ErinLaing.com

What I’m listening to these days. From Vivaldi’s Bajazet.

Cecilia Bartoli.

Mary Beth Ellis has a very entertaining post over at freelanceswitch called “Friends with structure.”

From the opening paragraph:

“This is about structure,” the therapist said.

I’m sitting across from her because my husband found me sobbing into the carpet of my home office, again, some more. She’s sitting there because I’ve reached the point, now, where I need to pay people to listen to me.

“I thought this was about huge, huge amounts of anti-depressants.”

“No. For the first time in your life, you don’t have outside structure dictating your every move. And it is affecting your writing, and you are very angry.”

And I thought I was alone in the ‘sobbing into the carpet of my home office’ department.

I’m sure anyone who works as a freelancer can relate to this piece. Being your own boss is not easy - despite what some 9 - 5ers think.

I know I’m constantly finding different ways to give my days more structure. I recently rented office space and now I have somewhere to go every day from 10am to 6pm.

I make lists and I try and set small ‘achievable goals’ on a daily basis so that I feel I’ve accomplished something by the end of the day. I think this sort of thing is necessary, especially when the overall goals can take months, sometimes years to achieve.

I’m reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth. This sentence stuck with me from early on in the novel:

And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much – because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint…

Whenever I read a book I always have a pen close by so that I can underline or highlight passages/sentences that resonate with me. When I’m done, I transcribe the various phrases from the book onto a word document and keep a file of everything that made an impression on me. I do this for every book that I read. Doesn’t matter if it’s pulp fiction, non fiction, poetry, comics or magazine articles.

I find this kind of archiving to be extremely helpful when I’m looking for reference material. When I’m trying to write and looking for something to inspire or trigger an idea, emotion, reaction or motive.

I think the Roth passage is brilliant and will no doubt help me on a psychological level somewhere down the line. I also have reference folders for music, photography and movie stills. The latter two I use more for directing.

Listening to Incundus Homo (Bolivian Baroque), a piece I’d like to use for the feature I’m writing.

I just found out that Birthday Girl has been accepted to this year’s 27th International Fajr Film Festival in Tehran, Iran. I’ve been eager to travel to the Middle East for a long time and I can’t see a better opportunity than this. (Would also be a nice break from Germany’s unwelcoming winter.) The festival runs from Feb. 1st to Feb. 11th 2009.

The CBC’s Canadian Reflections will be broadcasting Birthday Girl nationally this coming Sunday, November 9th at midnight! This will be the film’s English network premiere.

Canadian Reflections has a long standing tradition of showing critically acclaimed short films by Canadian filmmakers for over twenty years now. (Always Sunday’s at midnight, if you were curious about the late broadcasting hour.)

Hope you’ll stay up to watch!

The BBC in partnership with the British Arts Council has launched the 11th International Radio Playwriting competition. The play should be approximately 60 minutes in length, and submitted in English. The competition is open to anyone who is not a resident of the UK. The deadline is not until March 31st 2009, so there’s plenty of time to get writing.

Thanks Rebecca for the tip!

I’m really interested in radio plays these days. It’s such a wonderful medium for storytelling. I think, unfortunately, the BBC might be the only major network that’s still regularly producing radio dramas.

The CBC was well known for their production of radio plays back in the forties and fifties. The run was called The Stage Series and it brought critical acclaim to the network for decades. I’m trying to get my hands on a few. Definitely new fodder for me to sink my teeth into (research and writing wise).