Challenge within a challenge: Girl power praise

A few months ago Paperchase, one of my favourite shops started selling a card set with strong messages that caught my eye. I bought a few to begin with to send to a few women in my life.

The question that came to me immediately was who would I write the cards to? With social media and wanting to tell people about positive things, if I missed someone out they might question why they didn’t get a card? So I tried to write to as many women that were in my life as I could. These ranged from relatives, old work colleagues and close friends.

In each card I wrote what I admired about that person, applauded any changes or challenges they had been through and how if they were having a tough day, reading the card would give them a boost. Writing the cards was not to get likes or Facebook posts dedicated to me. Of course, it would have been nice to have an acknowledgement for receiving the card, for the simple reason to check whether Royal Mail was working and that it had not have been lost in the post, but I was fine without it. I didn’t contact people asking if they had received their card. If I did that, it felt like I was chasing praise, which I did not want. I asked one of my sisters if she received a card and it was awkward as she didn’t realise she had to tell me that she got her card.

I then expanded writing cards to friends that were fading or had faded for my life. It wasn’t a sign for them to give our friendship another go, far from it. The reason I wrote to this group of people was that they had all contributed in a small way to being who I am today.

Once the ball was rolling on writing the cards, I wrote to four women that had helped my career in someway. It’s not everyday you can express gratitude for somebody that has helped, supported or stood up for you in your career, so I took this as an opportunity to do so.

The whole process wasn’t easy. There were some cards I struggled to write. This was when it took time to come up with things I admired about that person; this could be due to me not knowing that person very well, or their strengths not being so prominent in comparison to others. Or if one of the fading friends had hurt me in the past, could I move on from that or not?

Like most of my projects/tasks/challenges I give myself, it turned out way bigger than I thought. I wrote to 67 women in total. (Two cards has yet to be posted as I haven’t got their addresses even though I asked.) Around a third of the women I wrote I got no reply, and that’s really okay. Some people do not know how to deal with random gratitude that comes through the letterbox. A few sent me a brief message saying thank you, others stated what traits they admired in me which wasn’t the intention and it made me feel a bit uneasy as it would come off that this was a boosting my own ego project which wasn’t the case. A few replies provided me with closure on certain friendships that had been in the balance. I felt I could draw a line and move on. One even wrote saying they had been a terrible friend and I shouldn’t have wasted my time writing to them. As I’m living till 105, I got a few minutes to spare.

There was one message that stood out from all the rest, and that was from my old friend Kirsty. We had in fact been best friends since sixth form and I was her maid of honour at her wedding. Then three years ago she stopped replying to my messages for no reason. There was no big argument, no big event or scene, she just disappeared. It took a long time to accept and move on. I often thought it was because I didn’t have children and she did and wanted to hang out only with other mums. However that didn’t make sense as she had said when she was pregnant she wanted to still be friends so she had some entertainment in her life.

Her card was one of the toughest cards to write. Questions of should I leave her in the past or not went through my mind. There was no guarantee of a reply, would I be okay with a reply furthermore? There might have been something I’d done wrong that hadn’t realised. She sent two messages to me within a day of each other. The first thanking me, and I saw that as closure. But then a second message came and it said about how she’d been going through a tough time over the past few years and she got into a bad crowd and lost contact with some people including myself. The cards although intentionally were set out to give people a boost, it also gave an opportunity to make amends.

I’m not sure what the future holds for my friendship with Kirsty, I’ve said we can try and rebuild it, and we have met up a couple of times since the card, and a third time to meet up has been arranged.

I’ve found at first writing the cards was a bit odd, but the more I wrote to people and thought about the highs and lows these women had been through, the easier it was to praise their achievements and their strength.

Gratitude and praise is an area that can be tricky. It’s far more easier to see the negative and complain about things. Praising somebody’s personality and achievements takes a lot more effort. With some of the letters women said it came through at the right time; they’d been having a tough week or day and it lifted their spirits. It may not be for everyone, but I’m glad I took the time to write to those 67 women. Maybe try writing to one person you admire, as corny as it sounds it may make their day!

Screenwriting: Giving it a polish

A few weeks ago I finished writing my 4th feature film. It was an animated film, and it’s a genre of film that I haven’t written an animated film before and boy was it tough! You’d think that as it is aimed at a younger audience, the material would be easier to write, but I found it to be the complete opposite. And as a result the write took way longer than I thought it would. But I preserved, and the reason being is that I know I have a unique idea. When I told it to others, it got their interest and they asked more questions. With the level of interest, it was a challenge to see whether I could put my unique ideas into well-formed compelling characters and plot.

When it came to writing I put too much pressure on the opening ten minutes. The first ten minutes of any film is there to hook the audience, get them to start connecting with plot and character. With an animated film, I think there is added pressure to make sure you’ve got a younger audiences attention straight away, otherwise you’ve lost them.

I also put a lot of pressure on trying to make the screenplay funny, and at some point in the process I made a decision to focus on getting the story on the page, and adding the humour in later.

So what now? I met several people at the London Screenwriters Festival who wanted to read the screenplay once it was complete. Now it’s time to test the waters and see if there still want to. I’ve already got one yes, and I’m hoping for a few more yes’s to get balanced feedback.

One of the areas which I am weak in is scene descriptions. I immediately think that the reader knows exactly what is happening on the page, but without much description to go on. .

Reading the screenplay there were a couple of plot hole areas that I need to solve. Simple ones like characters knowing other characters names before they’d even met or been introduced. A few more lines of dialogue would solve this.

The screenplay came in at 86 pages, and the usual for an animated film is 90 pages, so the good news is I have a few pages to play around with and hopefully inject some more humour. I’ve already got a few good ideas for extra scenes.

One of my new years resolutions is to do something with screenwriting everyday; whether it be writing or reading about screenwriting itself, or listening to related podcasts. Some days I fall behind but I catch up. I’ve read a great deal of really useful articles from Screencraft on their blog section about different elements of screenwriting, so I’ll use some of their techniques they suggest in the polish.

So now to spring clean my screenplay!

Thoughtful presents: Detective Bob and Bev

Buying Christmas presents can be a tricky thing as you’d always like people to use your presents and not just give them to a charity shop on the first instance. For my parents Christmas present I thought I’d create a joint present that they would both use.

They both like watching drama series, and regularly recommend ones to watch, and so I thought of something that could assist with their TV watching.

Now the picture only shows the remains of the present as I didn’t get round to taking a picture of the rest of the contents of the gift. I simply bought them 5 of their favourite snacks and drinks that they like when watching TV. Sweet chilli crisps, ginger beer and chocolate covered raisins were a few things I got them.

Because many of the shows they watch are crime related I also got them notebooks addressed as case books so they could write down who they think had done it on the series they are watching.

It just goes to show that presents don’t need to break the bank in order to be liked. The snacks were eaten pretty quickly and the notebooks don’t take up too much room either.

Thoughtful presents: Binging boxsets

My friend Hayley also known as Rock turned 30 back in August. I didn’t get her anything straight away as I couldn’t figure out the perfect gift. But an off comment she said in a message a few weeks ago gave me an idea.

She gets through TV shows at a rapid rate. Rock got through 12 series of Greys Anatomy in an extremely fast time, I did wonder if she got any sleep! With this in mind when she said she’d run out of boxsets to watch and was thinking of rewatching Greys Anatomy again for the 3rd time, I knew I could do something.

Getting a Netflix subscription for a year could be costly, and sometimes too much choice is even tougher than not having enough choice. And for me it just didn't seem a personally thoughtful gift. So I thought to get her the first series of a several different TV shows of different genres. A taster of them, and if it turns out she likes any of the shows then she can go on and watch the rest of the series on her own accord.

I got the boxsets from the ever trusty Cex, and it cost me roughly £10. I remember a time when a boxset cost me £30 each!

Challenge within a challenge: To be tidy and have less; once and for all

Every year since around the age of 10 I have given myself the new years resolution of wanting to be tidy. And every year I fail. I always find something better to do than tidy up. I also have a problem in that I have a lot of stuff. I’m not a hoarder, but I just seem to have a lot of things. I’m not a shopaholic, yet I always have bags of things to be sorted.

I guess the main time I accumulated a big amount of material posessions was when I was at uni, and I have thrown out a large amount of these items since. But life goes on and you need new things as you acquire new skills or new tastes.

I’ve seen those challenges around of chucking out one thing per day and increasing it during a 30 day stint. What I want to do is have throwing out things as part of my daily routine. As bold as it sounds I want to throw out 2-5 things everyday. It may seem bold, but I’ve started doing an audit of exactly how many posessions I own. I haven’t finished that task as it’s a working progress, but with close to 150 DVDs and 45 items of gym wear, I know I can start getting rid of stuff easily.

It won’t be straight into the bin. The things I throw out will be either given to charity or recycled.

Following my journalism degree, I’ve always had a large amount of magazines and paper in general. Years ago I used to collect In Style magazine as I thought it made me sophisticated. And I thought piling up my collection, like Carrie Bradshaw did in Sex and the City with her Vogue magazines would be stylish. What it looked like was a mess and that I was a hoarder. And I decided to weigh my collection which was around 4-5 years old, and it weighed half my body weight!

Today I watched a great documentary on Netflix called Minimalism: A Documentary about Important Things and it was really interesting. And while I may not reach true minimalism, it’s made me realise that most of the stuff I have, I don’t need. I thought this for a while, but now is the time to truly attack the mass of possessions that I own.

I’ll keep a log of what I throw out. Throwing out rubbish such as packaging waste for recycling won’t count as it’s general waste. I think that the first few weeks it will be easy, a bit like with weight loss, the pounds go down a little faster in the beginning. It’s the weeks and months that follow that it slows down. But I hope if I build this little task into my daily routine, my mind-set may shift and hopefully I will own a lot less by the end of the year.

So let 2018 begin, with more tidying and hopefully less possessions!

Thoughtful presents: A pack of cards

I’ve used a pack of cards twice this year as a present for friends going through tough times. Earlier in the year my flatmate was going through a bad breakup and to distract her I gave her a pack of cards with bits of trivia written on each card. This was a short term fix to keep her busy and it did keep her from thinking about her ex, even if it was just for a little while.

The other day I asked my old flatmate how her studies were going, as she is studying to be a solicitor, and she said it wasn’t great. She felt like she had bitten off more than she could chew and that she was really struggling.

I obviously couldn’t do the course for her, but I thought what could I do to motivate her and to give her a bit of a boost. And then I thought of a pack of cards. I decided to write a motivational quote about career, tough times and determination on each card. As she has a lot of course work, watching a film about tough times would take too much time. A quote would be quick to read and hopefully give that boost she’d need to conquer the work she was doing.

I was at a pub the other night and a couple asked what I was doing, as I was busy writing the quotes. I explained and they asked if they could read a few, and picked them out like they were fortune cookies!

At the moment I’m not sure how it was received as I only posted it the day before yesterday, but fingers crossed it gets her back on track and helps her feel a little less stressed.

Thoughtful presents: Recovery care package

I’ve known my friend Alice a very long time and know how important her family are to her. A few weeks ago her sister went in for an operation and I decided to make a care package for her and Alice’s parents for when she got out.

Quite often we think about keeping people entertained while they are in hospital, but we forget that if there is recovery as well, that part maybe tedious at time.

The care package is full of little games and things to keep her sister and parents entertained. I didn’t realise at the time that Alice’s mum was also going into hospital shortly afterwards for a hip operation, so the care package had double the use!