A Literary Life

I’m clearly not any good at this blogging thing.   I broke my promise, twice now.   So I can’t blog continuously for thirty days.   But I will try and blog frequently(ish) or until I got so lost in something new that I haven’t the focus any more. So what’s new?   I’m about to embark to London Town for a one day workshop with James Moran (the wonderful writer of Severance, the Pompeii episode of Doctor Who, amongst many other ghoulish outings) and Dan Turner (director of the very scary Stormhouse, written by another ghoulish writer, Jason Arnopp) so that should be fun. Insights into how to get my brand new, sparkling scripts into the hands of people with money (and hopefully the passion to throw lots of it at me to make the thing).     I’m reworking my script for the BBC Wales Drama Award 2012 – an award open to all new writers of Welsh residency that I just know is going to be swamped with material of such high quality that I’m going...

So my latest screenplay – “Otherworld” – has gotten through to the second stage of the Red Planet Prize.  It is wonderful news, and a real opportunity.  I’ve entered the prize once before, in 2008, with a script that was thrilling, exciting, far too expensive for production on TV budgets, but most importantly, incredibly undercooked.  I’d not thought past episode 1.  I’d certainly not thought of episode 5 or 50 or 500.  With “Otherworld” I see all those episodes, I obsess of those episodes in a way I never have with a TV show before.  Which is why I’m going to be so crushed if I fall at this hurdle – but I suppose why, if I do fall, I’ll take a week, then pick myself up, dust myself down, figure out where I went wrong (and not curse Red Planet for failing to see my obvious genius!) and work on something else.  I already have a few great ideas stewing away. Anyway, I wanted to bring your attention to another wonderful post on Jason Arnopp’s blog –...