Arvon III

Thursday 15th September, 2005.
11:50am

Day 4

No diary entry last night. Had a late finish (11pm) to the guest tutor's evening session - an entertaining scout through radio and screenwriting from a woman called Sue Teddern. Was useful looking at a script of her's (a five-part radio serial called 'Making Hay') then listening to an episode. Writing style was broadly comedy-drama. She was a good advert for 'being yourself' - few airs, fewer graces, witty, candid, admirably unself-conscious.

Phone call to Emma last night was a bit heavy - adjusting to Alex's new school regime, handling changes in him, looking ahead to balancing work/PhDing, tiredness and my interrupting an episode of Lost. Challenging.

Was writing character notes until 2am. At around 1:30am my phone got one bar of signal which was enough for a text from brother to be patched through. Saying all that needs to be said about brother, it read: 'How is Shropshire? Where is Shropshire?' The Shrewsbury Board of Tourism (S-BoT) would be appalled.

Up since 8am today. Had the most disorganised session so far, and the subject... 'structure'! Told one of the tutors that our meeting this afternoon can be cancelled as writing time is more important to me at the moment. She was ok about this. Seems that Friday will be a day for sharing scripts that are in development.

There are a few really impressive old people (70+) on the course - lively minds and engaging storiers too. Going to try to call Emma now.