What are you writing?

swears

preppy-kei
I know many women who are MDs think it's a no-brainer to specialize in obstetrics/gynecology, but it seems like such an awful thing to deal with all day.

Unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and yeast infections...sounds kind of humdrum and depressing.

TBH, I've always imagined practicing any sort of medicine would be depressing, I couldn't deal with telling someone they had a terminal or permanently debilitating illness on a regular basis. Not even the vital help you'd be giving people would make up for that, I think.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
TBH, I've always imagined practicing any sort of medicine would be depressing, I couldn't deal with telling someone they had a terminal or permanently debilitating illness on a regular basis. Not even the vital help you'd be giving people would make up for that, I think.

True, I'd rather not be an oncologist, for sure.

With ob/gyn there's also this new problem with people getting all "nature" mystical and refusing to go to the hospital to give birth, which is really irresponsible and stupid--there's a reason why the infant mortality rate has been so low for the last hundred years. Nature will kill you, life is death, blah blah blah. It's funny when people get all misty-eyed about unmediated natural processes.
 

mos dan

fact music
not enough, to answer the question in the title.

good idea for a thread, will come back to it when i have more time. i spend half my life either writing or thinking about why i'm not writing... or thinking about better techniques for writing which i never implement...

who saw the screen wipe screenwriters' special? bloody brilliant, that guy who writes dr who is an inspiration.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
not enough, to answer the question in the title.

good idea for a thread, will come back to it when i have more time. i spend half my life either writing or thinking about why i'm not writing... or thinking about better techniques for writing which i never implement...

who saw the screen wipe screenwriters' special? bloody brilliant, that guy who writes dr who is an inspiration.

Are you a screenwriter?

I always thought it would be fun to write scripts, esp for films or horror films, but it seems like a pretty daunting industry to try to get involved in...
 

hucks

Your Message Here
Yeah, it was really interesting. I liked the guy talking about dialogue, about how you have to just keep boiling it down. The programme was curiously old fashioned, I thought - 45 minutes long, just talking, no gimmicks, and all the better for it.
 

mos dan

fact music
Are you a screenwriter?

I always thought it would be fun to write scripts, esp for films or horror films, but it seems like a pretty daunting industry to try to get involved in...

i'm not, but i agree on both counts. also a lot of the ideas they were talking about were general to all writing - dealing with writer's block, how to start etc.

here's the first of the five parts of the show (all on youtube):

hucks i agree, i get the feeling it was quite deliberate to have such a pared-down format, but it really worked. bbc4 is good for that generally, daring to go for detail rather than flashing lights.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I'd love to write scripts but to get them seen you have to submit in Final Draft, and I can't afford it, and cracking it doesn't seem possible. How much of a devil's bind is that? I guess it prepares you for the movie industry...
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
I'd love to write scripts but to get them seen you have to submit in Final Draft, and I can't afford it, and cracking it doesn't seem possible. How much of a devil's bind is that? I guess it prepares you for the movie industry...

There's gotta be somebody on craiglist selling it for cheap, I've found just about any software you can imagine on there...
 

swears

preppy-kei
I used to work with a guy who spent the majority of the time he wasn't working writing the most cheesy sci-fi film you could imagine, about people living on a space station orbiting the earth after a nuclear war had killed the rest of humanity.

He lend me a copy of a draft, really awful stuff: confused plot, ultra-hammy dialogue, the works. He's in his 40s, still lives with his mum and dad, and thinks this script is his ticket out of office drudgery. I think he assumes he can just post it off to Jerry Bruckheimer and get 80 million dollars spent making it. I suggested he rewrite it as a novel, since you're way more likely to get a book published than a film made (still tough though, obviously) and he give me this really offended look, could I honestly be suggesting that his dream wasn't going to come true?

Heartbreaking, really.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Heartbreaking, really.

Well if it keeps him happy, it probably doesn't really matter. Perhaps it'll ironically get get made into a Hollywood blockbuster after his inevitable suicide.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'll tell you what I *wish* I were writing...

A mate told me the other day about this Russian chess grandmaster in (I think) the '70s who was radically pro-Palestine and went to the occupied territories to take part in political activism there - I don't know whether he was just agitating or getting involved in actual paramilitary/terrorist activities or what, but he wound up in an Israeli jail with (of course) all these Palestinian activists, PLO and Islamic Jihad members, whatever. Anyway he started to teach some of them to play chess, then the ones he'd taught passed it on to others, and pretty soon the entire jail was chess mad...I'm not sure what (if anything) of note happened next, but I just loved the idea of all these guys honing their strategic muscles and mental discipline with chess. Sounds like it'd make a basis, in skilful hands, for a really incredible novel, or even just a good dramatisation of the actual events. Probably could be a good film too, but I reckon a book would work better. You could really riff on ideas like what it means to be subversive, and how you can resist and subvert a hostile regime with your mind, even though they can 'own' your body by incarcerating you.

Does anyone else here know about this, what the guy was called and when it happened?
 
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BareBones

wheezy
Any time travel anecdotes or stories would be good. I'm not going to use them, it'd just be nice to read other people's experiences of time travel. If there are any...

On new year's eve (the one just gone), I left the house party i was at in bethnal green, intending to catch the central line to bank and then take the DLR home. I got down to the platform, saw the next train wasn't going to be for another 14 minutes, so sat down on a bench and waited. Some time passed - i'm not sure how much - but when i looked up, I was at bank. Still sitting. No idea how I got there.

Not really time travel as such, but it definitely freaked me out.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
the second post ('Urban oncology') isn't even finished yet.

Ha ha, I got confused. I thought, it better not be, it's only one fucking sentence! Then I remembered how to use the internet.
 

lanugo

von Verfall erzittern
Tonight, after weeks of perma-stoned procrastination, I started writing my seminar paper on Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Tonight, after weeks of perma-stoned procrastination, I started writing my seminar paper on Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death.

very interested in the guy from the lay-person pov.

please keep us informed if you wish!

all the best!
 
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