It's been a good week

Funny how when you're immersed in something a week can seemingly fly by. Well that's how this last week has been.

From a blank sheet of paper (and some may say a blank mind too) I ended up with a whole short film, written up and critiqued and had time to write a second draft. I'm amazed!

I loved the course. Twelve of us worked hard, discussed hard, put our all into it and then went out for a quick drink last night in George Square to seal our friendship. That's what hard work also does, I think, has the capacity to bring people together.

We were an interesting bunch. From a retired accountant, to a boy who'd just finished his highers, to a Spanish news reader (who came all the way from Spain for the course) and all stops in between, which added a richness to our discussions, all guided by our ever-generous tutor, Douglas, who made time for each of us.

Of course our actual films were pretty raw and need a lot of work, if not to be put in a drawer and never to see the light of day. But each of us came out with something and a promise to send our work so we can each critique them and learn from each other. Douglas will give us written feedback on what we ended up with. And that folks, he's doing in his own time, which I think is pretty damn good.

Oh yes, and for those of you interested in free software to help you in your scriptwriting or novel writing or even comic book writing you could do no better than go to Celtx.

If you ignore all the calls to buy anything (you do have to sign up though) and at the top it has a box for Cloud, Desktop, Mobile and guides, click on Desktop. From there travel down to a bit that says 'free download' but is quite small - and when I say small I mean small and is easy to miss, download to your desktop and there you have the most wonderfully easy tool for creating scripts for radio, theatre and film, novel layout and all sorts. It takes a little playing with to understand what it can do - we were lucky as Douglas took us through it - but it's not rocket science. And you can download this to your mobile device too. Yup, writing scripts on your phone...mmm well maybe not! But definitely a great tool and worth a bit of effort to find it.

Well that's that. It certainly got my creative juices flowing and is a very interesting way of writing. I'm now deciding if I want to take this further and sign up for the year-long course. I'm going to let the dust settle and give myself a bit of time before I make any big decisions, but I'm so pleased I decided to give it a go.