Death pays a visit

I just saw my own death.

Not in a metaphorical sense, but quite literally.

I was having a dream, the full details of which I will not bore you with. It involved a taxi journey, and it was night-time.

The taxi stopped and myself and my fellow passenger got out. He asked the driver to wait for a moment. We said our goodbyes (handshake, man-hug) and then the taxi driver decided he was bored of waiting and started to drive away - with my bag still in the car.

Shouting, I ran to the back of the cab, pulled the door open and got in. I proceeded to give the taxi-driver a mouthful of abuse whereupon he picked up my bag from the passenger seat and threw it at me - I caught it in my lap.

I uttered a coarse parting shot at which point the taxi-driver opened his glove-box, grabbed something and threw it at me. I caught it - an automatic reaction.

When I looked down at what he'd thrown me, it took me a moment to realise what it was - a gun.

Instantly, with awful clarity, I knew why he'd done it. It was so he could claim self-defence.

Immediately, I looked up to see he had another gun in his hand, pointed directly at me. He pulled the trigger, I heard the bang and felt the bullet hit my chest like a punch to the ribs.

I sat there, shocked, still holding the decoy gun he'd tossed at me, my ears ringing with the sound of the shot in the confined space.

At that point, I woke up.

It was the most extraordinarily vivid dream I can ever remember having. I felt that bullet slam into me. I heard the high-pitched whine in my head, an after effect of the loud noise in the confines of the taxi.

It's now 3:42 a.m. and I'm wide awake, still reeling mentally from it.

I'd like to sign off with some witty comment about the dangers of eating a cheese sandwich before bed (which I did) but am still too shaken.

Apologies for the disjointed nature of this post.

A most productive day indeed

Today has been fantastic.

As detailed here way back in April, I'm currently working on a script-rewrite.

Mortal Remains (as it is still currently called, but I fully expect I will cheekily change the title very soon) has been on my radar for quite some time. Of course, by 'on my radar' what I really mean is I've thought about it, made a few notes, but spectacularly failed to do very much in the way of writing.

Unfortunately, with writing, the mood needs to take me. Sometimes it can seem like such a major journey, such an insurmountable object, that I'm hesitant to begin it.

Thus, over the course of the last 6 months I've managed to write about ten pages and bugger all else. I have, rather obviously, not communicated this failure to Mike - the author of the screenplay - and instead given him vague reassurances that work is progressing at a steady rate. Indeed, that's not really a lie if you consider, as I do, that consistently doing nothing is an accurate definition of 'a steady rate'.

In reality, I haven't actually been doing nothing, I've been mulling it all over. The whole thing has been slowly churning in my mind, forming, disintegrating, reforming, and generally melding together in a clever, writery, thinky way. At least that's what I'm convincing myself has happened.

Today, finally, something clicked in my mind and said to me "OK, you can start now".

Thus, I find myself having written 40 pages over the course of the day. Some of it, without doubt, is utter tripe and I shall callously delete it whilst shaking my head and chortling at my own ineptitude. But a lot of it is very good indeed.

While I'm undoubtedly pleased that it's all coming together at long last, the main reason I'm brimming with childish glee is because I've had a bloody fantastic time today. I rather lost my writing mojo for a while, so it was great to be artistically tumescent once more.

Oh, and I know that Mike semi-regularly checks this blog for news of progress on his script, so I thought it'd be a nice idea to give him something to read for a change.

More bloggery coming soon, once I've thought about it and made a lot of notes...