A good writing day today, some of which I spent thrashing out a pitch with my co-writer.

I think he was giving me the vote of confidence when he said, ‘You have this ability to change two words at the end and completely trash the whole project.’

Was that a vote of confidence?

Also today, a good friend told me he got fired from a regular gig on a well-known BBC programme because he called his script editor a wanker.

Not because he called him a wanker. It was because he called him a wanker to his face.

Of course, yes. We all call our script editors names but not to their faces.

You’ve never had a script editor.

If I had, I’d definitely call him names. I’m working myself up into a fury just even thinking about him, this mythical script editor I haven’t got. Yet. Why you son-of-a – a nasty-woman, I oughta – why for two pins, I’d –

You might want to ask him where he is. Hanging out with the real writers I expect.

Go away.

Dear Readers, don’t let anyone tell you that you are not a writer. If you write, you are a writer. Read ‘The Right to Write’ by Julia Cameron. You can find the book at this link. She’ll sort you out. Here she is talking about the Morning Pages.

It’s the best way to find your unique writing voice.

And what is your unique writing voice?

If you don’t know by now, I can’t tell you.

This morning I worked on my book. I’m beavering away every day on this book, quietly writing the redraft of my redraft of the first official draft which was the second
unofficial draft of the amalgam of notes that I started so long ago I don’t care to tell you.

Oh, heady days of yesteryear when I knew so little about writing that I thought that if I had 57,000 words of more-or-less completely unrelated anecdotes and roughly sewed them together with some kind of a general theme I would more or less have a novel.

Not so, my little chickpeas. Not so.

And many years later I am still not-writing this book. I not-write it for three hours every day. I feel like a genie in a glass jar.

You mean a gold lamp?

No. I know I’m in a glass jar because I can see out. But no-one can get in. It’s profound.

I met a man at a party. He said “I’m writing a novel” I said “Oh really? Neither am I.”
– Peter Cook

Today I was also mostly working on the character biogs for my next project; a commission I can’t talk about because I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement.

Not much use writing about that then?

It sounds glamorous though. Don’t you think?

Not if I can help it.

My other co-writer, who is irritated by my insistence on these character biogs, says he’s written many episodes of East Enders and never done a single character biog.

‘Isn’t that because they give you the characters,’ I say?

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly why.’

Wharranidiot.

Oops. Another co-writer bites the dust.