Well, having beaten myself with a birch for summarily failing to deliver to the ravenous maw that’s called My Blog for the longest time, here I am crawling back, hoping to make amends. I can’t promise though that this good intention will last.. I’ve yet to be convinced anyone travels down the windy, overgrown track that ends up on my blog anyway, so I’m basically only writing this for my own amusement.

In my defence, I have been writing. I do find writing tends to swallow up any tolerance or bandwidth for anything else, be it blogs, or reading – unless it’s research – or even getting involved in TV series. I tend to have to keep that cavern of my mind free to be monopolised by the plot or character I’m in the throes of creating.

One Man Army is a Black WWII Biopic about Job Maseko, a young South African who volunteered to fight, was captured in North Africa, but managed to blow up a German Supply ship single-handedly, whilst working as a captive stevedore in Tobruk Harbour, 1942. He was awarded the Military Medal, though the British originally wanted to award the VC, but were blocked by his white SA superiors.

I’m pleased to say this script has gone deep in a competition I’ve struggled to make inroads in before; the LaunchPad Feature Screenplay Competition. It’s one of the biggies, listing over 5,000 entries, you do well to make any headway in it. It also feels to be one of the better ones for writers in terms of what it has to offer.

Of course, a cash prize is always gratefully received, but surely landing representation and getting your screenplay in front of interested production companies has to be more of a draw and it seems LaunchPad does that. Perhaps I’ll go into my experience of comps in more detail in another blog. There’s a gauntlet for myself.

I’ve gone deep in a fair few comps now and with several different scripts; Quarter-finalist in one, Semi-finalist in a good few more, Finalist, Long-lister, Short-lister… there’s not many categories I’ve missed, other than the crowning glory of – Winner.  

All you can do is try. Always in the knowledge that it is after all, subjective. Who knows what your reader, your judge is thinking, what their sensibilities are, what ticks their own personal boxes on any given day.

All you know is, you’ve got to be in it to win it and who knows, maybe this one is the one to get there.