If Talent Campus was a movie the viewers would be standing on their seats and cheering… it has such a good ending!
I am struck by the fatefulness of my getting to Talent Campus 9.0. It would never have come about if a whole series of unfortunate events hadn’t occurred. It all began on the Thursday evening before the deadline day, Friday. It was rush hour, I was driving home with my wonder dog in the car, and my clutch dropped at a busy crossroads. Me and a woman who came to help, got the car to the side of the road and I rang the AA. They weren’t exactly cooperative, so I had no choice but to leave the vehicle and walk home. The next morning, instead of going to teach I needed to organize my garage to pick up the car, and I had the gift of a couple of unexpected hours. I decided to enter the TC competition, for myself, not with any expectations of success, but just to meet a deadline. It would make me feel better to have done just one thing for my writing career. Three days later, Chris rang me and offered me a place.
It was so serendipitous. Each moment on the journey felt like luck and blessing. I found somewhere to stay through friends with an inspiring 80 year old Quaker woman and made my tentative entry into this screenwriting meisterworld with the intention of learning as much as I could about screenwriting and the film and TV industry while shadowing the corner because I had grown so quiet. I had forgotten the person I had been and beyond doubt the person I could be.
Yet, what I experienced was learning about myself, as a person and a writer. Challenging fear, losing my imposter syndrome, and coming to believe in myself was at the heart of all our learning about inciting incidents and turning points. Admittedly I have so much more insight into all the processes of creating film and TV, of thinking, practising and doing. The value of that is immeasurable at this time in my life but the self-belief is a true gift. After all, I would wake in the night fearing I would never fulfil my writing potential. That’s not going to happen again.
Chris Jones is extraordinary. I mean is he a mage? He genuinely took us on an incredible journey with enough energy to power a small town. I could feel a rewiring taking place on a molecular level. Yes, there were amazing speakers, who doesn’t want to listen to Charlie Brooker and Anthony Horowitz, spend a day with John Yorke, time with Eleanor Greene and Philip Lawrence but there was so much more to it. A group of strangers, of writers became a generous family who began to know one another, support one another, love one another. I mean, can you imagine a roomful of writers and not an ego in sight? The bonding between us has been intense, and there will be some friendships which will last a lifetime, of that, I am sure and some of them will be mine.
I am not going to reveal all the things we did, the challenges which on another day in another time I might have thought impossible. I was rocketed into a different time zone, TC9 time zone where we faced down our fears and OMG learned to hug each other.
It was profound and has made a profound difference to how I will live my life as a screenwriter, and as a human being.
Thank you then, to all the talent campers, to Chris, Lucia, Bob and Amy – if this was a movie the viewers would be standing on their seats and cheering… it has such a good ending.
Belona Greenwood
https://www.belonagreenwood.com
Belona is an writer, script and screenwriter and creative facilitator living in the East of England.
