The future, as so many called it.

At the moment it isn't that old and is full of potential.

What am I going to do with my year?

Well in case you didn't read the title of this blog post, or you are reading this post using Internet Explorer 9 as your browser, I'll say it again. This is going to be my year of Improv.

What does that mean?

To most it would mean that I can't spell the word "improve." To others, it would mean improvisation.

But to me, it actually means that I want to improve and improv (aka making shit up on the spot).

To that effect I've started my fourth round of Intermediate level workshops with ComedySportz this past Saturday. For the next 8 weeks I'll be going to the Manchester Comedy Store every Saturday and making things up. It'll be fun. It always has been in the past and the last time I did the course I actually felt like I was improving.

There's also a group of workshop of attendees who do extra practice after class on alternate Saturdays. I went to the first one on the 7th January and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately for me, I skipped out on the extra session this Saturday, as I was catching up with other classmates who I hadn't seen since the last course. I think the next one will be on the 5th February, so I'll be going to that one.

So that's two regular things that I will be attending in the hopes of getting better at improv. But that's not all. I've found two different sessions down in the Midlands (where I am during the week due to work). It's early days yet with my experience of these two groups but they seem like a fun bunch.

So that's three workshops a week, plus an extra one every other week.

In addition to all this, I'm going to London on the first weekend of March and I'll be going to an improv jam, which should be fun and free from preserves.

Hopefully I'll be improv'd (get it?) by the end of the year. And by then, who knows? The world could very well be, as my friend told me, my lobster!

Well technically yes, but there is more to the site than just November. Every year, after the final throes of novel writing are done, a new section of the website is revealed called December And Beyond, which is convenient give the title of the blog post, otherwise you may have been misled.

But you haven't.

One of the purposes of the December and Beyond is to help and support people who wish to continue working on the novels they started the previous month. There's also a section devoted to enable people to post their goals that they hope to achieve before the next NaNoWriMo in 2011.

"But Matt, what are you going to do until the next NaNoWriMo?" I hear you ask. If you hadn't jumped the gun, I'd have aleady told you, rathe than make you wait until the next paragraph.

I have a number of creative goals this upcoming year and while I suppose I could have waited until New Year's Eve to post them, that's so passé as everyone does that.

So here they are, all itemised and whatnot:

December 2010:

• Writing a murder mystery sketch before t'end of t'month which takes us handily to the end of 2010.
• Try to write a 15 minute sitcom before the middle of January 2011 for a competition.

January 2011:

• Continue writing sitcom
• Starting an 8 week stand up comedy course with ComedySportz at The Manchester Comedy Store on January 22nd.
• Write stand up material

February 2011:

• Learn whether the correct usage is February or Febuary.
• Write more stand up material
• Learn to end all my bulleted lists with a full stop. There's no reason to let punctuation go to the dogs. Because they can't spell. Seriously, ask a dog to spell antidisestablishmentarianism. You'll find they all probably have contempt for you for asking. But they are one of the key demographics of this website's readership, so: Ruff!
• Write some topical sketches for a BBC Radio Series (if Newsjack returns for another series - usually 2 series are broadcast a year starting in Feb and again in June for 6 weeks at a time.).

March 2011:

• More stand up writing.
• More Newsjack material. (if applicable).
• Stand up debut? (unconfirmed at this point)

April 2011:

• Script Frenzy 2011 - I think that given the style of writing that I will be doing up to this point, I'll probably be leaning towards a mixture of stand up material and sketch, to get my 100 pages. A real mixed bag as I don't seem to have any luck with trying to write features, so maybe this will be better.

May 2011:

• 8 week improv course begins with ComedySportz again.
• More writing - probably a mixture of stand up, sketch and sitcom.

June 2011:

• Newsjack writing (if applicable).
• More writing - probably a mixture of stand up, sketch and sitcom.

July 2011:

• Newsjack writing again (if applicable).
• Short story writing or a return to writing That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore (though it really needs a page one rewrite).

August 2011:

• More writing of various varieties.

September 2011:

• More writing of various varieties.

October 2011:

• More writing of various varieties.
• Start another 8 week improv course.

And that little lot should take me right up to October 31st, 2011.

That's what I plan on, anyway, but I'll probably be too lazy to do half that, but there's no point setting goals that I can easily reach, there is no fun in that. I shall endeavour to lunge and thrust my way to writing and comedy perfection in the next year.

I should probably factor in some time to work on a NaNo plot for 2011, too. But I've talked about NaNo plot issues in my previous blog entry.

Do you have goals? Are you planning to sidle up to the big ol' buffet of personal challenges and fill your plate high with creative projects. What will you manage before Oct 31st, 2011?

Goal Seven
Meet more people. This will be really difficult for me. Anyone who knows me in real life knows how really shy I am around people I don’t know or don’t know that well.

Goal Eight
Be a better person. I don’t exactly know what this entails, but I know I’m not good enough the way I am.

Goal Nine
Be more confident. (I’ll have to wipe the dust off of that CD)

So there were the three goals to try and make me a better person. And I think that I am a little bit thanks to the course that I went on. Up until now I never mentioned what exactly the course was, but it ended last week so I shall tell you that it was the very awesome Comedy Sportz Beginning Improv workshop.

Some of the people that know me, know I like comedy. Some of those people even know that I try and write comedy. And one of those people actually thinks that I'm funny.

Despite all the years of being interested in comedy and in the back of my mind wanting to perhaps persue it as a career of some sort, I never actually did something about it.

Until this year.

I'm 28 this year (pretty soon, *ahem* 13 days actually *ahem* for those of you wishing to buy me a card and present), and I wanted to have a go before it was too late and didn't want to look back on my life and think "if only I'd have tried" and so between scouring the Internet for porn and tea cosy knitting patterns (A man is allowed diverse hobbies, and if he can, then so can I) I found the ComedySportz UK website.

Pretty soon, the first day of the course rolled around and I was really nervous. Had I made a mistake? Would I find out that I wasn't funny after all these years of thinking I was? Are these rhetorical questions and little redundant and boring?

I rolled up to the Manchester Comedy Store (Okay, that isn't exactly true. I don't know how to rollerskate, I walked) and I learned the answers to the three questions that I (tastefully) posed in the previous paragraph.

No, Yes and Definately Yes.

While I was shy at the first class, but over the next few weeks I eventually loosened up a bit and by the end I didn't think that I did too badly. At least not bad for someone with no performing experience beyond Year 9 drama.

I met the fantastic people that organised, ran and taught the workshops: Bron Edge, Sean Mason, Chris Tavner, Jade Fearnley, and Rob Hudson. Big shout out (dig me being all street 'n' shit) to all of you. You guys rock. (Though the rolling has yet to be confirmed.)

I made friends with people and I think that I'm a little more outgoing than I was before I started. Though I can't confirm this, as I went all Howard Hughes and I haven't left my room for six days. I've also been peeing in jars, but that's just for fun.

The last session of the 8 week course was last Saturday, and at the end of our session I presented people with gifts. I won't ruin the surprise for people that accidentally bid for them on e-bay later.

I wasn't entirely convinced that I did brilliantly at it, but it's a start and I've signed up for another course later in the year, to try and improv(e). Get it?

Amazingly, they didn't think that I sucked that badly, and even wanted to get my opinion for the new promo video that they were putting together. And so after a dozen script rewrites and me having to do multiple takes, it was finally in "the can" as they say in "the biz". However, later I was told that having me crying and sitting on the toilet wasn't the best endorsement, so we ventured to the front of the Comedy Store for a little bit of that "off the cuff" magic that I will, one day in the distant future, become mildly tolerated for.

You can find the video on Youtube and on Facebook (search for ComedySportz UK).

Yes I am aware that I could have embedded the video in this post, but for technical reasons I chose not to learn how to do it.

Don't forget to watch the video for the best showstopper in the business, Ashley Miller.

PS. In the spirit of Comedy Sportz, this blog post was entirely improvised.