It is something extremely pleasing with writing on a page with a zero as last number. Every tenth page is cause for a small celebration. Right now I am on page 90 on The Power of Bitterness. This time it is even a bigger celebration, because I'm on the move again. The page count is ticking upwards.

Only twenty minutes of movie left. They will be the most thrilling twenty minutes I have ever written. There is no way I can get stuck now, can I? I can see the rest of the story before my eyes as clearly as the part already written. I see the path. Now I just hope I'll be able to walk it.

For those of you who speaks Swedish as their native language, and writes movie scripts, there is nowadays a group on Facebook meant for you: Screenwriting - på svenska. This is something I have longed for a long time. I hope it will stay as active as it has been so far.

The group is meant for networking and to give each other tips about articles, news, classes, contests and so on. If you are searching for feedback on your script, Voodoofilm will probably still be the best place.

I really love when you can mix humor with seriousness. When you can tell something important, without getting pompous or depressing. This is what I think they have succeeded with in this video:



This video is not that easy to get without understanding Swedish (I think), but there are two very symbolic things that I think is most successful: the windmills and the Gladiator-reference.



Happy watching.

I sure hope these guys (including any ladies in the group of course) will do a feature film some day, based on a script of mine. They will give it a splendid photo.

I have rewritten the logline for my feature script "Sunlight". What do you think?

"In the debris after the ultimate and final war, a young and loyal officer from those claiming the victory, finds hope and green vegetation among those his father does not even accept as humans."


Any feedback are welcome.

I’ve finally understood why I am stuck on the third act of my script The Power of Bitterness.

First I had to accept that I was stuck. That took a while. I mean, I had planned it all and specifically put extra time on the third act since that is where I get stuck due to bad planning. It really offended me that I had become stuck this time as well. A grim time, believe me.

So I am stuck.

Why?

Because the third act is not a continuation of the main character’s story!

What on Earth was I thinking about? The third act includes the main character, sure, and she acts too, but what happens has nothing to do with her arc. It is left half-finished at the end of the second act.

Gee, how much energy I could spend on being frustrated on this clumsy blunder. But there is no time to dwell in the past. I need to spend all energy I have on the future. I want to write movie scripts full time. No time to whine. Nothing but writing will get me there.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.

I took part in a discussion about happiness on Facebook, which gracefully reminded me about my own philosophy on the subject.

I don’t believe you find happiness in wealth or anything else in your surroundings. I believe you find it within yourself. When you find peace and harmony within yourself, you have found happiness, according to me. And this has nothing to do with external circumstances.

My comment was not met with cheers and salutes. Probably most of them thought me fuzzy and naïve. I can live with that.

The important thing is I got reminded about what happiness is, according to me, not others.

I have felt rather worn down lately and out of focus, a victim to circumstances, unavoidably buried under laundry, dishes, cleaning and day-job. Things have always been like this. Or rather the factual situation has always been like this. That is what life is: you have practical things to attend. It’s been about the same since I was eighteen and moved away from home.

What has differed over the years is my attitude towards it all. I can choose to see the good things or the hard and boring things.

I walked home enlightened. I would open the door to my home, seeing my two healthy boys I’m blessed with, meeting my darling husband who loves me, and being at peace with the mess and the noise.

Surprised I stood in the doorway; the house was empty, husband and boys out on an errand. Without telling me or leaving any note; the dishwasher unattended as well. The cloak of happiness started to scratch my skin.

Then I reminded myself that external circumstances do not matter. I still had two wonderful boys and a loving husband, even if they left and forgot to tell me. It is always a matter what I choose to see and remember. I’m not a victim of somebody else’s life and decisions.

In the Power of Bitterness there is a king whom I wanted to show as at least somewhat caring and human. He didn’t need much sympathies, just enough for us to understand that he was not a ruthless, bad king.

At a council I had him supporting an orphanage.

Now as the story continued and I entered act three I came to the conclusion that I had not done a very good setup for the environmental conditions in the country. The fields did not carry enough crops and would within a lifetime be on the brink of collapse. This was something that I didn’t think of from the beginning, but was quite clear to me when I had written some on the last act.

Where to state this in a delicate manner? All I needed was someone commenting the declining growth.

That orphanage. . . All it did to the story was to add some goodwill to a character. He didn’t need it. And the story had no use of an orphanage. When I rewrite this story, it will be replaced with something concerning the agriculture instead.

I think that is as it should be. Everything said and done should have a purpose in the story. A scene just to add some goodwill, opening up ideas about things never returning is no good. Now the King will get a chance to show his character and discuss something we need to know.

There is an amazing amount of energy drawn from you when you have to run two washing machines for two days in a row.

Not the washing itself, of course, that’s why I use the machine, but hanging all of it on a clothesline, taking it down, sorting all of it. Normally I put on one or two machines on the weekends and let the clothes hang on the line a few days, no need to rush. But now I have a huge pile of laundry.

Why? Well, because we have been out traveling and I don’t want our home infested with little bugs which will cost great sums of money and discomfort to get rid of; if they are there, which I don’t know, but better be safe than sorry.

So I wash.

And wash.

And wonder how much clothes we actually brought along.

And ask myself if it really was necessary to pack all underwear I could find, since we now didn’t have any clean underwear when we got home.

I so much want to sit down and write on The Power of Bitterness. I’ve read it through and it is the best I have ever written. I am rattling to keep working on it.

But there are sleeping bags to air, tent to clean and suitcases to empty and put away.

And bags with paint and clays and old photos from my grandmother’s estate reminding me that I should do something about the hobby-room downstairs which now has a minimum of visible floor and no table surface avalible.

And we should get started with changing the cabinet doors in the kitchen.

And that roof outside our front door.

And start yet another washing machine.

A few weeks ago I met the very talented director Jerry J White III in person. (The reason I haven't wrote about this before is because I don't want to yell out on the Internet that my house is unoccupied.) We met in LA and had breakfast with his girlfriend, the equally talented actress Amanda Dawn Harrison.

Both were very nice and friendly people.

Though I write in English every day, I rarely speak it. My active spoken vocabulary is far smaller than my written. I also have the annoying feeling of behaving like a fool every time I open my mouth in front of strangers. Together these two make me want to run and hide somewhere instead of meeting people.

Not very constructive.

So I had to remind myself that what ever happens I'll survive.

My husband is one of those social types. He can talk to anyone anywhere. And he speaks English more or less daily too, lucky bastard. If I had brought him along, he would have made it splendidly. And I would have sat quietly, listening, being happy - and being a coward. After all, they are my friends. I was not about to hide behind my husband.

I don't know what kind of impression I made. I know for sure I could have asked more questions and talked about things a lot more than I did; but I don't think I made that much of a fool of myself.

And I learned all about how to eat pancakes the American way, just as in the movies.

I'm a mother of two boys who do not understand the concept of standing still. Especially not in an amusement park filled with attractions suited for their age. Of course it has crossed my mind that it would be great to either have expandable arms or put them on a leach. But when it comes to reality it's something you just don't do; in my world, that is.

The girl at the end of the leach was maybe four, likely three. It seemed like an impossible thing that that timid little girl would ever try such thing as running around.

The girl and her dad were about to try one of those little airplanes. The dad never considered to sit behind the girl, but squeezed himself in beside her. Since he was a man of size he pressed his daughter up to the railing of the plane's seat. He did not even let the girl guide the plane up and down.

Now, to make sure this does not fall as a dark shadow on fathers, I can tell you that the mother behaved just the same, janking the girl to the right direction by the leach, not even letting the girl choose the carriage, even less go by herself.

I hope they don't become surprised if their daughter marry a dominant man when she becomes an adult.