self esteem

Everything is Possible

6 September 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

If a book is good, or at least popular, chances are that someone will make a film based on it. But how often does the reverse happen?

Under the Black Sand wasn’t meant to be a novel. It started as a short film. I wrote the screenplay in the Netherlands, where I live, but the film would have to be set in Iceland. Being an optimist, I placed a message on a website where actors hang out. I found a male and a female. I met him and liked him. I had never met her before we started shooting. She had done some stage work and appeared in a TV series. Should be good enough, I thought. And it was. They were both perfect.

The film would need music. I was heavily into Mark Knopfler at the time. His keyboard player, Guy Fletcher, was dabbling in film music and I sent him a message through his website. Would he write music for my film? A stupid questions if you realise that I was totally unknown (still am) and he was the man behind classics such as Brothers in Arms. Strange things happen though. He saw the rough cut and sent a short message. “This film needs music.”

He spent his Christmas holiday writing music for my film. The tour was finished and he had worked on Mark’s live album. They would then go back to the studio in January. And still he found the time to write music for my short.

The moral of the story is that we should never give up before we try. The reasonable thing would have been to never contact him in the first place. Why would he even reply to my message, let alone spend time composing music for my Icelandic language no-budget film? That’s crazy talk! The man played on Money for Nothing and Calling Elvis. He worked with Tina Turner and God knows who else!

But he did reply and he did write music and and the results were beautiful. I can’t really describe the feeling when I play the album he released shortly afterwards and I hear the closing song. Black Sand Theme.

If you have an idea, try it out. Don’t give up. Never give up. Everything is possible.

Keep Writing

3 September 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

I have no time to write. I have just finished a nine-day working week and I’m tired. The attic needs attention before the workers come in next week. The kid needed to go to school. Maybe I should give up this novel-writing nonsense. Who am I anyway? Who am I kidding?

Kiddo was out the door at eight. If I go upstairs with my hammer and nails at ten, I’ll still have all day. That leaves two hours to write. Two hours that just ended, but I did manage to polish and fix a whole chapter. Instead of going upstairs, grumpy that life is playing me and stealing my opportunities, I now take that hammer in hand, knowing that the writer in me has been satisfied. I am that bit closer to the goal of finishing the novel.

So, no matter how life plays us, we can always write. It is not about having time, because we never do. Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans. It is about making time. It’s about grabbing the little pockets of opportunities and making the most of them. Watch less TV, don’t let that mini-game on your smartphone eat up your spare time. Make the most of whatever time you find.

A clique, a well known and worn truth, but we sometimes need to remind ourselves of the simple things we already know.

Thank You!

23 July 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

My novel isn’t quite finished yet. In fact, I don’t think any work of art is ever “finished”. It gets abandoned when the creator has had enough, has other ideas pushing for attention and deems that the current one is good enough. Under The Black Sand isn’t quite there yet. Give it a few weeks, a month, and I will happily abandon this story and send it off on its journey.

Under the Black Sand test copies

Most debut novels are years in the making. After a few false starts, endless rewrites and self-doubt, they finally emerge. This one is no different.

I think my first attempt at novel writing was Life Is A Bitch, which I started writing in 1996. It was as bad as the title suggests. It mutated into Plastic and could have become something, but it wasn’t to be. Then it became The Box. Vastly different from the first version, but still it didn’t rock my boat enough to finish it.
Fast-forward to 2005. I wrote a script for a short film, The Small Hours. It was the first thing I’d written that became something more than bytes on a hard drive. After film school, I wrote and shot another short, Black Sand. The idea was born after watching Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. Not that it bares any resemblance, but the film ignited a spark when combined with a real-life event from years earlier.

I got in touch with my favorite novelist, William Kowalski. He read the screenplay, came up with a few suggestions and I implemented some of them. The short wasn’t the correct format for the story. It was too big, too complicated. I wrote a feature length screenplay based on the short, but by the time it was completed, the world economy had collapsed and nobody had money for me. And so I followed the advice of a friend and fellow filmmaker, Hjálmar Einarsson. I adapted the screenplay into a novel.

It all seems fairly straightforward, but if anyone ever got to read the first drafts, they would’t recognise the story. There is also the small matter of being demotivated. When you have 60.000 words in a document, things start to blur. I had no idea how far I was, where the story was and how to move forward. I was copy/pasting dialogue from the screenplay and it was all turning very uninspiring.

Until I came across Scrivener. It is a word processor for writers. I imported my scribblings into the program, split it into chapters and I saw the light again. I had already written eleven out of thirteen chapters. I saw where the different parts of the story were located, how some parts were too short and some dragged on. Scrivener took me by the hand and helped me finish the novel.

There are no shortcuts. I had to come up with the story myself, I had to write it myself and I will have to push it myself once it’s “done”. But I doubt that I would have been able to finish it without the help, feedback and support of countless people around me. Thank you to all that helped, inspired and supported the effort, those that I did and didn’t mention here.

This post, originally from 23 July 2012, was recreated on 6 January 2016, after my site got deleted as explained here.

Little Me

21 July 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

Since the completion of the polished draft and the printing of it in a book form, many have said they admire me for achieving this and how they wish they could write novels. It seems there are wannabe novelists all around us. I use the word “wannabe” in the best and most positive sense, as I consider myself one.

When I ask why they don’t go for it, they say they don’t have the language skills (style) or a story to tell. That is nonsense, obviously. Writing is hard work, craftsmanship and a bit of talent. If you can write an email reasonably well, you have all the talent needed. The rest, you can learn.

The hard work is telling yourself to sit down and write. Simple as that. Reserve an hour a day, two hours, whatever you can spare. You don’t have to type all the time. Scribble an idea on a piece of paper. Come up with a name for a character. What is his or her job? Create crisis that the character has to deal with. Before you know it, you have the beginnings of a story. Draw from your own experience or come up with something wild. Inspiration will come to you if you stay at it.

Story structure is important, especially for larger works, and I may cover that in a later post.

The skills and writing style comes as you type. Like everything, practice makes perfect. Your first story may be stupid and badly written, but the second will be better. The third is the best yet. And so on. Hone your skill, find your style and keep practicing. Don’t write a novel just yet. Write short stories, small things you can finish quickly. The novel will come when you’re ready for it.

Many people that admire me for having completed a novel are 10-20 years younger than I am. Needless to say, I hadn’t written anything noteworthy at their age. So, I’m no better than they are. I’ve just had more time to do this and get where I am. Don’t compare yourself to someone that wrote a novel at age 17. You are not them. You are you and things happen when you’re ready for them.

We are too quick to stamp ourselves “little me”. I am not a novelist. I am not a prime minister, a rock star, a great thinker. I am just a plumber, a ground stewardess, a bus driver. This way of thinking is flawed. You are your experiences combined with character. Your job description simply states what you do to make ends meet and has nothing to do with yourself as a person.

Have faith in yourself and be what you want to be.