By Bill Kirton
Just two bits of writing-related trivia this week.
We quite often hear about novels that have been
optioned by one of the big studios and then months, years go by and nothing
more is heard of them. So it’s best to be forewarned about the casualty rate,
just in case you strike lucky. Even then, however, when the luck does come
along, you can’t help feeling that this time it’ll be different. All of which
is to introduce the news that I recently got an email from a small film company
in Los Angeles asking permission to adapt one of my short stories for the
screen. Note that it’s not one of the big boys and, if it happens, it’ll be a
short film. But that hasn’t stopped me having a big smile on my face a lot of
the time since I read it. Also, from my hovel in Aberdeen ,
those magic words ‘Los Angeles Los Angeles
And the letter I wrote in reply giving permission to
adapt the story produced a typo (fortunately spotted before I sent it) which
reminded me of another which I’d previously intended to include in a
trivia-type blog. You see, for some reason most of my ‘best’ typos involve the
keys in the middle of the bottom row – v, b, n. In this case, it was the
story’s title, Love Hurts, which in my hurry (and because I have fingers like sausages),
became Lobe Hurts – no doubt a romantic tale about either earache or the
devastation occasioned by an overenthusiastic nibbler. The previous one
which I was going to mention, though, was much raunchier. I don’t remember what
I was writing but it involved something about food and, when I read through it
after I’d finished, it had taken on distinct erotic tones because among the
other things on the plate were ‘naked beans’.
A writer’s life is full of such simple pleasures.
2 comments:
I smiled all the way through this post. And I agree, all writers dream of that "call from Los Angles."
Hope they send you buckets of money and that this is the first of many.
Thanks Jackie (although I have to confess that there has been nothing but silence since then). Never mind, I still have that email FROM LOS ANGELES.
Post a Comment