Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Being a fan of Charlie Kaufman's early screenplays - Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I sat down last night to watch the film he recently wrote and directed, Synodoche, New York. I had high expectations I guess - perhaps too high. I had assumed that Kaufman's quirkiness came from a need to be original. Alas, the film betrayed his true fascination - in a line from the movie, he even says, "I realize now that nobody's interested in my misery." And why should they be? Kaufman's universe is a bleak one. Our lives are seedy and pointless and become all the more complex, or rather painfully complicated, as we strive to examine and make sense of them. There's no joy in Synodoche, only angst, regret and loneliness. No love, only misunderstanding, lack of connection and fear - and the ever present specter of death. The only line I found uplifting in an otherwise dire waste of screen time was: "There are no ...

A lot of people ask me how I manage to get so much done. I often wonder myself. I was lucky. When I'd done schooling, I decided I didn't want to work for a living. Of course I had to - for a while. I did some pretty horrible jobs, gravitating from factory to office work because I noticed that the office workers seemed to get an easier time of things - and got paid more. Of course I could have done the life journey properly and got a nice cushy career type job in a bank or a corporate company. It's not as if I wasn't bright enough. I was even offered a few positions like that. But, much to the chagrin of my mother, I chose not to take them - mainly because it seemed like a cop out. The easy option. I deliberately chose the hard way - because I wanted to loathe the 9 to 5 I suppose. I'd watched my Dad living a life of quiet desperation for twenty years and I believed there had to be a better way to exist. Actually, I guess that's a kind of adolescent way...

As if I'm not busy enough already, a local director has asked me to write the music for his latest production - and have it to him by the 11th of October. So on top of the two pitches for TV series we're producing, running Magellan Books and the EWTW and editing my latest novel during the day, I'm composing and recording music in the evenings... No Rest for the Wicked, as I once sang! BTW, as well as Lydie M Denier, I'm proud to announce another Hollywood star has chosen Magellan Books to launch her latest book to coincide with her new TV series in October. Cool, or what? More news on that soon - coming to an inbox near you! Anyway... I'm probably one of the last people in the world to read "What the BLEEP Do We Know?" By now most of the ideas in it are well publicized and known thanks to movies like The Secret and the media blitz that accompanied it a few years back. A lot of self help gurus are still peddling the Law of Attraction or their version of it ...

Writers have a tendency to complicate things. We think that's what is required of us. Character depth, we tell ourselves, is what counts. Plot complexity, we think, is what impresses. Layers of story threads woven into a sophisticated tapestry will mark us out as a literary master, we want to believe. But actually in the modern marketplace I don't think this is true. At least not when it comes to selling our work to agents and publishers, producers, indeed the general public. Just look at the way books, TV and films are pitched to us - in the media especially. You might think that it's journalists and editors that create these little snippets and brief synopses designed to encapsulate our work. Wrong. It's us - we have to do it. Novelists write their own back-blurbs. TV listings are derived from the screenwriter's original log lines... Even after we've written something as word-weighty as a novel, we have to learn how to distill dow...

I've always been loath to tackle the subject of writer's block. A personal, largely superstitious thing - but still I get asked what writers should do about it - all the time! So here goes: 1. Crisis, What Crisis? First off, you need to deny that there is any such thing as writer's block. This debilitating condition can only hurt you when you give it the privilege of a concrete name. Take away its name and you begin to take away its power over you. Tell yourself, there is no such thing as writer's block. There is writing and not-writing. Only writers have a name for something they're NOT doing. Think about the absurdity of builder's block, or doctor's block, or pilot's block. Any kind of inability to write is similarly absurd. Writing is like breathing - something you learned to do a long time ago without thinking. Stop thinking about it - and just do it. 2. Stop! In the Name of Love. If you've run out of ideas or you're st...

"Getting paid for writing, son, is a triumph of tenacity over intelligence." I love this quote - it's one of my favorites - not least because it's one of my mother's. Mommie Dearest has always regarded writers - and me especially - as odd sorts.  The idea that we would spend a large portion of our day knocking out words has always struck her as, in her word, silly . A waste of time, basically, and not the sort of occupation for a sane person.  She may be right but that doesn't stop it from being a compulsion for me - and most other writers I know. I remember once when she came to visit me - which only happens about once a decade.  I was at a particular low point. Can't remember why. I think I'd just lost my way after a deal fell through. One of those times, you know? It was with great glee and insistence that she leaped on my misfortune and told me the situation was a God-given sign that I should give up all this arty stuff and s...

I lost a day this week. Yesterday I was under the impression it was Wednesday (it's Friday today). Robyn (the lovely wife) had to battle to right me of this misconception last night until I eventually had to accept I'd lost a whole twenty four hours. I'm not sure how this happened. I have my writing week so carefully mapped out these days. I worked on my new course last weekend and all day Monday - perhaps a little of Tuesday. No problem. I spent a day somewhere in the week editing my latest novel again - after Robyn had done an edit/proof run through. She'd made notes on where she thought I needed to tighten up a couple of logic inconsistencies. Fixed those, hopefully. Oh yeah, I spent around half a day sending out hard-copy editions of my books - which sold out - had to contact the printer and get some more done because I'd run out. Plus of course I spent many hours answering the constant stream of emails that go with having a high profile Net ...