Feedback a.k.a Having to realise your not as great as you think you are.

Hello.

This blog post won't be a fun one to write. That's not because I don't like blogs, I actually am learning to quite enjoy this, no. It's because it deals with that moment that you send your work out with the belief that its the dogs bollocks and then having the stark contrast of opinion against that.

I don't think it's arrogant to love your own work, if you didn't then whats the point in doing it in the first place, especially as a writer, but being brought back down to earth is a horrible,sickening and pretty much depressing experience.

Okay. A little bit of context. If you have read the first two posts you will know that I was writing a 3 page script for BUstation about a man named Gaz who is chasing up football results for his "Accumulator", also the title of the script (finally a releveant and credible title). Well, I had completed the first draft, sent it to the editor and I have to say it felt good. I then went away on holiday to the States for christmas, basked in the sunshine, eat my weight in tortilla chips and halfway through the holiday I decided to check my emails.

This is when I saw the little email which even warned me that I should probably leave it till I returned home. Well turns out that my story had a number of major problems, and once I read through this feedback I completely agreed.

My script didn't show an aspect that was "Hidden" which was the whole purpose of the brief, my character "Gaz" was very open about this bet he had made. I had run over the three page limit, which I honestly didn't realise till I had checked, and most importantly I had made it very difficult for the production team to actually make. Alot of the exposition within the script was revealed through a sports presenter on the television meaning that with the small budget the production unit had this would be near impossible to produce.

I believe feedback from a fresh pair of eyes is essential as it spots the niggles that you can fail to see. I think it's good to have somebody read through your work who will pull no punches, there has to be an understanding that it is nothing personal, but pure perfectionism.

Anyway the conclusion to this story is that I needed to do a complete re-write of the script to make it viable to produce which I will discuss in the next blog which finally makes it into 2012!.

A picture to let you know how I handled the feedback.

Enjoy.

p.s if your reading this, thanks for the feedback, it actually helped substantially.