Christmas Break

It is that time of the year when I archive all my files, put everything in order, and find that fuzzy plastic thing that fell off the top off that piece of incredibly important kit, the function of which escapes me for the moment. Every year, especially busy ones like this year, I leave all my filing, accounts, wiring, and old newspapers with mysterious highlighted passages that were supposed to be of use to me sometime, scattered about my office, and about my computer disks. And then before Christmas, I set aside a couple of days to do nothing else but tidy up, chuck out, and back up all digital content.

Usually and today is no exception I discover that I have several backups with different content and have no idea which is the latest and so back up the back-ups just in case. Then I run out of space and have to look through all the files just to work out whether I really need to back up anything. Much to my alarm I discover how much time I have spent on projects that never got further than one or two paragraphs. And worse how much time I spent on projects that took months that never got anywhere.

I can't even remember why I started a lot of these things or why I never finished them. What makes some projects go and keep on going to some sort of result, and what makes some just die is a mystery to me. I come across the opening chapters of novels that read like Dostoyevsky on a good day, and film treatments that seem works of potential cinematic genius that I must have for some reason decided were doomed to failure.

I vow to rekindle them, and then notice the archives of the past ten years containing other gems that I never finished. It is as if one project takes a hold and strangles all the others at birth. Backburner projects put aside because of the momentum of another project never seem to re-emerge.

My film "Joggers" looks like it will kill off a dozen other brilliant ideas because, well, it's looking rather good and worth taking to the final stage. My fear is that my actresses will shave their heads, have plastic surgery and facial tattoos before I start shooting the next sections. This is the danger of having to shoot a film in pieces while one gathers the money for the next bit. But on the other hand, maybe I should write in a body piercing, head shaving, and tattooing scene? It would cover the possibility of radical life style changes, and shift the film into a gear unforeseen even by my own immense powers of imagination.

One thing I am certain about, as I stack all the hard drives, stuff plastic bags with whole rain forests reduced to print outs of umpteen dozen versions of the script, and contemplate what I want for Christmas so that my mother can order it, is that act one is such a high adrenaline opening scene of a Private Ryan kind, that topping that can only induce premature death in the audience unskilled at holding their breaths like a free diver. And not a drop of blood is spilt.

Ah... there's that sound... damn... I've just got a warning message saying the disk has run out of space before completing the backup!