Throwing myself into cyber space

I’m not really the blogging type. I’m a technophobe with a fear of my personal information being out in the ether. I tut and shake my head sagely when a teenager’s party gets ruined by inviting everyone on their myspace network, or some fool’s house gets broken into after they announce holidays on their facebook status. However people always say if you want to succeed you have to put yourself out there. This is me, putting myself out there.

There seems to be so many pathways into being a writer that I’ve spent ages paralysed over which one to take. Every writer I read interviews with suggests a different route. Some worked their way up from tea-boy, where others find their first script pounced upon. I tried the Foot-in-the-Door technique by applying to be a script editor’s PA on a well-known British soap, only to receive an email doubting my desire to be a team assistant. “Oh, no” I protested “being a PA is my dream!” So it was back to the drawing board. Now it’s been only six months since I really started trying in earnest. Before that I knew what I wanted to do, but just….waited. Was I waiting to be discovered? Hoping that some BBC top-dog would hear through the grapevine that an Oxford English graduate (quelle surprise) wanted to be a writer?! I was the embodiment of the exchange “I’m writing a novel” “Yeah, me neither.”

I want to be a scriptwriter and my aim at the moment is to get some experience. I took a night course at Central Saint Martins to get used to writing on a regular basis again, to deal with showing people my work and hearing them criticise it -at the moment my skin is a little too thin! I took Creative Writing – Fact of Fiction – Beginners, taught by the novelist Elise Valmorbida. In January I’m due to start Screenwriting for Beginners with Josh Golding. After plenty of rejection letters I have managed to secure myself a work placement at the BBC, in the scriptwriting department of Holby City. This starts on Monday, and I’m incredibly excited but have no idea what to expect.