Could Animation be Incompatible with Writing?

When I set out to learn the craft of writing, it was with the warm and fuzzy notion that my animation and the writing would be complementary pursuits. I could spend my morning slaving over a hot computer animating away, then while away the afternoons with a pen and pad churning out my next novel. But it is in the nature of a creative fantasist to give a rosy colour to such plans without any serious thought to the murky realities.

Having just spent over two months on a short promotional film I've now had my bubble of delusions well and truly popped. Rather than catch up on the odd bit of writing in the evenings, I found myself unable to write a word, I simply felt drained and my faculties to write withered. This longer production has shown me that my reasoning and creative energies need to be directed to the one task, leaving little room for anything else. I have begun to wonder if the same should not be true of the reverse; if I am going to write a novel, shouldn't all my energies be given over to that? I'm aware that there are plenty of people who work at another job whilst quietly writing a book in their spare time. But I wonder if those jobs use the same parts of the mind as writing. If it doesn't, it could well be an advantage, giving the person time to muse over their writing when they are not doing it, or allowing their subconscious mind to process some problem when their thoughts are directed elsewhere. But in my case, it feels like I'm using the same parts of my brain for both animation and writing, and to split my time between two tasks slows me down and leaves me feeling tired and concerned that the quality of my work is suffering. Additionally there are my little rewards. I'm a very simple person to please really; my rewards are simply to be able to finish what I'm working on, or at least achieve some milestone and finish a section of the project I'm working on. When this happens, I get a little endorphin rush and feel good, this in turn encourages me to get on with the next thing. But if I split my time between two projects I end up spending half my time on each, it takes me twice as long to finish and consequently my little work fixes are not so frequent (unless everything is carefully staggered, and sadly life just doesn't work that conveniently). So I start to lose focus, then interest, I slow down and (worse still) start to procrastinate.

When it comes down to it, two months of no weekends or evenings is the limit for any task, whether animation or writing. So for the next few months at least, I intend to focus solely on my writing. Perhaps after that I will need a break and go back to some more animation work. Indeed maybe this should be the way I work in future, oscillating slowly between one and the other, switching before it becomes dull and always keeping the edge, whether it is with the moving image or the written word.

The Freedom of a First Draft

It seems a little odd to be talking about the process of writing a book without actually showing any of the writing itself, so to redress this I’ve decided to write this blog around a small section from my novel.

It’s a section that may never make it to the final book, not because it is bad; on the contrary, I like it a great deal, but sometimes there are good reasons to edit out a section, even if there is nothing wrong with it within itself. To put it into context, I'm working my way through a first draft at the present time, mostly free-writing sections of chapters I have planned as part of the overall narrative. Whilst the style, prose, and even structure of the work I'm producing in this stage can be downright embarrassing when I read back through it, it does serve a purpose; writing in this way offers a fantastic freedom to explore my characters and explore new possibilities for the narrative flow and colour. Sometimes I find myself writing outside the original plan because something suggests itself as worth pursuing. These explorations of character are giving me invaluable material about the characters and how they behave, interact and think, and more importantly I'm getting to know the minor characters, and through them the principals.

Not that some of it won’t be a casualty of editing when I come to a second or third draft; I realise that everything that makes the final draft must pull its weight, either moving the story forward or providing needed understanding about the characters.

The section I'm including here is part of a larger chapter, in which the principal character Melanie and her work colleagues have a group evening out. It is a very complex chapter that cycles round several of the characters and importantly brings some of the possible love interests, and complications, to the front without actually resolving them. The piece I wrote here was a complete sidetrack from everything else and I won't know, until I have completed the first draft, if it just adds complexity to the scene or is a much needed island in a rough sea. What I do know is that it provides a delightful moment of friendship that both characters had lacked up to this point, it also offers a lot more depth for Sue as well as one of the only direct physical descriptions about Melanie's appearance in the book, albeit through dialogue.

The toilets were a cool relief from the barrage of sound in the main club. The gaggle of women monopolising the mirrors above the sinks turned to stare as Melanie and Sue entered, then turned back to fine tuning their faces.
 Melanie ignored the attention, and lead Sue to a suitably blank corner, beside a hand-dryer displaying an out of order sign. 'Sue, can you do me a favour?'

'Um, Ok, what?'

'I need to brush my hair–it's all that dancing, my bag stays still but I move around inside it and my hair gets all messed up. I'm going to take it off facing the corner so no one can see me, but could you just stand behind me, I'll feel less uncomfortable with someone I know stood there.'

'Yes, Ok.'

'Thanks.'

'Um, do you want me to hold your bag?'

'Oh, thanks. You know you don't have to watch me.'

'I don't mind. I mean you're really lucky to have such thick wavy hair, mine's just dead straight, I can't do anything with it.'

'I am? I can't really tell at the moment it's full of tangles and I daren't use the mirror, everyone can see my reflection.'

'Here, give me the brush.' Sue took the brush from Melanie and passed the bag back to her. It was strangely thrilling to be without a bag in a public place and have someone touching her, even just her hair. It felt intimate and risky, but not sexual and oddly, not embarrassing. Let them look for once, perhaps they might learn something.

'You really do have beautiful hair you know, those red highlights, and shiny, like, um, horse chestnuts when they're just out of the case.'

'Are you saying I have hair like a conker?'

'Um.'

'Sorry, Sue, I'm just not used to compliments. It's odd, I suppose most people only get to see the ends of my hair with the bag on. I don't know why I bother sometimes, it would be a lot easier to have it all cut off. It's not like anyone would know but it's nice to hear that someone likes it. It's a good confidence booster–so, thanks.'

'I wish I had a quarter of your confidence Melanie, the guys really like you.'

'I don't think so, what do they want with a girl who has a congenital difference? I've got to be realistic. Although do you think Howard likes me?'

'Howard? Um, I don't know, I thought you liked Robbie? You're always having lunch with him and sending silly messages over the network.'

'No, Robbie and me are just friends. Brother and sister of the bag. Besides I love Japanese food.'

'There you go, I think I got all the tangles.'

'Thanks Sue, you have no idea how much I appreciate that.' Melanie slid her bag back on and turned around. 'We should do more hot chocolate lunches together at work, proper girl lunches.'

'You know, work's been much more interesting since you came. You're a really nice person.'

'You haven't seen me transform into my evil double yet. Oh–sorry I'm doing that thing with compliments again aren't I?'

'Yes.'

'Sue?'

'Um, yes.'

'You're a really nice person too.'

If you want to know more about the story and why Melanie wears a bag, please read the brief overview of The Different posted on my website.

My Own Deadlines

As a writer and animator, I'm used to working to deadlines but the only deadlines I find myself failing to meet are my own.

Most of the time such things are not an issue. I set an arbitrary date by which I would like to complete a self-initiated task, such as writing a blog, and attempt to work to that. More often than I would like: work, family or other considerations will lead me to revise these self-imposed deadlines. This is fine, unlike my work deadlines, they are meant to be a flexible guide rather than a rigid cut-off point.

But I got caught out by myself recently. I had planned to write a short seasonally themed story in time for Christmas. It was to be delivered via Twitter as a series of tweets spread over a two week period, which I calculated would give me a deadline around the 11th of December. During November I had a great deal of coursework for my MA, I also had a lot of paid work during the first two weeks of December. To consider this story was probably unrealistic, but as is often the case with me, I used it as a pleasurable thing to wind down in the evenings, after a hard day of doing other things. As the deadline approached I still had a small amount of the story to write. I wanted to get the ending working well, tying up a number of threads, but I had altered the story from it's original outline and I felt the ending should also change. Unfortunately, I also had another deadline for my coursework on the same day, as well as an article I'd promised to complete. I realised something had to give.

In short, I missed my own short story deadline. I did consider posting the beginning whilst I was still writing the end; it's not the first time I've had to do that, but in the end I decided to pull the story. Which, in hindsight, was the correct decision; I had not done enough promotional work for the story and I still wasn't happy with the ending. That I didn't meet my deadline, I don't mind at all; I can revise, and improve it ready for next Christmas; I can deliver it with a more relaxed timeframe and, most importantly, I will have a whole year in which to plan how to promote it. I've also learnt that it is better to not deliver something at all than something done badly.

The Ancestry of an Idea

Character test render from the film Static © 2001 G.Boulton & S.Cornish

It is good to understand how ideas develop, evolve and combine.

I believe that no ideas are wasted even if they get nowhere in their original form. The novel I'm writing didn't just spring fully formed like Athena from the forehead of Zeus; it has a history. It has parents that lead to a sort of conceptual conception, and a long long gestation during which it began to develop features such as characters, and a storyline. It's some way from it's debut yet, but it's been kicking for a while and it's definitely turned and engaged with the birth canal.

So let us begin with the parents. Back in 2000 I was a partner in an animation studio called Artgeek. Things were going well; we had landed a rather good deal to make a short film, with a working title of Static, funded by an insurance company. It was a good idea and my co-director Greg Boulton and I ran with it. We could afford to; the budget was colossal. It was an adaptation of a short story about disability, originally written by Stephen Duckworth, illustrating what it might be like to be the only hearing person in a world where ears hadn't been invented (as an artistic decision we also chose to design every living thing with wheels, resulting in a world that was subtly geared around wheeled access).  To cut to the chase, it got canned at the end of pre-production. After the whole 9/11 thing, insurance companies globally had to tighten their belts. It was gutting.

The other parent is an idea that struck me as I was sitting outside a coffee shop on a sunny Brighton afternoon (don't ask me why there and then, but it was shortly after being knocked back on an alternative funding bid for Static, over to legal concerns). I had an idea for a black comedic live-action short film, in which a child was so ugly that his parents actually stuck a paper bag over his head.

I discussed the idea with a friend and filmmaker at yet another coffee emporium and from that realised I had an idea that was big enough to develop into a feature script. In my usual style I wrote up a few scenes (which were very good scenes), but the resolution and character needs didn't quite work on the rough treatment and I shelved it. It was In some ways too comic for the direction it was headed.

Over the following years I would visit those scenes in my mind more than once. But it wasn't until I began serious writing on my MA course that I realized that the essences of the two projects might be combined. Taking away the physical reason for the protagonist's stigma in Ugly, whilst giving the readers the lack of comprehension that the other citizens had felt for the character in Static, would leave the pure prejudice and preconceptions of both the other characters and the audience. This immediately enabled the message from the earlier projects to gain a redoubled power and meaning, and I knew that I had a strong story to work with for my Novel.


If you are interested in more blogs about how writers develop their ideas Back Story is definitely worth following.

The Muse is messing with my head again

I have two problems with my writing: over-confidence and lack of it.

It works with my underlying mood. There are times I'm on top of it all, cock o' the heap; I'm focused, I see clearly what needs to be done, I write as the words come to me. I play with the text, I experiment, it feels like I'm painting emotions and experiences with words. Sometimes when I read back through what I've done, I can't believe it was me that set it down. Really, I have no idea how I could have conceived it that way. Then there are the other times I question everything; I make false starts and lose confidence in what I am trying to say and how. Over and over again, different failed ideas die as I try to put them down, like lifeless insects spread across the page. I can't sleep properly, worrying that I'm going round in pointless circles. Any excuse interrupts the work; children, traffic, the weather all are blamed for my inability to concentrate. Criticism is doom; I'm self-conscious about everything, and nothing is worthy.

This isn't writer's block; the one comfort I can take when my mind turns listless, is that my muse is busier than ever. All those false starts are simply the seeds of new ideas. Embryonic creations to be mulled over by my subconscious for a few weeks or months, before they can be brought to term, to be born from my eager fingers in one of my cyclic periods of productivity.

I have learn to accept that this is the way I work, but I love hating it and hate myself for loving it. The sickening tedium of sustained dissatisfaction in exquisitely hideous contrast to the intensity of my over-stimulated brain, tearing me apart, leaving me hurt, exhausted, and craving more.

My muse may be good but she is not kind.