As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster… I mean, movie director.
I pursued it for a while too. Left art college. Enrolled in film school. Worked as an Assistant Director on a Anglo German movie that had a limited run in this cool art house cinema in the city. Got to chat with Vanessa Redgrave who watched one of my short films. Enrolled in television school. Landed a job as a corporate television editor for nine years. But what I realised during all this time was, the cool indie filmmakers didn’t inherit scripts, they wrote their own, and as good as I was on the visual side of things, I lacked any real chops in writing. So, I snagged an old Sharp typewriter from a family member (this was before laptops were the tool of choice) and set about writing a script. It sucked. I knew nothing about narrative structure, and writing dialogue. I couldn’t afford any classes, so I started reading everything from scripts to classic literature. That’s when I fell in love with the power of words.
Some twenty years later, I’m still writing, trying to create that masterpiece. People say my books would transition well to the screen. Now you know why. It’s been a strange, but wonderful journey. Whatever the form, books, movies, song, just absorb it all in because you never know where it’s going take you. I didn’t. And I still don’t.
Craig Wallwork 