing that strikes me is that you need to attach a ‘Career Plan’. Oh dear. This might take a bit longer than I thought. Also, reading through the RIFE guidelines, it states “all applicants must have applied to Skillset for a bursary before applying to Screen South.” Oh. OK then.

So it’s onto Skillset to discover that I probably won’t get any funding from this source, which is no great shakes. But the ScreenSouth application form states that I have to attach three copies of my Skillset submission. Hmmm.

Attempting to unravel the vagaries of ScreenSouth application forms is perhaps not the best way to start 2008. That said, the TAPS course is only £500 – what’s the going rate for a bit of bone marrow these days?