Wire news and Perry news

I hope I'm not recycling old info, but I haven't seen anyone mention this: The Wire is coming to BBC2, linky. So, if you haven't seen it yet, and you're still interested (and haven't been put off by the huge wave of hype) then you can see it for free. Great news, which comes just at the moment I pressed ' Submit' on an online order for the final (series 5) box set. I regret nothing.

I recommend the series, highly, as ever. Ignore everything about it being complex, and all in hard-to-understand lingo. It's not a forbidding artwork, it's a very entertaining TV show with lots of great characters, and great plotting, which has gone to great effort to achieve realism. And succeeded as far as I'm aware, although I've never been a cop or a drug dealer in Baltimore obviously.

Additional: as a personal rule, I don't like to use the blog for personal info, except where it concerns or affects my screenwriting, but this is a special case. My wife is expecting a baby, due at the end of August. We're very happy, and everything's looking good so far: mum is healthy and beginning to show.

This is the 'production' that is preventing my going to the Screenwriters' Festival later this year. It's a bit too soon when the little 'un will be less than two months old to be going off for a four-day festival, however useful it will undoubtedly be. Have a great time if you're going, but - you know - I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm a happy pappy.

SWF 09 Launch

Lots and lots of lovely people made it to the launch party for the 2009 Screenwriters' Festival at the Channel 4 building on Horseferry Road on Tuesday.

As I stumbled along a dark road near St. James Park tube, squinting at my google-map print-out, who should loom out of the shadows like zombies but Messrs Arnopp, Barron and Clague. It was a mite scary, I can tell you, but also wonderful: it seems no longer possible for me to turn up to any kind of writing do and have to network alone. How good is that?

And as we arrived at the venue, ho - isn't that Mister Beckley, and with him, the Stackster? And Ms Lipton? Oh yes. I hadn't got in there yet, and already I was part of a veritable posse.

Inside, I met up again with Tony Keetch and Elena Fuller, non-bloggers but pitchers extraordinaire. They were both involved in the onstage pitching competition at last year's festival. Indeed most of the ten 2008 pitching finalists made it, including the fellow that later on in the evening won the raffle for a free ticket to SWF '09 (that's two years' running he hasn't had to pay, the lucky thing).

During the pre-talk convivials, I also met David Turner who's pitching this year, and bumped into (and yet again failed, alas, to have a proper conversation with) the wonderful David Lemon and Rachel (next time, I will talk to them, properly and find out Rachel's surname so I don't have to introduce them like a magic act).

Also - as far as I remember, someone correct me if I'm wrong - there was free wine.

After that, were the official talks: Mister Arnopp and David L have both summarised that stuff, so I don't have to strain to remember the details. The message boiled down to this: SWF 09 needs everyone's support to keep going in these difficult economic times, so buy a ticket as soon as you can to help their cash flow, if you want to go ,and if you care about the thing continuing. Fair enough. Sadly, because of a new production I'm involved with - which at the moment is top secret, but I shall post about it when the time comes - it is very unlikely that I'm going to be able to go to Cheltenham this year. There is only one way now open to me that I can see: become swiftly and prominently interesting and important enough to be invited onto a panel. Hey! It could happen...

Anyway, after the talks there were more opportunities for nibbles and a bit of networking and a soupcon of celeb spotting. Most exciting for me was that Michael Wearing was in the house - but I didn't get to talk to him. I'd spotted the tanned, white-haired fellow earlier on and had almost gone up to speak to him. Good thing I didn't, as at that point I thought he was Andrew Davies.

And - I may be mistaken, but I think I'm right on this - there was free wine again.

New Year, New Meme

Happy New Year! I didn't expect to stay away from the blog for the full twelve days of Christmas, but it was a fantastic and furious time: lots of fun, lots of relatives visiting, lots of damn-the-recession fine food and wine, and my son (two and a half years old, so just this year getting what the season means) is still not sleeping properly at night because he is still so excited. I'm exhausted.

It's been mostly a holiday: I've nibbled at various pieces of script work over the last two weeks, but not chomped down hard on any one thing yet (this is a nice analogy isn't it?! Erk!). So, there hasn't been much to post about really. I've produced a whole five pages to reach 25 out of 60 on the Life Support pilot. So, I'm buckling down (or buckling under - whichever's good) to do a bit more before the big bad day job starts again on Monday (when, no doubt, my screenwriting effort will go up, but then I'm a contrary bugger, clearly).

Anyway, Piers has memed me with the 'what are you good and bad at' question: I'd say, from all the feedback so far that I'm better (I wouldn't claim to be good at anything necessarily) at characters and dialogue. I need to work harder on pitching my work, and on handling notes better in a rewrite. I won't pass the meme on, as I think everyone I know has already been passed it by someone else I know. Hello all of you people I know, by the way; you're looking well - is that top new?

P.S. A nice bit of luck - I was one of fifteen Shooters picked out of the hat for the Screenwriters' Festival launch party next Tuesday. Anyone else attending?

Stock Taken

Well, I have to keep being a scriptwriter to a bit longer. Firstly, because otherwise Jason Arnopp will burn me and Phill Barron will kick me in the nuts; but also, I'll have to keep going until at least October now, 'cos they've changed the dates on next year's Screenwriting Festival. See Martin's blog for a summary. A festival? In a ladies' college? I can't miss that.

Some of my regular correspondents have taken slight exception to my last post. Yes - it was a bit of a vent; for that, everyone has my apologies. But I stand by the thrust of it: there's no point in immediately believing that the work just wasn't right for the reader or the competition. You've got to review the script entered, pull it apart and see if it's as good as it can be, even if this autopsy can be pretty depressing and make you feel like you should give up. And the honest-to-goodness reaction to not getting through in a competition is that it hurts like hell, and I wouldn't be a truthful writer if I pretended otherwise.

In this case, I know the sensibilities of a good few of the authors, and was privileged enough to see a few of the entries at points in their development before being submitted: I know that the subject matter and overall tone of what got through was very varied, and not a million miles away from the stuff I'm doing. So, what more can I have done? It may be nothing. Perhaps I was trying to do too much. Or too little. It may well be that the style I'm going for (white collar versions of Raymond Carver short stories but with more jokes, and on telly) isn't really suited to the schedules of today. Or it could be the kind of thing that's being done too much already. Or maybe it was just a rubbish idea.


Anyway, I'm not giving up, so I've been doing a few things over the last couple of days to make me feel more like a writer, to whit:

• Analysing new dramas: just caught up with the first two episodes of Survivors. Quick capsule review (warning: very light spoilers): I'm liking it, after a questionable first half an hour where the build up to the apocalypse was a bit slow, and the logic of the contagion/poison was undermined - if it takes a different length of time for different people to die, why did everyone on the final day die overnight, no matter what their symptoms were like before? This is a dramatic virus, methinks. I shall catch up with Wallander tomorrow, and The Devil's Whore soon-ish.
• Reading 'How to Guides' on writing: the Guardian gave lots of pamphlets away a month ago, on writing lots of different things: comedy, journalism, etc. and someone kept them for me. They make interesting reading. I'm saving 'Plays and Screenplays' until last. Yes - that's right: they're both covered together in one pamphlet. Like they're the same. Twelve pages to cover comedy was ambitious, but six to cover screenplays is just insulting. I'm looking forward to violently disagreeing with it, already.
• Writing: I'm doing a big rewrite on the Life Support pilot. This isn't a kneejerk reaction to its not being selected. I think the idea has merit, but I've made a few mistakes which I want to rectify. I'll try to share some of that process over the next few posts, as - who knows - it might be useful.