Sue Heel (Writing)
What training have you received? Can you really be “trained” to write?
I think you can learn how to format a script or be taught about structure, but the real content of what you write has to be something that is already within you. I remember when I first discovered that I could write: I could read well before all the other kids at school and I was often allowed to read the latest book to the younger kids at “story-time”. I soon found out that I could keep the kids attention much better when I just made the stories up. This gave me the confidence to write my own stuff down from a very early age and I soon began exploring deeper and darker themes. I realised that I may have been quite an intense child, given that a few of the kids ran out in tears, but I just loved to write down my thoughts. Looking back, I guess that was training of a sort. But it felt more like my first job. In hindsight, I should have billed that school!
What themes do you like to explore in your work? Identity, loneliness, death, yearning, anger, betrayal—I’m a real barrel of laughs!
What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer? My own. It came to me a few years back and it’s very simple—“Believe in yourself and trust your intuition, you daft bitch!”
Most significant moment in your career so far…
Writing and directing a feature film but it was a hellish experience. I strayed from the path of my original intention to make a drama with comedic elements and instead made a comedy with some drama. I was young and naïve, and believed the “executives” when they told me that a lighter film would be more successful. Subsequently, the script and the film bear little resemblance to what I set out to make. I won’t fall into that trap again.
You’ll die happy when…
…one of my films is listed under the classic section. ■
