Screenwriting : How I knew I wanted to become a writer!! by Gavin D Walsh

Forgive me if this is a pointless post nobody is interested in. I just felt compelled to tell a little story, and hope that some will join me and share theirs. If I'm totally honest, my first ambition/dream was to be an actor, but I didn't possess the self confidence in front of a group of people. Give me a mirror alone in my room as a kid, and I was Oscar material lol. Anyway, moving on..... Growing up I used to have scrap book after scrap book bulging with short stories, poems, and even song lyrics. I must have had over a thousand of each, but again, I didn't believe they were any good and sadly didn't keep them. I used to buy 'The Stage' paper every time a new issue was released. I'd flick through all the upcoming auditions and wish I had the self belief and confidence to go audition. The main one that springs to mind now was, 'The King and I'. I soooo wanted to audition for that lol. So while being constantly told it was an almost impossible industry to break in to, as well as my own inner issues with regard to my own self belief, I decided I was going to try and forget about what I was passionate about, and try and concentrate on building a different career. College wasn't an option back then for family reasons I won't go in to. So you can imagine how much this has eaten away at me all these years. Then, in 2010, I was involved in a near fatal car accident. I had to have my right side and pelvis rebuilt with titanium. I had 5 different injuries that could have killed me separately, and I had them all at the same time. I'm not going to go in to all the gory details and bore you. I spent two months in hospital, which included having to learn to walk again. This gave me plenty of time to reflect on my life, and lack of achievement I'd made. The following few years were going to be tough as far as earning a living goes, with not being able to do usual manual work or heavy lifting etc. It made me wonder.... What if I'd pursued this passion from the start? I know I wouldn't have been able to avoid what happened, but maybe I would have already been earning a livable income from my writing by then... This, along with my 'second chance', persuaded me to spend the next few years doing a degree in the Creative Industries. There was no way I was going to spend it at home on the sick, that's for sure. I won't go in depth too much from here on in, but two massive achievements for me during this time were: My screenwriting lecturer telling me I should redraft my final screenplays, so they were the right length for TV, and then send them to the BBC and ITV to see if I could get them commissioned. This was a massive compliment and boost for me. I haven't actually done this yet, though. I am going to go back to them at a later date. Movies is what I'm more interested in at this stage. The second achievement was to receive an award from the college itself. This was because I took over and completed a project that was outside of my degree coursework. The project was a documentary to be submitted to the welsh assembly to aid with their 'pitch' if you like, for funding to build a new facility on the campus to house blind and partially blind students, that would otherwise have to stay away from their families while they studied. I did a lot of the filming, all of the directing, the producing (which wasn't difficult for this project) and also all of the editing. The film was eventually shown at universities and colleges throughout the country. I guess my point to this story is - If you're passionate about something - NEVER GIVE UP. You will never know what you could potentially achieve unless you try. You may deny yourself the opportunity, and others the pleasure of seeing what you can do, should something tragic happen, as nearly happened to me. I know my grammar is not on point all of the time, and I know I will need help with this kind of thing along my journey. But I know I am a good story machine, and will continue to dream them up for the rest of the time I have left on this planet. Thanks for reading. I hope I didn't bore you too much. But most of all, I hope it made sense, I am a very tired soul tonight :))