Writers are weird, in general. Horror writers are twisted. Sci-fi writers are visionaries. Comet writers are... trailblazers? And they’re all part of the Create50 community, my weird, beloved
family.
I joined Create50 in 2015 with my short script Psukhe for the “Courage and Kindness” project. This resulted in a Best Script Award at the British Screenwriters’ Awards that year. I wrote six
scripts for the following Impact50 project, and Sirtaki was selected for the
film; I Never Kissed a Girl Before didn’t make the cut but is particularly dear to me because I co-wrote it with my daughter Hannah. Family business.
I am not a horror writer so didn’t try out for the first round of Twisted; however, seeing how that took off, I
submitted a story that made it to the finals for Twisted 2. In the end it didn’t get selected but that’s okay, I knew it was not horrific enough. Sci-fi is more up my alley, and I’m happy to say
that R vs. Martin Smith did make it into the Singularity anthology.
So thanks to Singularity50, I now have an Amazon author’s page. Thanks to Impact50, I got stuck deep into
writing short films (and am meeting a DoP tonight to discuss shooting one of them). And looking at my “failed” submission for Twisted 2, I see that it actually fits neatly into a collection of
short stories I’ve been building over the years.
Stop singing your own praise, you think, and my first reaction is to agree. But then I say: wait a minute. No. Sign your own praise. We writers too rarely do, we tend to hide and shun success,
like some of those Twisted creatures shun daylight.
I have accomplished something – and so have many others who grabbed the opportunities offered by Create50 and are now award winners, produced screenwriters and published authors. Among those
writers, I have made many friends. We help each other, we learn from each other, we egg each other on. Some of these friends have become family. Better than family, actually, because I chose
them.
Here’s to my weird siblings and our wonderful family business of writing. Here’s to Chris Jones and his fabulous team for creating this wonderful playground for us. See you all at the launch
party for Twisted2 and Singularity?!
Vera Mark.
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