Stuff of writing days

I suppose what I should be writing here is the bit on co-writing I promised, but that seems to involve more thought than I've been able to manage for a week or two, so it'll have to wait. So this is an insight into the STUFF of writing days of the last week or two.

Holed up in a room with my cop pilot* co-writer for two days thrashing out what we hope is the clinching draft (as opposed to the several other clinching drafts we've been through so far). It's the first time we've tried working in the same room simultaneously, and it proved surprisingly painless. We're closing in on the final greenlight decision, so everyone's getting antsy.

Reading lots of stuff on the web researching for another pilot I'm doing (another cop show - have I mentioned that writers are as prone to typecasting as actors? Probably a post topic in itself), trying to avoid logging on to this, this and this, failing miserably, and consequently frittering away hours at a time**.

Met the woman on whom the show will be based, which was both intimidating and thrilling - she had an extraordinary job, and perhaps the most extraordinary thing about her is that she doesn't seem extraordinary at all, other than extraordinarily nice. Extraordinary.

Arranged a meeting with some other people whose world is very far from my own that I had to postpone, but when it goes ahead I'm sure I'll post about that too.

Ashes to Ashes finished magnificently - the audience declined in a fairly normal and graceful arc rather than a catastrophic plummet, which bodes well for A2A2.

And Life on Mars 2 was nominated for a BAFTA. This apparently means everyone involved in the show can now embroider "BAFTA NOMINEE" on their underwear, which is a bonus. The genuine actual bonus is that I get to go to the ceremony, dinner and party which, even though Skins will walk away with it, is pretty damn exciting. Big question is - which frock?

Met my very favourite exec in the world for coffee, gossip, and a casual 'let's see if we can cook something up' meeting. And, much to our surprise, we did, so I wrote a two page pitch which went down very well and will go to a broadcaster next week, with the backing of one of the UK's top indies.

Crivvens.

Now, before you click your mouse button with bitter fury - lucky bastard, he gets it on a plate, I could do that, it's not what you can do it's who you know, it's not about ability it's about luck etc. bear in mind how long it's taken for me to reach this point. Eight or so years on the dole and working part-time in a corner shop while churning out scripts that gradually got better, followed by eight years of writing scripts under the pressure of production deadlines and all that entails.

That's a lot of work to put in to earn some luck.

It's led me to the precarious point in my life as a working writer where people are looking for me to come up with stuff with real expectation - exciting, but also terrifying; the tightrope is thin, the fall vertiginous. The opportunities now coming my way entirely depend on my ability to produce the goods - screw them up, and the work goes away.

Okay, now I'm really scared...


*Meaning the cop pilot show we're working on, not the profession of my co-writer. Though he is an ex-cop. If I discovered he flew light aircraft that would really screw my glib 'cop pilot' phrase.

**My goal in supplying this information being to suck you into a frittering vortex of my creation, reducing my own I-should-be-working guilt levels by allowing me to believe that 'everyone else is doing it'.