and if that’s the case, then I was trying real hard. 2012 was The Year Of Making Mistakes.

In the course of these mistakes, I bummed out on my writing. That’s how, in the end, I knew they were crappy mistakes, instead of mistakes that were Really Going To Make Everything Better!! Neil Gaiman did an amazing commencement talk for Stanford University where he gave a reliable compass to all artists in doubt: is your dilemma moving you closer to, or farther from, the mountain?

Man, my compass was waaaaay off, because that mountain was behind me and it took a while to find the path back to it.

But I did, so it’s time to

But that means taking risks, right? It probably means being wrong a whole lot. It’s like

But this year, I’m going to make better ones. Because I need to play catch up and apparently

 So I don’t know about the wisdom part, but I do know that I need a progress acceleration, people. So in the spirit of the sage advice above, I am dubbing 2013 The Year of Making Mistakes In Public.

You, my friends, are the public.

I’m writing stories and putting them on my website and finding out whether they get read, and whether people will read from one to the next, and what’s working and for who. Because here’s the single best inspirational quotation I have seen for an artist:

I’m minding the gap. I’m going to write and I’m going to post and I’m sorry that I’m not going to be amazing right now but I’m going to get better. I’d be grateful for some help along the way. The first story is up now, and since I’m an artist, and the statistics for making an income much less living from my writing are astronomically stacked against me, I’ve put in a virtual tip jar, in case you’d like to throw some change in.

When I get my hands back on Photoshop, I’ll make it an actual tip jar, instead of just a button that says it’s a tip jar…

So keeping to schedule may be a challenge, given my startling similarities to Dug. You know how it is. “I’m busy writing and is that a SQUIRREL?!”

And after all those motivational quotes, I leave you with my favourite.

Don’t ask why, because there’s

]]> http://www.adelekirby.com/2013/04/the-year-of-making-mistakes/feed/ 1 http://www.adelekirby.com/2013/01/amazing-monday/ http://www.adelekirby.com/2013/01/amazing-monday/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:42:55 +0000 Adele http://www.adelekirby.com/?p=1847 It started with an email from one of my gym chains, warning us instructor folk of the impending arrival of ‘Blue Monday’, a day which has been (scientifically dubiously) ‘scientifically proven’ to be the most depressing of year. I suspect the third Monday of January has excellent grounds for calling slander, and Dean Burnett has written what is probably its most entertaining defence over in the Guardian (his comparable ‘scientific equations’ are glorious for a giggle).

So. We were being asked to combat the effect of the Blue Monday phenomenon with… enhanced enthusiasm. The wearing of bright colours. To more cheerfully inflict acts of exercise on those brave souls who still made it to the gym. That sort of thing.

To be fair, instructors get quite a few emails from clubs asking us to dress up for this, help fund raise for that, encourage members to participate in whatever new initiative is going around. But every now and again you find an instructor who not only reads such emails but also runs with them, and then you end up with something like this turning up on your Facebook feed at a goddawful hour of the morning:

Cheerful Thursday! And why not? And check that girl’s waist! I used to dress for work like that. Then I got told to eat all the cake to put on weight and now it’s full length for me. Go Caitlin!

Now, offensively enthusiastic posts and pictures are normally my area of specialty, so I felt like I was behind in the game. Naturally, I had to respond in kind. Cheerful Thursday? I think YES.

This thing needed some momentum.

With tongue firmly in cheek, I warned my classes of the perils of Blue Monday, ordering them to turn up on Monday armed with joy, gratitude and an enthusiastic two fingered salute to the January blues*.

* If you’re reading this from the southern hemisphere, you’re probably wondering what this ‘January Blues’ is of which I speak. Well, you and your glorious summer can just stay smug while I take five minutes to pull on several layers of clothing and waterproofs every time I go outside…

Cheerful Thursday was quickly followed by call to arms to have a Fantastic Friday:

To my great surprise, two members at Hammertime caught me after class to assure me that if they did not turn up on Monday, I was not to worry. They would not have committed suicide under the weight of the January blues, all was well but there were places to be etc.

Interesting. My plan to defy Blue Monday seemed to be working. Certainly I was fulfilling the club’s request to raise people’s awareness of it – even if I was only perpetuating the urban myth with a healthy degree of cynicism. I began to wonder if the question was not so much whether people would turn up to class Monday, but would dare not to.

Blue Monday, as it turned out, actually dawned a White Monday, at least in London and much of England. Personally I think it’s damn hard to have a bad start to a day which begins by running about and snowballing your fellow bootcampers in the park – right?

At 7am on Blue Monday, Ravenscourt Park was not dark, but instead the surreal light that comes from lamp, star and ambient light reflected from snow.

That’s my guys to the left of the trees, practicing out their snow galloping. Proud. Also amused:

Glorious way to start the day, and with double combat and spin to come, there was no force in the universe that could ruin my day. The first combat admittedly slightly cripples me (currently lame, but not acting enough like it) but I manned up, donned my brightest blue and officially dubbed the day Amazing Monday**:

** NB in the interests of fair disclosure: taking these photos is MUCH harder than you might think, especially on an old iPhone without the reversal function. I won’t pretend these were the first I took, and that I didn’t look like a total knob doing it…

I scooted down to Hammertime, no more cheerful than normal (otherwise Beth might not be the only one wanting to punch me out) but certainly on a fair 11 from a scale of 1-10. And what did I find?

Two full classes. Rammed.

Blue Monday, you LOSE. We WON.

We worked hard. We committed lactic acid to our muscles,    sweat to the studio floor, fought through fatigue and I almost committed an act of violence against the stereo when it skipped during key moments of both Death is the Road To Awe and Turbulence.

And we had a sensational time doing it.

No-one took the easy way out.
No-one gave any less than they had to give.
No-one let themselves down.

It was an Amazing Monday.

Which got me to thinking. About Blue Monday, and about life, about swings and roundabouts and peaks and plateaus. About how we can have these incredible highs in a day/week/year/life and still lose them in the lows.

I’m not saying a gym class is the biggest high around – for all that I love my job and what I can give to people, I sincerely hope it is not the absolute pinnacle of anyone’s week – but whatever it is that lifts you up, that sets your heart literally or metaphorically racing, sometimes it’s not enough. Or you find yourself addictively chasing those highs, because something else is missing.

…So I’m pondering. And then I found an answer, of sorts. Unless you’ve already had the pleasure, allow me to introduce you to Dax Moy. He’s a Personal Trainer, but he’s got the holistic approach in the bag and a lot of what he’s training is the brain. He is well worth stalking on Facebook and once of his recent rambles really rang true with a lot of people: this little (well, it’s Dax, he trumps even me on the rambling front, but what rambling!) video about self esteem, and how we so readily sabotage ourselves. See me here? Guilty as charged. Worth a listen.

So in the video, Dax explains that every time we make and break a promise to ourselves, we betray our self confidence. I make a lot of promises to myself and to my shame, I break far, far too many of them. I listened to that video going ‘Oh. OH. Oh shit. Oh. Oh ok. Right. Um.’

In the 3 days since I saw it, I’ve watched myself lie repeatedly. Never with ill intent. I just betray myself, continually, with breathtakingly unrealistic expectations. And the subconscious cynicism this kind of behaviour breeds is the noose around my neck.

So. With all that on my mind, and I spent the rest of Amazing Monday with Greg. I met him at SFX Weekender last year, dressed as Leia, he as Captain Hammer.

I still call him Captain Hammer (he is more polite and does not call me Hot Leia – at least, not to my face), but he’s more of a Doctor Who meets Superman hybrid, and ninja to boot. He is also is trying to get into space (you can vote for him here, and I’d love you to because that would also make him Captain Kirk).

We ran around the Science Museum in a state of child-like enthusiasm, and I learned a lot from the hours in his company. He’s one of the smartest people I know,  and he doesn’t have a smart phone (the same goes for Iain, another genius over-achieving friend who lectures in theoretically physics at Oxford while being significantly younger than me.  I’m starting to think there might be a connection between this and their terrifying productivity).

Amongst other things, Greg is an elite athlete competing for a place in the Commonwealth Games for cycling. The more we talked, the more I thought: this is someone who doesn’t lie to himself. He simply couldn’t do all the things he does, as well as he does, if he didn’t fully trust his capacity to carry them out. He might disagree with that, but I was seriously impressed.

So in the end, I learned three things this week. I think Dax perfectly revealed the foundation of the Blue Monday phenomenon – that day when the rush and hope of the holiday season is over, when you’ve made promises/resolutions to yourself which you realise you haven’t kept, and all the lies you have told yourself take their toll.

I realised why bootcamps and PT and exercise classes can be so empowering: because they are an hour of your day in which you’ve turned up to fulfil a promise you have made, and though you can still betray yourself by compromising your effort, you also have the chance to impress yourself with your commitment. You have a chance to fortify your self esteem against the toll of smaller, daily erosions.

Finally, I was inspired by Greg to be less of a liar to myself. He’s more ambitious than I, and achieving ten times what I manage. I believe that’s the armour that will stave off Blue Mondays in any week of any month of any year. Be realistic. Be true. Be awesome.

So, dear Blue Monday, I thank you. You have been an education. Let’s do it all again same time next year.

But it’s been particularly Good. At least…that’s been my experience of it. What’s interesting is that on any other given day, given the same set of events and circumstances, my experience of it would have probably been Exceedingly Average.

There is someone I will hold responsible for this, in due course.

So first up, in the northern hemisphere winter cometh, meaning dark and damp mornings are now the norm: but Bootcamp, though dark and damp, was still a hoot. My boss, Ben, turned up unexpectedly after for coffee and said all the right things to reassure me about the work I’m doing with my new group (though feedback like ‘unreasonably cheerful for the time of day’ turned up)*.

Next up I nailed two of the best cycle classes I’ve ever taught, one done off the bike with no mic or video system and only a boom box in place of my surround sound. Two people walked out though, and for a neurotic sensitive instructor like yours truly, this is always an awful experience – an open door to distracting, damaging thoughts like ‘they must be really hating this class’, which obviously leads to ‘they must hate me!’ and that debilitating conclusion of ‘I must be rubbish!’ (and an urgent desire to slink away to die behind the stereo).

But today, that door didn’t open. I taught on, moving through the bikes, checking in on people, explaining and motivating and giving them everything I could – and for the two who left, many more came up after to thank me for still delivering a challenging, fun class.

Pump rocked out even though we had to play pot luck on the tunes because I’d left the CD in another gym and the stereo was, bless its obstinate soul, being very particular about what it would play on the other three discs I had on me. Could have been very messy, but actually turned the class very interactive and I was amazed to discover that some members could remember choreography I had long since forgotten and tell ME what came next. Genius!

Memory of a GOLDFISH

After class I had a lovely chat with the club co-ordinator, during which I discovered I’ve been getting paid more than I realised for about the last six months (which fairly accurately reflects how far behind I am with my accounts…). Bargain.

Come the afternoon writing session, I hit a state of flow. This was achieved by leaving my phone in my bag and disconnecting the internet – a necessary state of affairs which almost never occurs, meaning writing sessions are generally a source of cyclic pain:

Phase 1 (OPTIMISM): I’m going to be amazing today!!
Phase 2 (PROCRASTINATION): after I’ve answered these messages/emails/PMs
Phase 3 (DISTRACTION): look at me! Intermittently amazing! Also: SHINY! SHINY! SHINY!
Phase 4 (DESPERATION): I’m sorry, the time is WHAT?!
Phase 5 (GUILT): it’s been 2 hours! What do you MEAN I only have 2 paragraphs? I’ve been SO BUSY this whole time! WHO STOLE MY TIME? WHERE IS MY TARDIS?

Voila, I went from Phase 1 to that euphoric feeling that comes with doing that thing you were put on this earth to do, and doing it well because it’s what you do. There was lunatic grinning and so forth and it was AWESOME instead of AWFUL.

Next up was the Equinox staff opening party, which went brilliantly until we trotted across the road to a night’s partying in a new posh club. I got in, stripped jackets off, squeezed my way about ten metres through the crammed space…and then just passed off my drinks voucher, re-jacketed and got the hell out of there.

The whole experience took less than a minute instead of a more typical hour of self-questioning/doubt/bullying concluding in the same result with a bonus slew of self-criticism for being so uncool and antisocial. Because you know what? It is totally ok for a social scene enjoyed by the majority of my age group to not be ok for me.

Admittedly it took a pair of purple wooly socks, shiny purple sports top and rose handwash from TK Maxx to be ok (and for those who know the lengths I will go to avoid shopping, that’s quite something to choose retail therapy as actual therapy), so it was expensively ok, but ok nonetheless. I then I took myself out to dinner at Whole Foods because I suddenly had unscheduled free time on my hands and their pumpkin pie makes me extremely happy.

Club drinks vs pumpkin pie: NEED YOU EVEN ASK?!

And it was while joyfully devouring said pie that I realised how absolutely bollocks a day that started in darkness and rain, was plagued by tech fails, had people walk out of my class and revealed me to still be socially dysfunctional could have been.

Then I started to look at my thinking – my words – there. What I meant to say is that I realised how absolutely bollocks the day could have felt.

Then I realised that the way I had felt all day reflected the nature of my thinking.

I realised that actually, I’d done a lot less thinking all day. You know that old adage…

To know oneself is to forget oneself

…well I’d forgotten myself all day. I hadn’t been responding to events with the usual inner dialogue of worried self-talk. The whole feeling thing is secondary, after all. We feel our thoughts. By choosing our thoughts, we choose how we feel.

Apparently also how we look. Same idea, same outcome.

I’m cheating though. I didn’t choose to change my thoughts: Jamie Smart** mind-ninja’d me yesterday and I’ve only just cottoned on. SNEAKY MAN. You see, this is a diagram he drew to illustrate my brain:

The red circle full of SHINY STUFF? That’s me.

This is a diagram he drew to illustrate a peaceful brain:

This will allegedly solve my goldfish problem

Three hours with Jamie will calm the hell down out of anyone. I had no idea how calm though. I had no idea how much I over-process the world, and how agitated that frenetic amount of thinking leaves me feeling.

I had no idea I had this much control over both what I think, and what I feel.

I feel good. I feel calm.

I won’t get enough sleep tonight. I usually spend a couple of hours leading up to bed anticipating how tired I will be tomorrow, and then most of tomorrow background processing how tired I’m feeling then. I’m filling NOW with shit that hasn’t even HAPPENED YET… except I didn’t get enough sleep last night either, partly because I was background processing and anticipating the idea of tiredness from the night before, and that’s still on my mind right now.

NO WONDER I AM A GOLDFISH.

Guess what all that thinking about how tiredness leaves me feeling?

Correct!

Today was easy. Today was Jamie’s fault.
Tomorrow I suspect that will wear off.
Tomorrow, I will need to watch myself. Yet also forget myself.
Tomorrow, I will make mistakes and make choices about what I’m thinking.
Tomorrow, I will be choosing how I feel.

I choose to FEEL AWESOME.

How about you?

……
….
…
..
.

And just in case that was all too technical, here’s a picture of the toilets at Jamie’s event yesterday:

Just… yes.

*I’m not sure Ben entirely understood what he was getting himself in for when he hired me, but he’s pretty much got a handle on my ballistic attention span now: most every time I open my mouth, he beats me there with ‘Is this relevant?’ and that just about keeps our conversation on track. I find this hugely entertaining. Fortunately, thus far, he seems to also.

** Jamie and I are former members of the Fellowship of Starbucks (Westbourne Grove). He’s like Gandalf, only a lot shorter and without the beard.

So I’m having a bit of an argument with the blurb for my YA fantasy novel. And the title. Not to mention with the book itself. But for those so inclined to have a quick look – how am I doing? Do either of these ring for you? Neither? Do they stir any curiosity to read the book? Love to hear your (diplomatically phrased) thoughts!

MANDALA: PALE, BEYOND THE STARS

In three words:
Boy vs Destiny

In one sentence:
An orphan boy experiencing the incarceration of his guardian through nightmares must find the man who destroyed his family before the dream-connection kills them both.

Longer version I:
Too much destiny is never a good thing, especially when quite a lot of it involves the likely premature death of the destined.

Such is the burden on Lien, a boy with equal talent for instigating and attracting trouble, when he seeks the aide of a cursed spirit to save a friend, right some wrongs, kick some karmic ass and find out why everything awful ever seems to be his fault anyway.

Saddle up for a swashbuckling adventure across Altica, a splendid medieval world where the taller the story, the more likely it is to be true. For our intrepid hero might be unprepared for the hazards of the wide and wild world, but not half as unprepared as Altica is for the force of nature that is Lien.

Longer version II:
Growing up in a geographically and chronologically unreliable forest can make the unusual seem mundane, but even for teenager Lien, a recurring dream delivered daily by a night mare seems out of the ordinary. Especially when the dream charts the nightmarish dying days of the friend to whom he owes his life.

Lien’s quest to catch his night mare, ride her back to the source of the dream and save Arete leads him beyond the wild borders of the Leaverness forest. There he discovers the medieval world to which he was born, but peopled by folk who would use him to destroy the ancient, mystical world in which he was raised.

For in the turbulent city of Avenel, Lien finds that everyone has a different idea of who – or even what – he might – or should – be. There’s an empty throne pointedly missing a teenage heir; a chivalric order which some people are dying to get him into while others would kill to keep him out of; and whispers of war within the city and without, which Lien wants nothing to do with, but seems unable to escape.

To navigate the mysteries of his past, dangers of his present and ensure he has a future, Lien will have to seek the aide of a force more dangerous yet – Mandala, a possessing spirit that some claim represents justice, but seem closer to an avatar of vengeance. The path to Mandala draws Lien closer to finding Arete, but also to a confrontation with the forces that destroyed his family and will gladly finish the job.

So it seems that too much destiny is never a good thing, especially when quite a lot of it involves the likely death of the destined. Saddle up for a swashbuckling adventure across Altica, a splendid medieval world where the taller the story, the more likely it is to be true.

LIEN by Anne-Laure Daviet – http://www.mi-chemin.net/carnet

Photo: Carolyne Jackson Photography

I’ve been threatening to blog about some of my shoots for some time now, partly because I feel the need to try to justify them in the first place (beyond ‘but…but…they’re FUN!’ and we all know my attitude to life, which starts with Fun and hopefully ends there also), partly because photography is a fascinating art and mostly because they’re FUN. Oh and let’s not forget that I am the pin-up for Early Senility and there are some things one simply shouldn’t ever forget.

Get dressed. Have hair and makeup done. Realise I’ve forgotten to get pumped up. What’s a girl to do? Push press with a stupidly heavy lump of metal, of course…

Therefore I shall constructively procrastinate over blogging a few of Life’s Big Bastard Questions with, instead, a little Behind the Scenes of a Photoshoot blog. Or in the case of my shoots, Behind the Magic because let’s face it: even my nearest and dearest would never have imagined a girl so infamously awkward, fashion-stricken and determinedly tomboy to…you know…model and stuff.

Elegance. You’re doing it wrong.

Which does beg the question of how these things happen in the first place. The Once Upon A Time belongs in its own post, but the Forge shoot started with social networking media.

HAH!

I cop a lot flak for my active online activity but the number of opportunities which have arisen a direct result  more than justify it when given a reckoning. And of course, with the friends I have, it’s an awful lot of FUN. Let’s not add calculations viz things not done as a consequence. I thank you.

So model networking goes a bit like this: a friend of yours shares the photo of a friend of theirs. You like the photo, you make the photographer a friend of your own with a few gushing comments on their work, and somewhere in there slip in the key phrase: “I’d love to work with you sometime…”

Over time, an online relationship builds. They see your pictures, you’re floating somewhere in their consciousness as they mull over themes and concepts, and one day they – or in this case, Carolyne – say “Hey Adele, want to shoot in a forge? They’ll make you a sword and everything!” and you don’t even blink as you write back “Is Darth Maul an evil bastard?”

An actual sword. Actually being forged for me. Actually brilliant.

Then, because you’re a full-time geek and famous for it, people post cool stuff to your Facebook wall all the time: like someone’s awesome set of Avengers makeup.

HAD TO BE DONE

And you ask FaceBook: “Would anyone like to try this out?” and one of your best friends, who is conveniently also a makeup artist, says “Is the Pope Catholic?”

The Thor look, by Trudi Camilleri

So suddenly you have a great photographer, general concept, location and makeup artist/stylist, which means it’s time to conceptualise. Now back when I used to be just Really Rather Busy and in possession of mere Diary of Doom, I would plan and moodboard the hell out of a shoot like this. Now that I’m What Is This Sleep Of Which You Speak? busy and the unfortunate slave of a Diary of Khazad Dum, I tend to turn to the mighty force of my Facebook Collective instead, like so:

Yes, my friends are THIS cool

Which obviously led to:

Which is actually a fairly normal tweet for me, truth be told

Which led to meeting The Incredible Amy (aka Amy Wheaton) at St Pancras two days later to traumatise the general public with the handing over and discussion of this:

Yes, it is exactly as small as you think

So Trudi went gleefully eyeshadow shopping and I packed three outfits, including the Elektra kit my designer friend Suthesh Prasaant made for the Laredo Western Shoot and which gave me one of my favourite photographs ever, courtesy of Rob Gallop:

Photo: Rob Gallop; Costume: Suthesh Praasant

and after a minor incident involving me trying my darnest to make us both miss our train, and then getting on a phantom train of which National Rail’s timetables pleaded complete ignorance, we finally met Carolyne in the real world, to set about making some magic.

Utopia is the forge of the lovely Andy Quirk, who did indeed forge us a sword and was a jolly good sport about the whole thing, coming to the rescue on several occasions with ideas, props and most brilliantly, compressed air, which took our photos from controlled cool:

Photo: Carolyne Jackson Photography

to wild cool:

Photo: Carolyne Jackson Photography

Of course leaping over the anvil wasn’t enough – I soon decided I had to try perching on/falling of it, which led to excitedly trying a tribute to the classic Red Sonja poster:

There were some obvious anatomical difficulties which, alas, could not be overcome, not to mention my lacking a massive mane of red hair, but with the compressor and Carolyne’s awesome lighting and edit, we were all thrilled at the result:

Yes, there was a lot of nearly-falling-off the anvil

So there was a lot going for this shoot. The location and concept had to be a win. The costumes were fantastic and the work of truly talented friends. Carolyne keeps telling me that she’s only been seriously photographing for a year, and while that’s roughly the same length of time as I’ve been accidentally modelling, I find it hard to believe given her level of awesomeness (though fotunately we did not discover until after that she is also an epically loyal Whovian, or between her, me and Trudi there would have been no photos shot at all).

And speaking of Trudi, I have decided we are a double-booking from now on because nothing beats having your best friend as your stylist on set. Excellent makeup and solving inevitable wardrobe malfunctions aside, having someone else there to point to tummy (suck it up), dash in to arrest stray hairs and indicate subtle changes of pose and face was absolutely brilliant. You’ve no idea how many ordinary-to-awful photos are taken to every one finished and shown, and it’s a whole minefield of minor matters – eye line, chin angle, hips, expression, costume, hair, lighting – which make or break a photo. It’s the difference between an ‘almost’ photo like this:

UNEDITED RAW SHOT

and a great photo like this:

Photo: Carolyne Jackson Photography

And it’s when all these elements unite perfectly, when – between model, photographer, stylist, costumer and Andy with his compressed air – our powers combine, that you get the killer shot.

Photo: Carolyne Jackson Photography

You don’t get that shot every shoot. If you’re really lucky, you get a few of them. As you get better, you get more of them, but they’re seriously hard to land and often it’s not the shots you expect which stand out in review.

That photo I would just about use as a reference for my character Arete, except that I know for fact she would get deeply sarcastic about the impracticality of such attire. But it’s the kind of photo I look at and go see as someone else, because it cannot possibly be me – and yet somehow, impossibly, and thanks to the work of Carolyne, Trudi, Andy and Amy, is.

Which is why I call it Behind the Magic, because say what you like, I was there, but still, it be magic, I swear.

Might have to try this more often. You guys ROCK!

EXT. PARK – DAY
LEATHER JACKET MAN (LJ MAN) – beautiful in his own right, and wearing an exceptionally beautiful leather jacket – proceeds.

DONNA (V.O.)
No. You’ve still lost me. You fell in love with the man – or the jacket?

INT. LOUNGE – NIGHT
MAGS perches on the arm of a couch, absently plucking the petals of a single red rose. DONNA sits more conventionally, wine glass in hand. On the coffee table, a half-eaten pizza and a flyer for Valentine’s Day Specials.

MAGS
Indeed, therein lies the question.

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS cycles past LJ MAN, entranced by his jacket. She slows.

MAGS (V.O.)
First: the jacket.

DONNA (V.O.)
You stalked him?

On LJ MAN: MAGS now rides slowly behind, having turned back.

MAGS (V.O.)
I was enamoured. What kind of man could wear such a garment? I decided he must be a heroic figure. Lethally genteel. A spy, perhaps -

INT. BAR – DAY

LJ MAN leans against a bar, suave ala James Bond. Seeing an elegantly dressed MAGS, he pushes aside his martini to take and gently kiss her unresisting hand, his eyes on hers -

INT. FUTURISTIC SETTING

MAGS (V.O.)
- or a steampunk space cowboy. The kind who cleans up six kinds or intergalactic vermin before breakfast.

LJ MAN swaggers in with a stupidly souped up SF gun. Pulls MAGS in by the waist, kisses her extravagantly, while aiming the gun at the camera and FIRING -

EXT. URBAN SETTING

MAGS (V.O.)
Or an urban superhero, fighting for justice and… other stuff on the streets of post-apocalyptic London -

LJ MAN stands back-to-back with a cat-suited MAGS, surrounded by THUGS. They share what might be their last kiss, then draw their respective post-apocalyptic weapons to face their fate -

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS slowly rides past LJ MAN, eyes still glued to the jacket.

MAGS (V.O.)
- and then it occurs to me that the jacket might be a maguffin, and I was actually attracted to its wearer.

DONNA (V.O.)
Halleluja!

Completely oblivious to the gate/tree/post/pedestrian she’s about to ride straight into -

INT. LOUNGE – NIGHT

MAGS
Only then I fell off my bike.

DONNA
And did he chivalrously come to your rescue?

MAGS plucks the last petal from the rose.

MAGS
Alas, no. And what if he had? How could he have possibly lived up to the man I had imagined?

DONNA
You realise this says a lot about why you’re still single.

MAGS looks all secret-squirrel.

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS hauls her bike back upright, dusting herself off. Ahead, LJ MAN pauses, looking to MAGS as though he might turn back.

She grins. Ready to give this a go anyway.

Well, on the penultimate day I confessed on Facebook that I had no idea how to approach this question, and then started something terribly melancholy. Semi-autobiographical, you see, melancholy being a generally accurate emotive state for the vacuum which is my love life.

Not that the 2 page films had to be about that kind of love – although the Valentine’s night setting probably screwed up a few more original approaches. I had a strange moment on the tube recently. I thought I’d try that on for size.

2 pages. Set on Valentine’s night. Exploring love. Thoughts welcome.

EXT. PARK – DAY

Pedestrians and cyclists pass, going about their business.

DONNA (V/O)
No. You’ve still lost me.

Amongst them weaves the back of LEATHER JACKET MAN (LJ MAN).

DONNA (V/O)
You fell in love with the man or the jacket?

INT. LOUNGE – NIGHT

MAGS perches on the arm of a couch, absently plucking the petals of a single red rose. DONNA sits more conventionally, wine glass in hand. On the coffee table, a half-eaten pizza and a flyer for Valentine’s Day Specials.

MAGS
Therein lies the question.

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS cycles past LJ MAN.

MAGS (V/O)
First: the jacket.

She can’t take her eyes off it. She slows, stops the bike. Considers.

INT. LOUNGE – DAY

DONNA
You stalked him?

MAGS
It was a very beautiful jacket.

 EXT. PARK – DAY

LJ MAN continues on his way.

MAGS (V/O)
I began to wonder about the man who could wear such a jacket.

MAGS rides slowly behind LJ MAN.

MAGS (V/O)
I decided he had to be a heroic figure of some sort. Chivalrous. Lethally genteel.

INT. BAR – DAY

LJ MAN leans suavely against a bar ala James Bond, martini and all.

MAGS (V/O)
Perhaps a spy. Or -

INT – FUTURISTIC SETTING

MAGS (V/O)
- a steampunk space cowboy.

LJ MAN swaggers forward in steampunk attire and with a stupidly souped up SF gun.

MAGS (V/O)
The kind who cleans up six kinds of intergalactic vermin before breakfast.

LJ MAN aims the gun at the camera, fires -

INT. LOUNGE – DAY

DONNA is just staring now: WTF? Mags remains cheerfully oblivious.

MAGS
Or like a knight or medieval warrior. He had the kind of hair that would fall attractively half way across his eyes when he’s sweating in the heat of battle, from under which he would fix his enemies with a stony gaze that freezes the blood in their veins -

SUPERIMPOSE STILL IMAGE: LJ MAN in the heat of battle, medieval kit, sword striking forward from over his shoulder -

MAGS
- and looks particularly good on action film posters. And then it occurs to me -

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS slowly rides past LJ MAN, eyes still glued to the jacket -

MAGS (V/O)
- that the jacket might be a maguffin and I am in fact attracted to the man.

DONNA (V/O)
Hallelujah!

- such that she doesn’t see the gate/tree/post/pedestrian she’s about to ride straight into -

INT. LOUNGE – DAY

MAGS
And then I fell off my bike.

DONNA
And did he chivalrously come to your rescue?

MAGS plucks the last petal from the rose.

MAGS
Alas no.

EXT. PARK – DAY

MAGS on the ground next to her bike – unharmed but embarrassed. Watching LJ MAN walk past. He does not even glance at her.

MAGS (V/O)
And what if he had? How could he have possibly lived up to the man I had imagined?

INT. LOUNGE – DAY

DONNA
You realise this says a lot about why you’re still single.

MAGS nods.

EXT. PARK – DAY

Return to the first scene, following LJ MAN. He glances back. MAGS, back on her feet, grins honestly. He pauses – as though to stop, turn and speak to her.

MAGS turns away instead, still smiling.

MAGS (V/O)
And I don’t know how to be any other way.

You really don’t want to me see when I’m upset.

And when I’m feeling less bullish and more broke and vulnerable, I think ‘I should really do something about that,’ a thought inevitably postscripted with the ineffable ‘later’.

So until I decide What To Do About It, I’m just going to make a point of my holistic theory, however bullheaded, and write blog posts that straddle and connect facets of my life. Which pretty much explains the eloquence of this post’s title.

It started with Chris Jones/Living Spirit’s first London Breakfast Club event for screenwriters. One of the greatest joys of working as a city Personal Trainer is that I’m now able attend stuff like this, and I am always up for a cooked breakfast. After too many hours in the Box I also tend to crave things like daylight and the company of story geeks who will happily sit down and dismantle films, books and TV series over a plate of burnt and greasy food cooked far beyond any nutritional value.

The first Breakfast at the Phoenix Artists Club featured the lovely and personable Linda Seger as the guest speaker, talking largely about the difference between Art and Craft, and their impact on Voice. And because I currently spend much of my life in a black and neon underground gym learning not to write fictional stories on the page, but to rewrite/edit the lives of clients who come to me to change their personal stories, my brain started connecting everything Linda said to my new vocation.

All stories give someone a problem, and the story itself lies in the gap between where that person is, and where they want to be. The writer’s job is to be as creative as possible about crossing that gap.

All PT clients turn up with a ‘problem’ – be it weight, strength, aesthetic, rehab, they want more energy, general health – and the success of their training program lies in whether it enables them to close the gap between where they are now, and where they want to be. The PT’s job is to be as creative and inspiring as possible about closing that gap.

As a writer, you have to know what you can bring to the table, Linda says – what you bring that no-one else can.

As a PT taking on a new vocation and business, I am exploring what it is that I can bring to my clients. What I can bring that no other PT can.

Art, Linda continued, is identity. It’s about learning who you are and what you uniquely offer. It is the beautiful shapes that you alone see in the world. It’s about looking at the stories you love, and seeking in the pattern they produce the reflection of your interests and values.

Personal Training, I’m realising, is much the same. It has craft – and these are the courses I’m enrolled on, the reading I’m doing, the observations made from hours lived in a good gym. But what completes the package is the Art of the trainer. It’s finding what makes exercise and physicality sing for you, and offering that song to your clients to experience also.

Too much? Too bad. That’s me. Looking for the experience under the action, the resonance in all acts of living and being.

Good storytellers tell stories that resonate within their audiences, connect them to others and enable powerful shared experiences.

Good trainers find ways to connect clients more deeply to themselves and the innate potential that we share with all mankind but is expressed uniquely within each of us.

‘If you were a film genre, what would you be, and what does that tell you?’ Linda asked. Good question. I’d be a schizophrenic cross-genre mess. Just look at my website page tabs. What does that say? I have been wondering, myself.

The answer to a question posed by a writing workshop about a month ago was unexpectedly offered through the Faster Advanced Functional Trainer course I attended on the weekend. The writer in me had a not-so-quiet squeee when the force of nature that is John Hardy – a geek of the body, as well as of story – cited Robert McKee’s inverse story bell-curve as the progress PTs make through Faster’s training courses.

The bell curve is easy. In stories, your protagonist’s life is ticking along quite ok, when something happens that metaphorically or literally drops their world out from under them. They plunge down, hit rock bottom (the base of the inverted bell curve), and from that place find new strength/knowledge/tools which allow them to face and conquer all adversity, so that they climb back to a place higher than they started.

Bugger

It fits most stories and equally fits the psyche of a trainer being subjected to John’s new ways of thinking abut fitness. Certainties crumble, the ground is loose underfoot and you kind of know you’re heading for a stack. But when you’re really hating him and the course, pieces click into place. You find clarity and confidence and emerge re-armed for conflict and equipped for victory.

And at the moment, under the weight of my varied interests and vocations, the ground is fracturing below my feet. I haven’t blogged about being at GymBox yet because I’ve been sliding helplessly down that steep side of the bell curve and I doubt anyone would want to read what I might have had to say.

But I think, now, the plunge has been largely self inflicted. I’ve been looking at my genres, my passions, the things I love and which express my unique self and seeing not tools and talents to be used as leverage but instead obstacles, problems, complications, shackles.

I think there’s something to be observed here about the difference between trying to make yourself and just being yourself. Effort is required for both, but I think one relies too heavily on craft alone where the other tempers the necessary steeliness of acquired craft with the more mercurial gift of innate art. About taking everything you can offer and embodying it – rather than compartmentalising it for convenience or common – even common sense – practice.

I realise that sounds terribly, impoverishly noncommercial. Which is in itself very much me, and perhaps explains both my eternally low tax bracket but also my near-pathological cheer and goodwill. I fully intend to find a way in life to be outstandingly commerically viable and remain pathologically cheerful, but for now, I’ll take what I have and take the time to look inside – instead of only out – to find what it is that I have to offer, be it as a writer and PT or instructor or model and friend and daughter and whatever else, than no-one else can.

And if, like me, the majorities of your battles are waged on the inside instead of out against the world at large, consider a time to call a treaty and take a look around. The patterns of your life are producing a reflection, though like me, you may have to wait for the surface to settle enough to see what it is.

Don’t ever let that stop you trying.

Whatever anyone (generally those already through the gates, who all hate me right now) says, it is a landmark. It looms. It is a reminder of dreams, goals and promises made by Younger You.

I don’t know about you, but I have a conflicted relationship with the Younger Adeles. I’m trying to explain to a couple of them where I am now, and by and large, they’re looking at me like I haven’t just made a wrong turn, I’ve lost the map, if not the entire plot. They are shaking various ‘before I’m 30′ checklists at me, woefully unchecked.

So if I’m honest, this Meeting if Mes – it isn’t going brilliantly.

They don’t care that I’m as single as they were; they never have. They do, however, want to know what happened to my equestrian career; a couple of them are not hugely impressed at the financial situation (although others are not the least surprised); and don’t even get them started on the question of That Book That’s Supposed To Be Finished, Remember?

I understand their confusion. Adele of a year ago, for instance, considered the group exercise studio to be the actual and only point of a gym. The gym floor was a foreign country, a place where people inflicted complicated looking machinery on their bodies, grunted and generally displayed a range of expressions amongst which enjoyment was suspiciously absent.

Adele of five years ago had never even stepped inside a gym.

So I’m telling her I’m a Personal Trainer now, and she’s employing a three-word phrase that starts with ‘what the’ and ends with a rude word plus optional question mark.

I show her my first poster.

Despite herself, she is mildly mollified by the evidence of this transformation from her ungainly, uncoordinated and famously unfashionable self into someone who can stand on her head – even though she doesn’t entirely see the point.

I tell her that I just taught a three hour Body Combat marathon with seven other instructors and 150 people screaming down the house; she agrees that’s pretty awesome.

I tell her that as  Group Ex instructor I can legitimately pretend to be Buffy, and as a hobby model/cosplayer I can dress up and pretend to be Wonder Woman, Elektra, River Tam, Korra and generally an adult female of elegance and style; at this, she is deeply surprised.

She goes to put the familiar prefix of ‘but I can’t…’ ahead of all those things, all those pictures, and I gently correct her with the new reality of ‘I can.’ I tell her that as a PT, I have a job where I help people take their weaknesses, doubts and fears and turn them into strength; and I reckon she’s almost impressed.

Damn her stubbornness though, she still wants to know where the book is. Where the TV series is. Where the writing career is. Where the horse is.

I find myself starting to answer with ‘I can’t…’

…and she calls me a bloody idiot and points at the PT poster. Asks me how it is I’ve transformed her many uses of ‘I can’t’ into ‘I can’, but taken her most sincere ‘I can… (have a writing career by 30)’ and turned it into a goddamn can’t.

At first, I cannot answer her.

And then I realise that I avoid the Younger Adeles through shame. I ask them, collectively, not to be disappointed in me.

They confer, and agree that as none of them can find our ass with an atlas, I had little chance of sticking to the map in the first place, and at least I now have a better ass to be found.

They bullishly gather, my many Mes, and remind me of their youthful dreams.

They suggest that I stop wasting energy avoiding them, and redirect it towards Future Adeles. Given the trajectory of life to date, I cannot project where they will be, or what they will be doing. I fully expect to be surprised in turn.

But I can make a commitment to them now: to root out the crippling examples of ‘I can’t’ and turn them into ‘I can’. This process, it starts in the gym with acts as simple as the pull-up and ends with The Book That Will Be Finished. And whatever I learn, as a Personal Trainer I will pay these lessons forward.

For the next Meeting of Me, I have a dream, one I refuse to allow to become a regret: a dream in which, wherever I am, whatsoever the career, whoever I have become, all parties present are able to be – however surprised – also proud.

I’ve been going to the SF London Film Fest a few years now, and annually considered the people who undertook the 48Hr Film Challenge to be a pack of loons. Having now completed it, I can safely confirm this as truth.

I’m a novice writerly sort myself; this whole film-making business is something I considered better left to people better qualified. But after watching a couple of the 2011 shortlisted films at the SFX Weekender in February, I had an itch. I also had a twitter account and predilection for enthusiastic tweetage.

By the close of the Guerrilla Film Masterclass a few weeks later, I accidentally had a huge team of very awesome (and far more qualified) people wanting to do this thing. I accordingly called them Team Awesome and we got started.

How awesome? THIS awesome.

Let it be said: Team Awesome was absolutely a team affair, as was always my intention.  I didn’t assemble a group to carry out my particular vision; I assembled a team to produce a film in which we could all claim creative ownership. Mission Objective 1 was obviously to complete and submit a great film; Mission Objective 2 was to have a damn good time doing it and build creative partnerships that would far outlast the key 48 hours. In this, we absolutely succeeded, with a hugely enjoyable shoot and plans already afoot for further films.

We were a team of 19 in the end, 18 of us innocent 48Hr virgins. Veteran Edward McLeod Jones bought invaluable advice on workflow, which got us across the line within time, and that was despite set-backs in post.

Whatever the competition rules on “preproduction”, PREPARATION is absolutely key to these events. I’ll first explain our preparation; then you can then see the film and I’ll explain our reflective conclusions. As first-timers, the learning curve was MAHOOOSIVE.

Much like Alex’s… gun…

So we were many, and the objective was to make a film that pitched to our collective interests and strengths. First, we met up to pool our combined skills/equipment/resources.

That was a big pool.

From that meeting we determined the sorts of stories we were interested in telling, considered some visual effects that we wanted to explore if appropriate to the inputs and identified live special effects we had the ability to pull off.

•  there was a definite interest in doing a comedy, largely because we found very few in the previous years films (though over the course of the weekend we found out why that was the case…) and wanted to make something that would stand out and get a reaction from the judges after hours of viewing serious films

• we had a near-7ft actor in our ranks, so I started trying to find a short actor to play comedically against Jez Hellion; we also had Michael Thyx, Alex Wadam and Jen Carnovale on stand-by call for the Saturday morning, when we would decide the story and therefore casting

•  we had, between us, an arsenal of classic SF props that only a collective of A-Grade geeks could aspire to own. I will openly admit to becoming a little obsessed with using the big blaster and light saber…

OH YES.

• we wanted the option to shoot outdoors, in daylight, again because it seemed an idea to stand our film out (and again, we discovered why most teams don’t do this!) so I arranged three very different locations to give us choices for the weekend: a park, a house and a quiet street

•  we met up for a test-shoot to get everyone confidently working together and check the workflow for the real thing – this was an invaluable session which helped us break down, time and plan our workflow

• our ambitious schedule was based around completing the shoot on the Saturday, transcoding the video on set so that a rough cut could be assembled on the Saturday evening and the actors called for or released from pickups on the Sunday. We set out with the best of intentions, but that’s probably not a model I would try or recommend again…

•  to maximise our efficiency on the Saturday, we sent one member to the Apollo and gathered the rest of the fellowship, standby actors included, at a Starbucks central to our three locations, meaning we were already having a very jolly morning together before receiving the inputs and mobilising

INPUTS

TITLE: Reading for Survival

(win!)

PROP: Chocolate we see a character open a bar of dark chocolate, break off the top row, go to eat it, pause, smell it… then throw that piece away

(double win!)

DIALOGUE: Anyway, it seemed like a perfect place to spread some news around about the Nitrogen Cycle.

(…the F**K…?!)

We had a similar reaction to most people who see this picture

• Our story team took the inputs, looked at our locations/cast/effects possibilities, threw ideas on the table and started piecing the puzzle together.

• After a pow-wow we ran with Lance Nielsens’ comic idea for two intergalactic fisherman trying to have a quiet day fishing on earth. The concept worked beautifully for our tall/short casting, let me put quite a few of the props into a Tardis-like icebox (geek win) and allowed our live effects man Dominic to gleefully gloop an actor courtesy of blowing up an unseen monster with the massive SF blaster gun

PRE-GLOOPING: Michael and Dom prepare to gloop Jez; Jez looks less impressed

THE GLOOPING

POST-GLOOPING – and so totally worth it

• Jez happened to have The Art of War on his kindle, which became the key prop to incorporate the title of the film: we were imagining the book as a cross between the Art of War and the Hitchhiker’s Guide, trying to instruct the guys on how to defeat the monster

•  the dialogue had us stumped though and throwing around a series of daftish ideas, because who would ever actually say that? Adrian came up with the idea that the ‘nitrogen cycle’ might not be the chemical process but an object… a cycle, powered by nitrogen. The fact that we were doing a comedy made it conceivable that Alex’s character could be a kind of bumbling, well-meaning fool who would try to make and sell a bicycle powered by nitrogen. Well, it was that or he was going to need to take a piss in the lake…

• the monster was obviously tricky – we’d all liked the idea of including a monster somehow, but obviously without a lot of special or VFX time, we were limited in what we could do. I’m not sure we got away with the monster; we certainly wouldn’t have gotten away with it if we hadn’t opted for comedy

•  finally, having made a call on concept, cast and location, we trotted the team out to South Weald Park (with a few prop-stops en route), with the writing team assembling the script on the train

•  Team Awesome worked like clockwork, giving us a smooth and very entertaining (albeit chilly) shoot

Seriously. Freezing. Things almost got intimate.

Oh wait – things DID get intimate.

• with the footage digitized on location – which I would highly recommend –  our editor was able to assemble a rough cut on the Saturday night. Our composer had been considering music throughout the Saturday, swiftly producing a beautifully complementary score which he was laying down that evening; and with footage sent off for VFX on the light sabre and ship shots, everyone felt very jolly by the end of Day 1

That’s a wrap!

Sunday night, on the other hand, turned out to be a pressure-cooker for the post production team. For all our planning and scheduling, we ran into delays in post and then because we were working so intensely on the edit, we lost clarity in the final checks and simply didn’t have time for a full colour grade.

And there are parts of the film that we did sit and pick at, but couldn’t fix because we just didn’t have the coverage to choose takes from.  Yes, our stunningly efficient Saturday shoot started to have serious consequences on the Sunday. We probably had more edit time than many other teams; what we didn’t have was as much footage to edit.

You see, while we had the film in the can at 7pm (win!), we had not spent enough time scripting and story boarding and with the limitations of daylight, did not have enough time on set to rehearse actors and have several takes on each shot. Jez and Alex did a super job, but we were on location at 2pm, shooting at 3pm and leaving the park before it was locked at 7pm. A lot of other teams shot indoors for hours or through the night, and that was a choice we denied ourselves with a specific exterior location.

Glooping Jez, while very entertaining for the rest of the crew, also meant we had an actor literally shaking with cold next to a breezy lake at 6pm. That lacked a little foresight on my part as producer – but where to find a wetsuit at such short notice? That would fit Jez? So concern for his welfare plus the fading of the light saw us accelerate dramatically over the last legs of the shoot, where ideally, we would have had more time, rehearsal, takes and coverage.

Our advice to teams for future years?

•  plan to shoot where light is not an issue, so windowless interiors or at night

• plan to shoot late on Saturday, to give yourselves loads of time to really nail out the concept and storyboards

• give yourselves plenty of takes because you’re unlikely to have the luxury of doing pick-ups if required

• have as many people doing individual roles as possible, so you don’t break anyone over the weekend. We had every crew and post-production role covered, and while it was a mission to co-ordinate, it meant that most people had a really enjoyable weekend and only a few of us got creamed-crackered in the final stretch

• get your team together beforehand, run a test shoot if you can, build a sense of camaraderie before you make the charge

Team Work: This Is It

• make sure all your post production team are geared up for an all-nighter on the Sunday

• time your schedule backwards from submission time

• choose one, maybe two locations and have a good prior think about what sort of stories will be suited to that environment

• comedy is HARD. It’s hard anyway; it’s harder under pressure. We made a few choices intended to make the film stand out, and while it will have, we didn’t always land those choices as solidly as hoped. Think very seriously about doing it funny (though I’d probably do it again J)

• ENJOY YOURSELVES! More than a single prize is at stake. We didn’t shortlist with our film, but had a super weekend and have built some great working relationships for the future!

For more photos of The Silliness On Set, click here – if you dare!

Logo based on Serenity, designed by Anne-Laure Daviet – http://www.mi-chemin.net/

Adele Kirby (writer/producer) @adele_kirby

Lauris Beinerts (director/producer) @human_0_1

Lance Nielsen (writer/assoc producer)

Robert Macfarlane (DOP) @DirectorRobert

Jenna Jovi (AD) @jennajovi

Michael Thyx (2^nd AD/actor) @MichaelThyx

Alex Wadham (actor) @AlexWadham

Jez Hellion (actor)

Jen Carnovale (actor) @Jen_Carnovale

Adrian Bentley (writer) @AdrianSBentley

Janis Sokolovskis (sound)

Edward McLeod-Jones (DIT)

Dwayne Blee (editor) @dwayneblee

Andrew Kristy (composer) @filmAndrew

Dominic Arthur Peters (SFX)

Mark Williams (VFX)

Jéanine Palmer (costume/props)

Emma Carolina Faith Gorbey (MUA)

John Henry (Monster wrangler)