So after a week of reporting NO NEWS WHATSOEVER in this, the official Standing There Productions Diary, I hereby produce a trump card, the likes of which I don't come across too often.

Over the past week, we have received (a) good news and (b) bad news. Receiving any news whatsoever is usually a bit of a coup, but two things at once is extraordinary.

First, the good:

Last Wednesday, Standing There Productions was notified that our kid's TV proposal has received development funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation, which anyone who grew up in Australia will know as "the little smiley face that comes up at the end of the Australian shows".

Development funding means "funding to write the idea into a script", so don't expect to see our name on the credits of anything in the immediate future, if ever. We're being helped to write a draft of a first episode - known in the biz as a "baby step". We're very excited about it, because we get to work with people who have done this before, including a real life grown-up script editor. It might also make the juggling act between paid work and creative sessions in the library a little easier to handle.

HOWEVER.

The bad news:

I dropped my laptop.

Dropped it. Spectacularly. I have been intending to go in and find out the extent of the damage at the mac place. I almost made it there yesterday but I can't quite face it. I feel like a neglectful mother who dropped her child on its head.

So. The good news is that we have support to write stuff. The bad news is we have nothing to write it on.

Also, if anyone watched Kath and Kim this last Sunday (the 9th), five points for anyone who noticed the Standing There Productions prop.

Anyone?

So I'm on a work trip in Northern Victoria, and my work day is over so I've got nothing to do.

Just like that. I've got nothing to do. Nothing. No expectations, either creative or social. This hasn't happened in years. The working day is done, the laptop is in my hotel room, there's takeaway pizza to be ordered and nobody in the whole town who knows my name, with the possible exception of the person on reception who asked me how I would like my eggs in the morning. (In a big pile).

So, in brief: I'm tired, I'm alone, I've had a big day at work.

I'm a NORMAL PERSON!!!!

Huzzah!

Being a normal person always makes me want to cheat.

I think, "Wow, this is how normal people live. I could just go back to the hotel and watch movies starring a young harrison ford... but I might make the most of it by TOTALLY GOING BACK TO MY HOTEL ROOM AND WRITING A NOVEL!"

Anyway needless to say, that trick almost never works. I found out one of The Most Cool Friends I Never See is in town. This town. The small town in which nobody knows my name except the eggs guy!

How good is life!

So, yeah, I "wasted" my normal night of potential creative genius. The novel will have to wait.

Plus, anyway, Harrison Ford is such a goofball.

Yesterday, I was struck? Became stricken? Was struckerated? Let me try that again: I have been struck down with a cold/flu/hideous head cold type of arrangement. About three years ago, I used to get sick all the time. Back in those days, being sick was depressing. It was oppressive and personal - largely because it was ongoing and I was supposed to be getting work done.

Nowadays, (providing I'm not too sick) it's kind of an enforced break. I'm the only person I disappoint (tonight I am missing the wonderful Shane Koyczan at the Malthouse) and I'm costing MYSELF money, rather than other people, so I don't feel quite so guilty or resentful, and I don't feel obliged to do... well... anything.

As a result, check out my achievements over the past two days:

1. Finished reading a novel that has been driving me completely insane (We Need To Talk About Kevin). I'm one of those people who watches a thriller where everyone is cruel and vile and it gets to the end and I say to the person sitting next to me, "So WHAT? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" This is a little bit how I feel when I read a book about people who can't communicate and who end up being vile to each other for no reason with violent consequences. It was interesting that it was a woman writing about not liking her son who turned out to be involved in a school massacre but it seemed contrived to me, and deliberately directionless. Anyway. That's what I thought. So I finished it. And then I went outside.

2. Went for a walk to the park and lay about on the grass with the sun on my sick face.

3. Looked at everyone else in the park, lying on the grass, and wondered who they all were. Where did they come from? Are they all sick, too? Are they chucking sickies and they're not really sick? Are they internet people or shift workers or consultants? One of them, as I stumbled dumbly past, called the other one "a bit slack", so possibly the herald sun should get down there, pronto.

4. Started a book of short stories by Miranda July. Oh Miranda, you're so clever.

*Adds to list of literary crushes*

5. Dawdled on facebook. Check this out (thanks to Josh):

... makes me think I fall a little too heavily on the "got language and opposable thumbs" side and a little too scantily on the "got short term memory" side. What was I saying etc etc.

6. And half cleaned my bedroom. Some days when I'm WELL don't go as productively as these two. Yay for the flu. Now, bugger off please flu. I can't afford this.

Explaining to somebody at a party what it is exactly that you do is hard for anyone, I expect, apart from possibly:

The Queen ("Oh yes, and what does that involve?")

A dentist ("What particular area of dentistry, exactly?")

The Prime Minister ("Excuse me, I just remembered my car is double parked, could you hold my drink?")

A teacher ("Some of you people are volunteering to stay in after three thirty")

or

Possibly, Nelson Mandela ("Care to dance?").

If you're not doing one of these jobs, chances are you have to answer questions like, "What kind of doctor? Oh, really? Could you look at my hives?"

As a writer who also directs and has a small production company but works part time in a legal organisation and who has a law degree but is not a lawyer, it tends to get a bit tedious half way through about Act II of my explanation. I therefore dumb it down, which does me no favours and involves a fair bit of fudging and the waving of hands through sections I would rather not explain, making it seem as though I am a writer who operates a seedy drug ring on my days off.

I met one or two of my personal heroes on the weekend, including Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, who are everything I dreamed they would be, and also they are human beings made out of cells and so on, which came as somewhat of a surprise. In my head, they were an institution. They were a blockbuster fiction. They were a way of life.

I came across several other peeps on the weekend to whom I was required by social necessity to explain myself, and I found that my common problem (I'm a writer... er, and a director... well, theatre mostly but also...) is a problem shared by many people.

I actually heard someone describe their profession as "Part time motivational speaker. The rest of the time I just look for work", which made me feel a little less conflicted. Part time motivation, part time lack of motivation. Depressing or hilarious? Tis a fine line.

In other news, global warming apocolyptic meltdown notwithstanding, today is a gorgeous day in Melbourne for the riding of brand new bikes purchased at www.unibicycles.com.au - as I'm sure you'll all agree. If things get a little eerie at about 8pm on your ride home, though, don't worry. Apparently the sun and the earth and moon are in perfect alignment. Or something extraordinary and humbling that I am sure to forget about while we have a standing there productions meeting inside a brightly lit vegie bar.

Solipsistic? Exactly.

Another day another stinking deadline.

Deadlines make the film festival less fun because you spend the two hours of each film thinking, "This had better be worth me not writing that proposal for that thing that's due TOMORROW. COME ON, YOU STUPID FILM, SHOW YOUR TRUE COLOURS! Bah, piece of European psychological drama procrastinatorial CRAP!"

Anyway. Not that any of the films so far have been truly crap (with one or two exceptions, below). But, you know, the pressure is on in all sorts of ways.

I will write up on the other films I've seen so far but yesterday I saw The Hottest State, which I greatly enjoyed despite the odd dip into sentimentality - I think it was truly an interesting film (not least because of the casting choices - Ethan Hawke playing his own father, someone else playing his younger father, and someone else playing his young self, but also because of some of the writing, which was really lovely).

I saw a documentary about an American-born-Japanese homeless artist who was locked away by the American government during WWII for being an "alien" and who had his citizenship revoked. Here he is, sixty years later (aged 81) painting pictures in the streets of New York. Suddenly the planes hit the twin towers down the street and he's the only person left standing in the neighbourhood by night time. The filmmaker actually moves him into her house and gradually helps him sort his life out. The parables between his situation and the current fears that allow governments to lock people away and revoke their citizenship were not unnoticed but never preached. Hm. Yes, it rocked my socks. Just a really, really good documentary. It's called The Cats of Mirikitani, but it's not showing again in the festival, so google it and get the DVD.

Anyway shuttup I have work to do.

PS. Last night I sunk to the festival low: lamb souva for dinner in between films. Orange juice in case I get scurvy.

Here it is, folks. My first official backdown. My first genuine complaint about the State Library, previously listed as one of my Favourite Places On Earth.

WHO THINKS IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO TUNE A PIANO IN A LIBRARY WITHIN EARSHOT OF THE PEOPLE STUDYING IN THE DESIGNATED QUIET ROOM (many of whom have left) FOR A PERIOD OF (so far) AN HOUR AND A HALF BY PLAYING ONE NOTE OVER AND OVER AND HITTING THAT EXACT SPOT IN YOUR BRAIN THAT IS TRYING TO CONCENTRATE.

I think I have officially lost the last quiet, untouchable, peaceful writing haven left on this earth. So long as there is the possibility I will EVER have to endure this TORTURE again, it is, officially, dead to me now.

WHY IS THERE A PIANO IN A LIBRARY ANYWAY?

Oh, please, make it stop.

PS. Any friends who are cheeky enough or members of my family reading this can feel free not to use the word "melodramatic" in relation to any or all of the above, for fear of me imposing stringent sanctions in the future.

PPS. The piano tuner has moved from a middle C to a high C. This is both a relief and a sign that we may be putting up with this for another hour. The dude at the desk across from me has officially discarded his laptop in favour of a skateboarding magazine.

Too many deadlines to see enough films.

Too many films plus too many deadlines = too little time to eat and get giggles with friends.

Too much of The Guilt to entirely enjoy the deadlines or the films or the friends.

What happened to my gay abandon?

Why am I again confronting the dual parts of my personality: the obsessive antisocial nerd versus the social hedonist? Why can't they both just get along?

Films I've seen so far:

The Happiest Day of His Life - short film purporting to subvert gender stereotypes but actually just relying on them. It's a shame. It was a good idea and I do think the phrase "dick-whipped" should be introduced to society.

The Armstrongs - a documentary about a small business that actually had me groaning aloud and crawling around in my chair, much like I do when I watch shows like "The Office", which this was disarmingly similar to, although this was real. Hilarious and depressing at the same time. Probably my favourite so far.

Ex-Drummer - a really well conceived, well-shot, entirely hideous film that made me quite ill. I'm still not sure if it was sending things up or celebrating them.

Yo - well acted by possibly the nicest, kindest, sweetest-looking actor on earth. Kind of been done before though, story-wise. There's something about the subtly and the slow reveals in films at MIFF though, which make the story not always the point. Which, coming from me, is usually an insult.

Anyhoo. The Guilt, The Guilt. I'm off. Seeing Teeth tonight with a collection of my favourite people on earth.

For someone with such a heady concentration of inner turmoil, my life really isn't that bad.