Say what?

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If you don’t know something, fine. If I don’t know something, fine. We’ll work it out together. Or more likely one of us will look it up and explain it to the other. It’s not like there is a shortage of places to look things up.

But if you’re a writer and your characters don’t know something, that’s gigantic.

relativity 001Follow. Around 1996, I read the pilot script to a US series called Relativity. Written and created by Jason Katims, it was from the makers of thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. Plus, it was a romance and I like romances, naturally I read it. And I enjoyed that script a lot. I wish it were still online that I could point you at it.

I enjoyed it enough that of course I wanted to see the final show and I was enough of a writer to be curious to see how they would stretch this romance out to seven years of 20-odd episodes a year. They didn’t, as it happens. I think they made 17 episodes before being cancelled. I didn’t see any of them. I must’ve seen something, must’ve seen the title sequence or something because I knew what the major characters looked like.

But actual episodes: none.

Last year I got very excited when the pilot episode found its way on to YouTube – except that my face fell when I saw it. Because the YouTube copy was dubbed into German.

Now, though, the whole series is up on Dailymotion. Doubtlessly less than legally but then if the show were ever going to get a commercial release I would’ve bought that a long time ago.

As it is, nineteen years later, I’m finally watching the episodes.

It’s not great. Certainly not on a par with MSCL or thirtysomething. It tries to deal with some serious topics but it doesn’t have the bite of those other shows. And characters I remember liking on the page feel a bit whiny on the screen.

But.

What knaws at me in every single episode is one line from the title sequence.

It’s a smart sequence. If you ever seen a Bedford Falls show like thirtysomething, you’ve got the idea already: a montage of scenes, credits on the bottom of screen, great music by WG Snuffy Walden in his pre-West Wing days. All that.

But as well as the visual montage of scenes, this sequence has an audio one. Clashing, overlapping, audible and barely audible, clear and obscured lines rush by you in a way that seems chaotic. In practice every line is placed pixel perfectly in time and in the stereo image because you never fail to hear the key lines and you always fail to hear the lesser stuff.

It’s the main characters talking about relativity. “Like Einstein… E=mc squared…” They’re explaining what relativity is and quickly pushing the point. One key example is “the things you think you can’t do, you can do” which is just so far away from the definition of relativity that it belongs in a different series.

But then bam. The last line.

It’s said by the series star, Kimberley Williams, in character as Isabel Lukens. This show is primarily a romance but it’s really weighted toward her rather than her guy, Leo Roth (David Conrad). So this is your most important actor in the show’s most important role and she has the most important position in your entire title sequence. And she says:

“I have no idea what relativity means”

Then sodding look it up.

She says it with a laugh, with that kind of gosh, how could anyone be expected to know this stuff type of laugh.

If Isabel Lukens did not know what relativity meant despite having seemingly constant conversations about it, the character would be stupid. Not uninformed, stupid. Worse: passively stupid. She doesn’t know what a word means even though she’s just been discussing it. Couldn’t be bothered to either look the bleedin’ thing up or to listen to the people discussing it with her. Ignorant in every sense.

But Isabel is not speaking for herself. She says this to allow us to not know what relativity means. It’s okay not to know. In fact, gosh, who could know?

That one line is the most outrageously insulting line I can think of in TV title sequences. I don’t mean this because I know what relativity means, I mean because the makers assume we don’t – and the makers assume we need reassurance that this is not a bad thing.

I feel examining one line from a cancelled TV series of 19 years ago might be overkill. But I also feel that there is something in here about all of television and how all of it has gone down the reassuring ignorance route.

Didn’t we used to look up to TV characters? Was I just young? Detectives and heroes and all that, they were smart and they were cool and then something happened. I think it was around the time when computers became commonplace. Suddenly we hit the moment when we, the viewing public, knew more about this stuff than the TV characters did.

We knew and we know more than they are allowed to know.

TV characters are rarely allowed to be clever, certainly they are even more rarely allowed to think. Now thinking is a tough one to show visually – yes, I’m thinking Sherlock too but not every show can do what that does – so you can understand the problem. But if the plot requires a clever character, that character will not be the hero.

More, that character will be mocked for being clever. Just as you can’t be a woman doctor without a white coat, stethoscope and a clipboard, so you cannot be a clever character of either sex unless you wear glasses. And get kidded for being in some way socially awkward. Kidded by the cool-as-all-hell action hero, for preference.

We are expected to feel superior to the clever clogs. The expectation is that we will need to feel superior or we’ll stop watching.

I think I’ll make it to the end of Relativity but just four episodes in, that single line is threatening to stop me watching.

How about them Apples?

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I do think it’s interesting and of course it’s newsworthy that Apple has just made more profit than any other public company ever. Weirdly, though, none of the many, many news reports I saw about this mentioned that it’s inspiring for writers.

Now, making lots of money could be inspiring for anyone, but I’m not actually thinking of the cash here. I’m talking inspiration and I’m thinking heartwarming. Seriously.

Apple just made $18bn, that’s £11.8bn and that bn is billion. Billion. I’m suddenly wondering if that’s a US billion or a UK one, but either way, it’s a lot. Doubtlessly, it is very easy to find the idea of lots of money inspiring if only because the idea of lots of not having to worry about bills is pretty great. Yet if you are driven by money, if you are drawn by money, you haven’t gone in to writing.

Here’s the thing. What none of the news reports really mentioned was that Apple nearly died.

There was a point when this company was within 90 days of going bankrupt.

Ninety days.

You and I are used to working under pressure but imagine being ninety days from bankruptcy while having thousands of staff on salary. As writers, our business is comparatively easy as we usually don’t have staff and we very rarely have any stock in warehouses. So imagine the staff and imagine having warehouses full of computers that aren’t selling.

This is where Apple was around the time that it brought back its co-founder Steve Jobs. So now imagine coming back to the company you made into a success and was ousted from in a boardroom fight by a fella you’d lobbied to bring in to the firm. No wonder there’s going to be a film about this guy.

Run the list with me. Immense pressure. Close to death. And deeply, personally invested in this firm. The degree and the volume and the sheer loudness of each of those must be more than any of us will ever face but we all face all of them. We all also have one specific problem that Apple did: our media and publishing seem to be these fast-paced worlds yet we know it takes centuries to make anything happen. Computers are this whizzy-fast technology revolution but pretend you’re designing fridges instead. It takes a lot of time, an immense amount of money, and with the technology available to you the very best you’re going to do is make a fridge that is slightly better than someone else’s. Then you have to get thousands of them made on spec and do everything you can to get those fridges in front of buyers.

Preferably in ninety days.

There was a lot that Apple could’ve done and there was a fairly infinite supply of advice from other companies and the technology press. They boiled down to two things. Sell the company or allow other firms to make Apple computers too.

What Apple did instead was hard and it was what writers need to do too. They simplified and they gambled on making something new that they thought was right.

The simplification was radical at the time. I don’t know how many different computers Apple had then but it was a lot. If you’ve ever asked a salesman or woman exactly what the difference between these six PCs are and they’ve recited something to do with gigahertz, that’s where Apple was then. A mess.

They dropped everything and instead planned to make just four things. A desktop and a laptop for consumers and the same again for professionals.

And for the consumer desktop computer, they designed the iMac.

I didn’t like it. The semi-translucent, brightly coloured, bulbous computer was garish but I admit that at least it wasn’t another grey box. Microsoft’s Bill Gates mocked it, saying that Apple was now the market leader in colours but he had a feeling PCs might just be able to catch up.

I don’t believe that Gates really thought that, I don’t imagine the man really missed what Apple had actually done. Yet he didn’t or couldn’t do anything then to compete with it. For what Apple had done with this (to my mind) ugly machine was to make it appealing. Computers weren’t appealing before: their audience already knew they wanted computers. Now Apple was reaching people who needed to be convinced to buy computers – and it convinced them. A lot.

PC stands for Personal Computer and this was suddenly personal. Apple put a handle on the machine not so you could lift it but so that you just instinctively understood that you could touch it. This was yours. And it was Apple’s: it wasn’t a commodity slapped together at a budget price, it was crafted and it was personal to them as well as to you.

When we’ve had umpteen rejections as writers, that’s what we need to do. Cut down on the number of projects we’re trying. Focus. And then write something new, something very personal, something if not with colour necessarily – this romcom needs more purple! – then definitely with vibrancy.

One more thing. That iMac was such a giant success that, yes, of course all other computer companies followed suit – or thought they did. They slapped a blue plastic bit on the front and waited for the money to roll in. They’re still waiting.

Apple isn’t. That ugly original iMac begat many variations and a couple of generations but then Apple chose to end it. They do this a lot. Make a hit and then kill it. Replace it with a better one. The brightly-coloured iMac became the plain white one and then iterated through I don’t know how many variations until it’s reached the beautiful one on my desk. I don’t use the word casually: this screen and this iMac are a pleasure to look at and since I might be looking at it 16 hours a day, it matters.

So there’s another thought. Write something you can bear looking at for 16 hours a day.

I like Apple products, I very much like their approach to design, but $18bn is so huge that I don’t think I can really imagine how much it is. Consequently I’m not that interested. Yet watching all those news reports, I really did find it heartening. You can be at death’s door and pressing the bell and you can turn that around completely by ignoring your critics and carrying on doing what you think is right.

You can’t go home. But at least you can shop there

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I do quite a lot of work in schools now and I realise today that I have been lying pretty much every time I’ve gone in. Because at some point when I’m talking to the teachers, occasionally when I’m talking with the pupils, I will recount the reason I do this.

Which goes thisaway. When I was at school, my careers teacher laughed at me for wanting to be a writer. I’ve said this before, in case you’ve come to this through some strange Google search that has got you all my mentions of this instead of whatever career laughing advice you were actually looking for.

This fella, whoever he was, laughed at me and got the class to laugh too. It did damage.

What would’ve countered that was if the school had got a writer in to talk to us. Any writer. Even me. Seeing that writing is something possible as a job, that would’ve made a big difference. That’s why I go in. Also, I get paid.

So far, so true, not a word of a lie. The lie comes from how I then explain I went the wrong way instead. I went into computers and actually I still usually think it was the wrong way but it wasn’t half a handy wrong way to go. I worked hard to get out of computers, I got into writing about computers and then I worked hard to get out of writing about computers. Come on, one grey box after another. I’m asleep at the thought.

Flash forward a lot of years and there is nothing grey, nothing boring and if I’m falling asleep it is because I am so bleedin’ tired. But there is computing. Again.

For the past month or so I’ve been writing software reviews for MacNN.com, the Macintosh News Network. I’ve done some sixty pieces for them and I’ve had a ball. Old computing muscles come back and they join new writing ones: I don’t know if you’d like my review writing but I get to do things that are important to me. Specifically this: MacNN feels the same way I do about why one reviews things. There’s never going to be a geek-out analysis where I conclude that X is better than Y because it’s a pixel faster or a megabyte bigger.

Instead, MacNN is all about what does the bloody software do, is it any good at it, and who precisely will benefit? That attitude permeates the entire process starting with what gets picked to review. I should’ve made notes about this but at a guess, I’d say maybe 70% of my reviews have been positive because 70% of them were of software that did something well and useful. Might be a really obscure thing, might not be anything I have the slightest interest in myself, but they do something good for someone.

The key is someone. I think that thinking about people is more interesting than thinking about computers. Thinking who something would be for is certainly like marketing but I think that it’s also like drama. I don’t want to draw too contorted a conclusion here but the best software I’ve used has been really clear about who its audience is.

Just as with drama, when that audience happens to be me, I don’t just like the software, it grabs me. I become evangelical about it. It matters to me.

And the fact that some one or some few people working somewhere in the world can make something, can create something that matters to others, that is drama.

Despite all the other things I’m doing now, not one of which I’d trade you for, there is a certain portion of my week that is back being devoted to computers and computing and software. I have been wondering why I don’t feel like it’s a regression since I previously associated software with my very earliest writing days. The reason is that while the role and the importance of software hasn’t changed since I used to do this, I have. I’ve changed a lot.

The fact that I went into computers does not mean I went the wrong way. I just went a certain way. And in a Mobius-strip like fashion, it has led me on to drama in human and computer form.

You can go back, you just aren’t the same you when you get there.

Hide the card

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There’s this thing I don’t have a word or a phrase for and I’d like to have, so I’m going to talk it over with you and see where we get. Also, it relates in part to a TV series that is presumably coming to the UK soon, so, you know, hang on in here, work with me on this.

I believe that writers can sense a good idea, somehow smell it. Taste it. So far, so obvious: we all recognise when something has potential. But we taste the full strength of that idea and – this is the key bit – we know just how great and effective and powerful it will be when we’ve worked out how to tell it to you.

I need an example. Try this. I’m working on a theatre project and after a very intense meeting about all sorts of things to it, I mentioned the ending. I don’t have the script, I haven’t written an outline. As it happens, I can recite to you the opening scenes but after that we have about ninety minutes of I-have-no-idea until we reach the last moments and specifically the last line.

Given who I was working with, I was happy to tell them everything and I needed to in order to get the job done, but I wouldn’t tell them that line. Alan Plater once wrote about a TV idea that he “knows the A and the Z and has a rough idea of B to about K”. I’ve got A, B and Z. So there I am, sitting in a pub, having discussed a project that I’ve worked on for at least 17 months and there is no chance you’ll see before 2016, and I will not tell the ending because I know it sounds weak without the beginning and middle.

Yet.

I struggled to say that I even had an ending because I literally struggled to say, to speak. I got choked up thinking of it. And I do every time. I can remember where I was the moment I first thought of it – I was on a bus going by the Birmingham Rep – and I choked.

I know I’ll get you.

I just have no idea how.

So assuming that I’m right, what is the right phrase for… tasting the idea, smelling the idea, sensing it? The ability to feel the full force of something that has no force until I’ve written everything that takes you on that specific trip from here to there.

I do know that it is tied in to what you reveal and when. (There’s that Suzanne Vega line from Pornographer’s Dream: “What she reveals / and what she conceals / is the key to our pleasure”)

There is a right moment for a story to bring you a particular key fact. Up until then it has to have other great ideas, it has to lead you down other lines that are equally good, equally interesting, but which you can pull away as you reveal the real… something.

The biggest TV drama surprise I can think of was a moment in Battlestar Galactica that I will not spoil even now. But if you saw the show, yes, I mean that one, that moment. And when it was airing, the creator Ronald D Moore used to do a podcast audio commentary: ten or more years on, I can remember him describing this scene as we watched. And he used the term “hide the card”. He kept repeating it – “hide the card, hide the card” – like it was a conjuring trick.

I suppose it was, I suppose all this is, but it feels cheapening to call it that.

What he specifically meant was that in this particular scene, we were set up to expect many, many things and it fulfilled them all. It seemed to tell us everything, if it had just done what we believed it was doing it would’ve been strong and effective but he didn’t reveal his hand until the last moment. I actually jumped out of my seat.

It was a shocking moment and the shock came as much from how brilliantly set up and misdirected we were as it is from what actually happened in that moment.

That’s the thing I think writers have. We know what that moment is going to feel like even when we haven’t set it up yet. Our job then is to set it up properly. Our difficulty is getting you to the point we sensed.

It is fracking hard. (I have got to watch that show again.)

And I think you can get it very easily, very badly wrong. This is why this is on my mind today, this is where the new TV show comes in.

It’s a comedy called A to Z – no connection with Alan’s comment – which is the first time I have ever tuned in to anything because of the cast. It’s a romcom, and I like romcoms a lot, this time starring Cristin Milioti. Also Andrew Lofland but I’d not heard of him. Milioti was remarkable in the final season of How I Met Your Mother which broke every storytelling sense I’ve got in how after eight years of never showing us the Mother of the title, made her the star of the ninth year. I think the writing of that was bold and supremely well done, I thought Milioti played the part terrifically, I was sorry it was the final season.

So her back in a new romcom, I gave it a go.

It’s not great. It’s also cancelled. It made A to about M. I’d have said that to you anyway, just as a gag, but it’s pretty much literally true too: each episode was named after a letter of the alphabet. The pilot was called “A is for Acquaintances”, for instance. Each week, a narrator would explain that “this television programme is the comprehensive account of their relationship… from A to Z.” She explains this a lot.

Quick setup. A stands for Andrew, who works at an online dating agency. Z is Zelda, which is the name you would only ever give a character if you really, really had to have her begin with that letter. No other reason possible.

We have no idea who the narrator is. Think of How I Met Your Mother’s narration by Old Ted, except that we don’t know who is speaking. I saw five episodes, I think, and we never knew, despite getting quite a lot of narration. I assumed that the narrator was just a device and a lazy one at that.

Is it hiding the card that actually yes, the narrator is a real character and we just haven’t been told yet?

No.

A draft script for the pilot episode of A to Z by Ben Queen is now online at Lee Thomson’s brilliant TV Scripts site and you can read it right now.

If you do, then the first line you read will be:

Our NARRATOR is female, in her 50s. Think Diane Keaton (or someone equally cool if that person exists)

Twenty-six pages later, Andrew has a folder of material about the online dating agency – here called Crush, changed in production to Wallflower – and:

He opens the file. Inside are press clippings about ‘Crush’ from its origins. We maybe see a glimpse of its founder JULIET MADDOX (who will turn out to be our NARRATOR).

Twenty-six pages. And over those twenty-six pages, our NARRATOR has twenty-nine speeches.

If you’re thinking that’s fine, it let us dangle before telling us, look at that direction again.

We maybe see a glimpse of its founder JULIET MADDOX (who will turn out to be our NARRATOR).

Nearly thirty pages and very nearly thirty speeches in, viewers do not learn who the narrator is. In the episode as aired, there is a file folder, he is carrying it, it does have newspaper clippings (about an online site? seriously?) but he doesn’t open it, it isn’t referred to, the whole exchange of dialogue about it is cut. The sole way to know that it’s about the narrator and who that will be is to read the script. I actually said aloud “Oh, okay” when I read that.

You need to hide the card, sure. But you have to have the card in play. Or you won’t get the audience to that great point you’ve smelled and tasted and sensed from the start. Maybe because they won’t stick with you that long, maybe because your show is cancelled before you get around to it.

Library of Birmingham speech

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Just over a year since the gorgeous Library of Birmingham was opened, it’s under threat. More than half of its staff face redundancy, about half of its opening hours may be cut. Even in those opening hours and even if the staff that remain happen to be the experts you need, access to the Library’s archives will be further limited.

There was a public meeting this week, organised by the Friends of the Library of Birmingham, which saw the Library’s Studio Theatre full. Two hundred people turned out at 5pm on a wet Wednesday to have their say from the audience and six speakers got to have their say from the stage.

I was one of those six: I was there representing the Writers’ Guild. I want you to know about this. You can listen to the audio recording of my part here – though my mother warns you that afterwards Soundcloud goes straight on to an ancient BBC Radio interview with me – and the full text is below.

Since I had an almighty accident with the text on my iPad on the night (my finger grazed an on-screen button that fired off an automated reformatting and replacement of the last two thirds of it) I had to deliver most of it from memory. So this text is slightly fuller, slightly more detailed than I said on the night.

Go support the Friends of the Library of Birmingham, would you?
—

Hello.

I’m William Gallagher, I’m regional representative of the Writers’ Guild here in the West Midlands. And I speak to you today very much on behalf of the whole Writers’ Guild, the national union, because this is a national issue. It’s an international issue.

It’s international and it is personal.

For I am a writer, I am from Birmingham, I am recently returned here from London. So you know the crisis facing our Library is important to me. You know it is.

Actually, you know exactly how I feel about this because it is obvious. A writer. A Brummie. It is impossible not to feel shaking rage that this is happening.

Except.

It turns out that it is possible to feel other things as well.

Maybe less obvious things. Certainly things I don’t believe are being considered.

Such as embarrassment.

I’m regional rep for the Writers’ Guild and today I’m here for the whole union. But being the regional representative more often means representing Birmingham and the West Midlands to the Guild. I was embarrassed telling them about the cuts. I needn’t have been, as it turns out, because they knew the second I did, they feel the same way I do. To the national Writers’ Guild union, this is not a Birmingham problem, this is a national issue.

But to me, it is also personal and it is also very much Birmingham, and I was embarrassed. Telling Londoners.

Shaking rage and embarrassment.

How about shame? I am ashamed of what’s happening in my city.

Now, I am proud to be part of the arts and culture world that we have all created here in the Midlands but as well as arts and culture and media and literature, I am a businessman.

I’m a full-time self-employed freelance writer. I create my own work. I hire actors, I commission other writers, I book venues. I am a businessman. And this is supposed to be a great time for business in Birmingham. The city wants to attract companies, the city needs to attract companies, the entire point of HS2 is to bring businesses here to the city.

We are telling the world that Birmingham is a fantastic place for business.

But we are showing them that we can’t even keep our Library open.

Shaking rage, embarrassment, shame. One more.

Fear.

I am actually frightened for what this means to the future of our city. Now, that sounds like a bit of a reach. The library closes and a few writers have to buy more books on Amazon. Amazon needs the money. But no. It’s more.

I have taught writing to schoolkids in this very building. Schoolkids in the 21st century, thrilled to be coming to a library, having the best and the loudest day and then leaving roaring with excitement.

I think that’s worth the world.

But let’s talk hard business cash.

Take one hundred of those kids, any one hundred of them. How many will become writers? Novelists, poets, scriptwriters, journalists, playwrights, sports reporters nearly count, how many? There is no way to know. That’s one reason this kind of decision is easy: you can’t measure it.

And you do know that it won’t be many. Statistically, there is even a good chance the answer is none. That not one of those particular hundred kids will do what I did, will make writing their career. That makes it even easier: who needs the library?

But.

All one hundred – all of them, every single one, one hundred percent – go away from this Library able to write, able to communicate. They go away communicating at the top of their lungs, they go away working together, creating together. They go away with books, they go away with ideas, they go away seeing, actually seeing, that art and writing and communication is something vital, something they can do and that it is something they might be capable of doing well.

All one hundred – all of them, every single one, one hundred percent – will use what they get from this Library in whatever career they have. They will do well in their careers because of this Library, because of communication.

A teacher told me here, told me in this building, that he can look around a class and tell you which kids are readers and which are not. It is that obvious. It is that physically obvious. Reading and writing and seeing what reading and writing does, it changes all of us. It improves all of us. It improves and it empowers our city.

I’ve come back to Birmingham after years of commuting to London. Now I’m back I wish I’d never left because Birmingham and the West Midlands have this vibrancy, they have all this creativity – and we have this Library of Birmingham.

And we’re thinking of cutting it.

So yes, I am afraid. I am afraid, I am ashamed, I am embarrassed and I am shaking with rage.

A few thrilling moments: 2014

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Two things. First, “I’ve had a few thrilling moments” is a quote either from Grosse Pointe Blank or Ally McBeal. I forget which, I just use it a lot.

Second, this is a stupid idea. Stop reading this. And definitely do not do what I do.

I’ve been enjoying reading blogs about what people got up to this year, I’ve been enjoying those a lot, and I did think it would be spectacularly easy to do one myself. Of course it would: I have a trick.

Follow. Last year I did this thing, right, and by mistake believed I was supposed to report back at the end of each month. I was entirely wrong. But it took a good six months for them to say, William, look, it’s all very nice, but… And in those six months I had learnt something. I learnt that having to account to someone made me do things that were accountable. Most especially in the last week of each month. Oh, yes. I’m a demon from the 27th onwards.

Consequently I ignored these fine people and continued reporting back to the end of the project – and then I carried on doing it over on The Blank Screen productivity website. That version is a bit sanitised, a bit more careful, but it’s all there and it’s all true every month. And yep, 27th onwards, demon.

I’ve got this down now, I really have: when I’ve done something, I make the tiniest of notes in Drafts 4 on my iPhone and know that it is squirrelling it all away into an ever-lengthening document over in Evernote. Effort on my part: pretty close to zero. Result on its part: the demon run of the 27th onwards.

So doing you a list for the year should’ve been a doddle. It was an enormous doddle. Couldn’t have been easier. Open Evernote, select all, copy, paste, go make some tea.

Except.

I’m not stupid, I think the list is okay. I think I did alright. If pushed, I would say that I’m pleased with 2014.

But have you spotted the ENORMOUS FLAW yet? I have nothing in 2015. Not a bean. This year, not bad. Next year, tundra blowing across the hills. There should be a couple of books coming out, possibly even three, and I’ve been booked for some events that I am spectacularly looking forward to. But tomorrow morning I get back to this desk and I look at the very blankest of blank screens.

Frozen. Paralysed.

At least until January 27th.

If you’ve read this far, thank you and it’s been a treat talking with you this year. If you read on to the list, you’re mad and I am even now dialling NHS Direct to get you some help.

William

2014

Writing: approximately 620,000 words

Books:
Filling the Blank Screen (September 2014)
The Blank Screen Guide: Blogging (January 2015)
Editing Catherine Schell’s autobiography (2015)

Speaking engagements:
88 talks, workshops and presentations including:
Page Talk panel discussion at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
Representing the Writers’ Guild in the House of Commons for Parliament’s Birmingham Day
Promoted the Writers’ Guild at two RTS Mini-Summits including one at BBC Nottingham
Spoke at Combrook Readers’ Group for short story I’m writing for them
Performed three workshops at Original Writing Day in Newman University
Ran three-day workshop at Fircroft College
Many Young Writers’ Write On! group sessions for Burton, Birmingham, Rugby
The Writers’ Toolkit: produced one panel, spoke on a second, chaired a third
Three productivity workshops for the Federation of Entertainment Unions

Produced Events:
9 including:
One Steven Knight interview evening for the Screenwriters’ Forum
A separate Steven Knight event at the BBC Drama Village for the Writers’ Guild and the Royal Television Society
“Women in Theatre” panel discussion at the Birmingham Rep
Erica Whyman Royal Shakespeare Company event for Writers’ Guild
Royal Television Society Film and TV Summit breakout sessions

Fiction, drama and poetry:
Doctor Who: Scavenger radio drama released
River Passage: earned Arts Council England funding for poetry app
Wrote and shot “Ye Olde 3G” 30-second video promo: won an iPad Air
Thirty-minute stage play “Murder at Burton Library”
Directed “Murder at Burton Library” for Burton Young Writers
Resistance: radio, theatre and TV proposals; dozen script pages
Transferable Skills (4 pages of script)
Soundscapes education scripts (2015)
Wrote poem “My Curse” for Jo Bell’s 52
1x poem ‘Heart’ (100 words)
Revised novels “Man and Wifi”, “Transferrable Skills”
New novel “Men Win” 10,000 words
Seven short stories including The Book Groups for West Midlands’ Readers’ Network and The Flare, a GISHWHES short story by request

Blogs:
The Blank Screen: 1,229 articles
Self Distract: 56 articles
Guest blogs: 9

Attended:
Theatre: 25 shows
Other (meetings, workshops): 54

Journalism:
Edited Write On! Magazine issues 3, 4 and 5
Radio Times reviews 10
Magazine tutorial feature re iPad
2 ecourses on productivity issues
2 presentations
1 Lifehacker UK article
Launched weekly email newsletter for The Blank Screen
Took over monthly email newsletter for the Writers’ Guild West Midlands
Four iPad software tutorials
MacNN: 30 reviews for US technology site
Wrote Writers’ Guild press release re Library of Birmingham cuts

Publicity:
Photoshoot for Writing West Midlands
Interviewed for From Croydon to Gallifrey podcast
Interviewed in Doctor Who Monthly
Chiefly great reviews on Doctor Who fan sites
Stonking review in Doctor Who Monthly: “Seductively gripping”
From Croydon to Gallifrey podcast interview aired
Radio interview: BBC CWR re anniversary of moon landing and TV history
TV interview: Russia Today

Other:
Became regional representative of the Writers’ Guild
Joined Royal Television Committee
Ran day-long workshops in London, Newcastle and Birmingham for Federation of Entertainment Unions
8 pages copywriting for PR firm
Joined Creative England crew site
Asked to judge RTS awards
Two-day drama meeting with Nadia Kingsley and Tom Wentworth
Na wrote a poem about me
Produced video for Parliament Day and the Writers’ Guild
Promoted the move to get Alan Plater a blue plaque
Produced 2x videos for The Blank Screen site
Writers’ Guild and Royal Television Society event invitation emails
Birmingham Rep theatre programme copywriting for Of Mice and Men and Solomon and Marion
Met with BBC to discuss general projects plus liaising with RTS and Writers’ Guild
Launched The Blank Screen mentoring
Room 204 Buddying Group: took over managing; ran two quiet social events

ENDS

What is this story called again?

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The forgetful robot sat in the park burning a candle. He hoped that it would attract Santa’s attention. But he’d forgotten that day he had stuck his tongue out at Miss McGonagle. Seven times. That meant Santa would never see him again. He is off Santa’s list forever. 

But maybe he’s still on Santa’s secret list. The Shush-Don’t-Tell list for boys and girls who he can’t truly say are exactly good but, come on, it was one time. Okay, it was seven times.

Sticking your tongue out at Miss McGonagle is very bad but Santa – shush! don’t tell! – likes sticking his tongue out too. Because he can. He’s so fast going around the world that he can do it without anyone noticing. It makes him giggle and laugh.  If you’ve ever heard Santa going ho ho ho, really he’s just stuck his tongue out at someone.

The forgetful robot thought he heard laughing, but then he forgot. It’s more or less his job, really, forgetting things. If you want something forgotten, you hire a professional forgetterer. And there is no one more skilled at forgetting than Siduloiwciosulhifscys, though he calls himself Sid so that it’s easy for you, and so that he can remember all the way to the end of his name.

What was here waiting for again?

Right, yes, Santa.  

What was he waiting for again?

Right, yes, Santa.

What was he waiting for again?

Right, yes, Santa.

The forgetful robot eventually had an idea and wrote down the word ‘Santa’.

What does this word ‘Santa’ mean?

What does this word ‘Santa’ mean?

The forgetful robot thought about it. He was quite clever, he was just forgetful. So after a bit, he worked it all out. ‘Santa’ must be the title of this story. What was this story about again?

Squeezing your heart

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We get Christmas all wrong. I don’t mean that it should be a religious thing, I’m afraid I am entirely happy with the commercialism. Getting presents is great, giving presents is greater and there is a genuine magic in the air when we like sticking a tree in our living room and draping it in impossibly gaudy tat.

There is no other minute of the year when you’d register that tinsel exists. Can you even buy tinsel outside that so-very-brief Christmassy period of early September to late December?

I’ve just done exactly what I think is wrong. I got one beat into thinking of Christmas and I’m off puzzling about the past. I don’t think a vague wondering about tinsel supply and demand is especially wrong, but there is something inescapable about looking back. Maybe I’m just now old enough that what I mean is this: when you’re really young, Christmas is about presents and when you’re not, then Christmas is about pasts.

If something truly bad ever happened to you within earshot of a Christmas then it’s with you for every Christmas after it. You know this. Forever. If you’ve lost someone, your mind gets constantly pulled to the gap they’ve left. Christmas becomes this seething mass taking place at head height: sometimes you just have to duck down to get away from it, to make it stop.

Look back. Choose to look back. You can’t stop yourself looking back so go with it, go for it. Think about who you’ve lost and what. Change this from a time when you can’t breathe to a time when you celebrate who you had and what.

Just don’t do it for too long.

And hold my hand.

Shelve your ideas

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So some preposterous number of years ago, I interviewed Alan Plater at his then home, a spectacular flat in London. I was very young and rather nervous but wowed by how massive this place was and, especially, how full of bookshelves he and his wife Shirley Rubinstein had it. I wanted the flat, I wanted the bookshelves.

I particularly wanted the bookshelves. I’m not sure I could’ve vocalised this then, I suspect I just drooled, but it seemed a pretty perfect kind of place to live in.

Did I mention the size?

I came away thinking that London flats are superb and that bookshelves are fantastic. I was right about one of those things. While Alan and Shirley’s flat was glorious, it was actually two flats. They were knocked together into one long one and in fact few people in London live like that.

Shirley and Alan became close friends of mine after this but I never went back to that flat. They moved to a gorgeous house – and this time the knocking through and building on turned it into an even more gorgeous house with more levels and rooms and crinkly corners than can truly be appreciated in one sitting. Oh, and book shelves. Lots and lots of bookshelves.

I’ve just realised: when I watch Grand Designs or lesser property shows, my lip does curl just a little at those houses that have no bookshelves. Not fit for purpose, if you ask me.

But I like that I never went back to that flat. It makes that place and that moment a specific little bubble. I’ve never been one for lusting after houses and cars – possibly I have a bit for some Apple gear but give me a break here – but those shelves, that bubble, I wanted it. It felt inextricably bound up in what I wanted my career to be. I did lust after being a writer, even as I thought that was something other people did. Not me. Couldn’t be me.

Turns out, it could.

And all of this came back to me this week as I did a mentoring session over Skype. (I do mentoring for The Blank Screen and Other Stories now. It’s a thing.) During the natter, there was an oooh. Look at the shelves behind William.

I turned around, winced at how I’d forgotten to tidy up, but there they were.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves. Crammed.

Nowhere near as organised as Shirley and Alan’s, but bookshelves aplenty and akimbo.

I haven’t thought about this much in recent years but I’m thinking about it today. Because I look at those shelves of mine and I want them. Just as I wanted Alan and Shirley’s, all that time ago.

And I’ve got them.

A couple of them have copies of my books.

How in the world did that happen?

The animals stopped on Tuesday

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Monday night, animals. Tuesday morning, nothing. Every cat, every lion, every hump-backed whale just vanished. I think they had a better offer. They’ve gone somewhere else, all of them, and they didn’t even say goodbye.

I think a giraffe left a note.

But I can’t reach it.

I miss the animals. I was never a big animal guy, I knew people who had pets but I didn’t think of that for me. Wasn’t interested. And now I can’t. I won’t ever hear purring. I won’t see flying fish. Won’t ever eat bacon sandwiches.

I miss the animals. I’m going to climb this tree and hope the giraffe’s note tells me how to follow them.