BATTLING DEMONS BY THE SEA

I'm on a mission. I'm attempting to write my first feature film script in 9 years and I've chosen an Australian period bio-pic.

I'm not allowed to give the story away or my brother, Hamish, will excommunicate me. Safe to say it's a story that we felt driven to tell and we spent considerable time planning and plotting. Then he nicked off for a holiday in America. I think he's just made it to San Francisco. I'm very jealous.

Though I've got the most incredible setting in which to write. I'm poised on the sea front of Portsea, just above Shelley Beach. The view is breathtaking and this is the house where I spent endless, happy, sunburnt summers growing up. It's also the location where I wrote my last screenplay.

I am most definitely making good headway, but I've hit a rough patch and am battling with myself not to give up too easily. It's Day 9 and I'm on page 76. My aim was 10 pages per day and I kept to that until Sunday. That day of enticing sloth.

I have been doing a mini triathalon most mornings (Sunday being the exception!!!) which is most unusual for me. I've done a little yoga, then a run along the beach with dogs yapping at my heels and demanding balls to be thrown (so not really a proper run) and then much to my surprise I've made it into the ocean pretty much every day to swim around the nearest buoy to the end of the jetty. What a wonderful way to start each day. It's heavenly and makes me feel so alive.

Just in case you don't know this, I am one of the laziest exercisers on this planet. I love yoga, but prefer to do a bit on my own than venture to a class and I have quickly got used to going for a morning walk with Minnie (Hame's divine black Staffordshire bull terrier) but running/jogging. Mein godt! Funny how I've always thought it was only for very fit people to do. But even unfit, jelly belly ol' moi can do it.

I am an ex-smoking asthmatic, so I don't go very fast or far, but it's easy to do and helps walk the dog that much faster. A revelation!


Talking of dogs, my heavenly host Kirsty Begg and I took her old boy Jaffa, who's recovering from an op, Minnie the Minster and Mum and Dad's fluffy puppy Oscar to A Million Paws on Sunday morn. It was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing at all the different people and their crazy dogs. I'm a late convert, I've always been a cat person but I am completely and utterly taken with Minnie. Unfortunately the heavens kept opening on us, but we managed to go for a wander and check out the stalls and while sipping our much needed cuppas, we stood by the mini competition circle in the centre. The rain was sleeting down and they were having a Tallest Dog comp. Kirsty asked where the other entrants were (only two massive Great Dane's were walking around the circle) and after being told that they hadn't showed, she promptly entered Jaffa and he got third prize!!!! Clever ducky. As she said, "You've got to be in it, to win it" when the judges were poking a bit of fun at her old boy.

So, I'm sitting here on Tuesday morning and I have a deadline of Friday. I know that I can reach my target by the end of the week, but how do I get past this block? I'm having a 'the last section I wrote is crap and I want to give up coz it's all too hard' moment. It's stupid and completely predictable after 8 days of blissful writing, where it felt like the words were spilling forth with ease. I know in my head that this is a first draft, there will be many more and I just need to get it down. But my heart is saying, see you silly girl, what did you think you could just write this script, you've got no talent, you should give up now and get a real job.

But I love filmmaking, I love being creative and I want to give this my best. So, I'm going to make another pot of tea and face the blank page. Please say a little prayer for me to the writing god. I need it.

Lxxxx