I recently blogged about Being Creative Everyday. In that post I said that I’d take time out everyday to creatively play. Here is some samples of my progress:
My Drawing: Rolling Pin
My Creative Writing – A Sneeze
Creative Writing – Something You Found
Remember what I said about them not being masterpieces? Well…there you go. Point proven. I will post an update next Sunday.
Recently I’ve been thinking about being creative, but not actually doing anything creative. Creativity should be something I do everyday, as it has so many benefits, including:
It lights up my imagination, giving me pleasure and increasing my happiness.
It motivates me.
It is good for my mind, heart and soul. It makes my mind more active, my heart beat faster and enriches my soul.
It helps me deal with my feelings, good and bad. It also helps me to express these feelings.
It makes me a better problem-solver. When I’m feeling creative, I can come up with better solutions to problems.
It allows me to explore ideas.
It enables me to look at events, situations and people in different ways.
Helps me to hope for and imagine better or alternative futures.
It gives me hope, at times when I feel that I need it.
Other people’s creativity inspires me.
The way to be more creative, is to play, as children do inhibited. So when I was at Waterstones at the weekend and saw these books, I just had to pick them up. Here’s my opportunity to play and be creative:
I picked up both of these books along with a pack of felt tip pens. I’m going to draw or write something in these books at least once a day. I’ve already started.
I’ll be posting my progress here by sharing a few scanned images. Don’t expect any drawing I do to be an artistic master piece (for that see my fabulous Illustrator friend Sye); or that any writing I do will be literary genius. Just take it for what it is – me playing. I’m aiming to post a progress update once a week.
When’s the last time you saw a gay character in a mainstream movie? A while? Recently? Although gay people are under represented in the film world, there are more of us around than you might think.
We’ve put together our list of the top 11 gay characters in mainstream movies. Each one of them is terrific in their own special way. Here’s the list:
11. Dr. Frank-N-Furter – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Image Credit: Fanpop)
Dr. Frank-N-Further (Tim Curry) from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is technically bisexual. He seemed to prefer men to women, after all he created Rocky, but we also see him get it on with Brad and Janet.
10. Michael Caffrey – Billy Elliott (Image Credit: Great Blus @ Tumblr)
Michael Caffrey (Stuart Wells) comes out in Billy Elliott after warming Billy’s cold hands on his body. It’s brilliantly shot and shows that to Billy, Michael’s friendship is more important than whether he likes boys or girls.
9. Jack Twist – Brokeback Mountain (Image Credit: Fanpop)
Jack Twist’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) journey to self-acceptance is a beautiful one. It’s great to see his character grow in confidence as he accepts his sexuality, even if what happens to him at the end did leave us a bit traumatised.
8. Ennis Del Mar – Brokeback Mountain (Image Credit: Jonathan Hurwitz)
Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) is reluctant to form an emotional connection with Jack in Brokeback Mountain. But after learning about his childhood memories of what he saw done to gay men we could understand why.
Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson) was so brilliantly 90’s gay in Cruel Intentions. Blaine was openly out and self-confident, as well as being mean and sinister.
6. Stuart Dakin – The History Boys (Image Credit: What Else Mode @ Tumblr)
Stuart Dakin (Dominic Cooper) is a sexually confident pupil in The History Boys who tries to seduce his male teacher at the end of the year.
5. Irwin – The History Boys (Image Credit: Ma Vie En L’air @ WordPress)
Irwin (Stephen Campbell) was the Teacher in The History Boys. A geeky character who encourages his students to follow their passion. There’s a spark between him and pupil Stuart Dakin (played by Dominic Cooper above), but Irwin is too afraid of the consequences of acting on his attraction.
We couldn’t resist adding in a picture of Irwin and Stuart together here: (Image Credit: Sinclair_furie)
4. George Downes – My Best Friends Wedding (Image Credit: Omundodoemarco @ Blogspot)
George Downes (Rupert Everett) is best friend to Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) in Hollywood flick My Best Friend’s Wedding. He’s any openly gay man who charms everyone.
3. Graham Dashwood – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Image Credit: Total Film)
Graham Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson) is a High Court Judge in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. As a teenager in India he fell in love with a boy. But when the families found out Graham was shipped back to Britain and he never went back. He lived a life as a bachelor until the start of the film where he goes back to India to find his former lover.
2. Armand Goldman – The Birdcage (Image Credit: Screen Used)
1. Albus Dumbledoor – Harry Potter (Image Credit: Fanpop)
Albus Dumbledoor (Richard Harris / Michael Gambon) was Head Teacher of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter books and films. It was never said that he was gay until author J.K Rowling outed him, but his fabulous robes and flare of body language (particularly when Michael Gambon took over playing him) hinted at his sexuality.
So whom have we missed? Who’d make your top list of gay characters in mainstream movies? Comment below or on our Facebook page.
Published by: The Gay UK on Saturday 2nd August 2014.
I recently self-published The Good Teen, a modern-day telling of The Good Samaritan parable, with a hint of magic. I want to tell you a bit about my writing process for this short story.
The idea came from my childhood. Being brought up as a Christian we were told the The Good Samaritan parable. It’s a story that has stayed with me and one that I wanted to retell with my own twist. So I wrote/drew out the plot on flipchart (Left: My flipchart for The Good Teen, click on image for full size).
I like to develop my ideas, plots, sub-plots, settings, characters, pacing and description on flipchart as it’s faster than typing and allows me more creative freedom. The creative freedom to draw pictures, arrows and anything else I want to.
I had already written a To Do List for The Good Teen (below) and changed the timescales to meet the submission deadline.
The Good Teen To Do List
The editing process, as always, was maddening. I had to cut to the word count limit, which meant some scenes were either cut, not written or combined.
Unfortunately, The Good Teen was not long listed by the BBC. So I decided to self-publish it online. You can download The Good Teen on it’s page. It’s a free download, with a Twitter Tweet or Facebook Like in exchange for the download link.
