Last night I went and watched the Tropfest festival at Melbourne’s Federation Square.

I’m a big fan of short films and Australia is blessed to have such a cool festival.  (World’s biggest short film festival).

Hundreds of people enter short (less than 7 minutes) films every year and the 16 finalists are screened at public venues around Australia.

There were quite a few animated films and almost all of the finalists were comedies of one manner.  My favorite was Fish Lips, a quirky film that aimed towards a similar sense of humor that you can find in Amelie.

The winning film, Shock had a great ending.  The second place  getter, My Neighborhood Has Been Overrun By Baboons, was another favorite of mine.

A complete list of the winners is available at the Tropfest site.

You can watch the winners online at Tropfest Online Videos

It’s interesting to compare the success of funny short films to comedic short fiction.   I think making the written word funny is a lot harder than making a short film funny.  Apart from the obvious lack of visual gags, it’s easier to establish a quick identification with a character when you can see the actor.

Cory Doctorow has made the point that although many people complain about being unable to read a novel on a computer, these days most people are comfortable reading equivalent amounts of text on web sites.  One of the problems with reading a novel on a computer is that there are a lot of other distractions.  Email, instant messaging, games and web surfing.  The same is true with writing.

There are many times I’ve sat down at my computer with the aim of putting in a solid hour of writing to find that after ten minutes I’m reading web sites.  When I had a dialup modem, it wasn’t as much as issue.  But with a wireless connection, the Internet is always there.

Some writers such as Charles Stross use a dedicated computer just for writing (no games installed and limited net connectivity).  Jeff VanderMeer goes so far as to ask his wife to hide the modem and not to reveal its location until he’s completed a certain amount of writing.

Another solution to this problem is to turn off instant messaging programs and email notifications and hide the icons for web browsers.    There are a few free programs that offer full screen editing mode.  Sure you can always switch tasks and check your email, but the fact that the web browser is hidden from view does make a difference.

Most of the programs available are simple text editors.  You probably wouldn’t want to keep your main story document in there.  After you’ve completed your set writing time, just copy and paste the text into your main file.

Q10

Q10 is a free fullscreen text editor for Windows.  It’s default sound options makes it sound as though you’re typing on an old-fashioned keyboard.  (Of course you can turn this off).  It also has a useful alarm option.  Just choose a set writing time (e.g an hour) and then the program will let you know when your time is up and how many words you produced).

http://www.baara.com/q10/

CreaWriter

CreaWriter is a another free Windows fullscreen text editor.  It allows you to choose your own background.  The default sound that comes with the program is incredibly annoying.  I’m sure turning that off is the first thing that most people do.
http://www.creawriter.com/

DarkRoom

DarkRoom is a similar free Windows program.
http://they.misled.us/dark-room

WriteRoom

For the Mac, there’s WriteRoom, a paid product.
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

DarkCopy
If you don’t want to worry about installing software, there’s a web site that offers a simple full screen editor (although it won’t hide your Windows taskbar unless you have set your taskbar to auto-hide).
http://darkcopy.com/