Handy stress-busting tip

Run around on an empty Portuguese beach with a toddler for a week. Works wonders.

Came back to face usual Christmas sensation, which is mostly frenzied irritation. No time! Too busy! Too many people! And still that awful and habitual decision to make - now I've left it too late to post any Christmas cards, is it okay for me not to bother? Again?

Meanwhile at the wordface another seam has been opened - I returned to several phone messages from the script editors of the prodco I met with just before we went away which gave me the strong impression I was being stalked. I thought we got on well, but not that well... Haven't found them lurking in the wash basket yet, but I'm sure it's the next step. Spookily, while writing down one of the ed's phone numbers with a view to returning her call, she called again. I could take this unnerving coincidence to be either further evidence of stalking - they've got a camera in the room! - or a Positive Omen. Think I'll go for the latter.

Upshot is I'll meet them and their Head of Drama early in the New Year to talk about doing a crime show (a thriller, not a whodunnit, so I can further stretch my genre muscles) later next year, and developing a new series idea. It's quite high concept, and if they'll let me go dark with it I'd be keen to take it on, not least because it's got a strong female lead and I'd love to create a mighty woman.

Question is, will I be able to do all the stuff I'd like to ? On Monday I went up the Filth to meet my powerful contact re. the Very Different development projects, and walked out with a commission for 2 treatments and a script. Next day I got an e-mail telling me that a series I was involved in developing, that's been on hold for more than a year, has now been green lit. Can I fit it all in while keeping quality up and myself sane?*

To help me decide, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours purchasing a shiny year planner and a delightful selection of non-permanent markers in a variety of colours, so that I can waste entire weeks of my life painstakingly highlighting delivery schedules that will bear no relationship with the stressful, compressed panic of reality. Whatever the schedule is at the start, it's a big ruddy lie. If you appear to have four months to reach production draft, you will spend 2 and half months of that time waiting and worrying, and 6 weeks screaming as you bleed over the keyboard.

Buoyed by the promise of future work, I dropped in on my agent with a bottle of malt and a faint sensation of what it might be like to be Santa. The agency have moved offices from a warren of hutches separated by piles of yellowing scripts and piss-stained carpet* two floors up to something resembling the control room of Little Nikita. The decor is stark, black and white Guantanamo chic, complete with blinding overhead interrogation lights directed at the guest's chair in all the agent's cells. Nice to know I have Blofeld working for me.

Back to work proper in January, so this lovely interlude of meetings, excitable chat, and brainstorming will come to an end and I'll have to get used to a low hum of anxiety again**. Ho bloody hum.

*A dog, apparently, but you never know. These agents can be right frightening sometimes.

**That low hum may be the reason for all the recent offers - the gnawing worry that "it's not good enough" is probably what drives me to churn out decent work. The only thing I'm not worried about is not being worried about that, because I'll always be worried about that.

Impressed? Yes I was.

Another series outlining day on the groovy project, me arriving an hour late after some poor devil suffered a heart attack on the train in front, and our driver kept us enthralled with a faintly ghoulish commentary; "the ambulance has arrived...the paramedics are stabilising the patient on the train...they're moving him on to the stretcher - oh no they're no-yes, yes they are... etc." That man could go far.

Arrived at the prodco's offices* to find a bubbling crucible of creativity, which fortunately included croissants and still-warm-enough coffee, and a sparkly gold statue of a slender lady balancing a delicate globe on her pinky in the middle of the table.

Just as well there was a lot of coffee available...

Expect short delays over the coming week or so. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.



*we've moved from overnight at a swanky hotel, to a day at swanky but more central hotel, to a morning in the basement office - it's getting serious now...

What counts as work?

I'd like to know. More than that, I'd like to know and put that knowledge into useful practice.

Because when I'm not in the middle of drafting a script, I can't help the sneaky feeling that whatever I happen to be doing, no matter how professionally constructive or helpful it might prove further down the line, it is Not Real Work.

I'm Scots, profoundly irreligious (what do you mean atheism is simply a different form of faith? THE ONLY GODS ARE THE ONES WE MAKE IN OUR IMAGE, YOU MORON*#), but carry the weight of my grandparents cultural baggage, i.e. Presbyterian moral righteousness**, certitude, and the notion that salvation is won through through work. Which goes to show that the cultural import and value of religion is far more lasting and significant than its core supernatural beliefs.

The upshot is, if I'm sitting in a comfy chair reading a book, or a magazine, or a script, or surfing the web looking at useful stuff, or going for a walk, if I'm not sweating, feeling vaguely anxious, harried by deadlines, and tapping that keyboard like my fingers are miniature Michael Flatley's legs*** I AM NOT DOING WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING.

Which is working.

This is of course complete rubbish, and that false belief is the bane of my bloody life. Here I am, with a few blessed weeks between gigs, with time to dream a bit, let stuff just grow, seed new projects, and what am I doing? Sitting writing this as a form of displacement activity so that I can get to lunchtime nursing a guilty feeling that I haven't done any real work. So I've got something to worry about. So I've got some pressure. So I can do some work.

Stupid.

Got a CD of scripts from the excellent Screenwriters Store, because I'm supposed to be developing something in simliar territory to an enormously popular American show that I've only ever seen about 20 minutes of. Enough to get the picture, but I felt I should do some research. Not that it counts as work, of course. The bonus was finding some interesting treatments and synopses, which for me are more useful than scripts because they are far harder to write than scripts.

And found something to slaver over. Mm, chunky and functional.

Which reminds me of this, one of the items I purchased (except unlined! Bliss!) during a very pleasant forty five minutes in Muji on Oxford Street. I know it's not a big thing, but it's one of those small bricks of pleasure that help me build a happy life. I just got it out to admire it again, then carefully replaced it in the drawer where it will doubtless remain for months, or even years (it's so nice and so special it can't be used for just notes, they have to be special notes), until I realise I don't need it and hand it to our daughter to chew and shred. And it will still have been a satisfying purchase.


*My that felt good. In these days of polite moral relativism, the done thing is to say "I respect your belief and your right to hold it." Well fine, I respect your right to hold idiot beliefs, but you know what? I have no respect for the belief itself at all.

And breathe.

I have an itchy throat and may have a cold coming.

**see *

***you've never seen miniature Riverdance? The Potty Time apotheosis

#or, as Mr. Hume more elegantly put it, 'the only necessary god is the vitality of the universe.

The Big Script Editors' House

How come all the script editors know all the other script editors? They all seem to know everybody and have worked with most of them, whereas I don’t know anybody*.

I can only conclude that they all share a big house somewhere in Lisson Grove, something Georgian and a bit neglected, and every night they all pile back, cook a big steaming rustic stew, serve it in big earthenware bowls on their big scrubbed pine kitchen table, pour each other glasses of wine and have a bloody good laugh about the eejits they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Finally managed to do some genuine actual work on Friday and got a one-pager in for one of the prospective development projects. I sent a copy to my agent (Big H, let’s call him, because I think he’d like that**) out of politeness***, and because unusually I knew it was good. To my deep amazement he replied. Even better, he wrote “this rocks!”

I'm so low maintenance. That response will keep me happy for months.

*that’s a big lie. I had a great time with last week’s Broadcast counting how many of the hot 100 I know. Hot 20, actually, because it’s only the producers and writers that count (do editors only count the editors?). I scored 7, and immediately felt insecure. What if they’re just slumming? Am I their bit of rough? Should I be worried that I’m not on the list? Do I want to be on it? If I was on it, wouldn’t that create enormous pressure on following years as I slipped down the ratings, or worse, failed to appear at all? Wouldn’t that serve to increase my deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy? Shouldn’t I just give up this whole lark, because, dammit, they know I’ve no idea what I’m doing…?

**Who wouldn’t want to be called Big H?

*** Some agents apparently read and comment on everything their clients produce, complete with notes and suggestions. Weird. Mine doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure what he does do, but he is on the phone a lot, and writes fantastically terse e-mails that succeed in communicating not only the subject at hand, but give the impression of feverish activity on my behalf. I’m also in gainful employment, so I’m not complaining. He does deals. That’s what he does. He’s busy doing, you know – deals. That kind of stuff. Agent stuff.