WGGB

Belonging

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Here’s a thing I did not expect, wrapped up in a lot of things that I did. The lots of things I expected are all to do with how this week, last Monday in fact, there was an awards night. The 29th Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards.

I was expecting these lots of things because, in a small way, I’ve been working on the event for close to a year. There were no Guild awards in 2021 because of the pandemic, and this year’s took more planning and more continually changing around than usual, also because of the pandemic.

There was one part I can say was me. I just told you it was the 29th Writers’ Guild Awards. Up until this one, each annual event had been titled with the year in the name. So the last one I did anything for was the Writers’ Guild Awards 2020. Or it could’ve been called the Writers’ Guild Awards 2019 because the ceremony was in January 2020 but it was celebrating writing done chiefly in 2019, and anyway, it was pre-COVID so there’s no chance of remembering.

It was definitely a confusing name, though. It got even more confusing in the planning of this one: the first question was whether these latest awards should honour writing over the last two years, or just sod 2020 and move on. We decided to celebrate both years, to not be beaten by having had to take a year off.

But then the question was whether to call it the Writers’ Guild Awards 2020-2021 or something like that. It was me who said we should drop the years and call it the 29th Writers’ Guild Awards. Okay, I had to find out from Nick Yapp, who wrote the history of the Guild, what number it was, but I am the one who said it should be the XXth Writers’ Guild Awards.

So that’s four words, if you count the number as a word. And all through the night when those four words were on screen, I got a bit ridiculously pleased with myself. At most three other people knew I’d thought of that, and if any of the three remember all this time later, I’ll be ridiculously surprised.

Anyway. Proud of four words.

Imagine if I’d been up for any of the awards.

Other than that, though, it was just fun and a privilege being a little part of the organising group. Seeing clever people at the top of their game, it is brilliant.

So is the night. I tell you, the best evenings I’ve ever had have been at Writers’ Guild Awards and so of course I now expect them to be fantastic. Last time, I wrote dialogue for Hartley Hare. This time, I met Paul Chuckle.

What I also expect, though, is to feel flat afterwards.

Only afterwards. Never during the event itself. The sheer volumetric pressure in that room is so happy that you cannot feel flat. Well, maybe if you don’t win an award you’re nominated for. But the sense of support and even happiness from the whole room for each writer who wins, it is joyous.

I just expect now to feel flattened around a fifth of a second after I leave. There have been some years where I’ve made it an entire second, but only when I’ve walked out with someone.

Because usually I come away with a sense of how all these superb writers, every one of these people you’d like to be just as much as you’d enjoy calling friends, each one is outclassing me as a writer. I would come away with that sense of them being better than me and it is in no way helpful to know that yep, I’m right, they are.

Come on. I just met Emerald Fennell, who wrote Promising Young Woman. I haven’t even seen her film, but I’ve read the script and right there on the page, her words left me shaking. Fantastic. She won for best screenplay this year incidentally, and I was embarrassed to realise she was sitting right behind me because I punched the air and yelled “YES!” when the result was read out.

So I am in a room of the finest writers in the land, I am completely conscious of that throughout, and it does not dent the joy – until between a fifth of a second and a full second after I’ve left.

It has got so that I expect this.

But not this time.

That’s the real unexpected thing. This time, for the first time, I did not leave there thinking I was the weakest, poorest writer. If you want to make a case that I am, I will not only nod in agreement, I will add my name to your petition.

I just didn’t feel it this time.

I felt good.

I felt I’d been where I belonged.

True, I need to write better, and also write more, and I would prefer it if I were able to write something good enough to get me nominated in the XX+1 Writers’ Guild Awards.

But I’ve found a place I think I belong.

Unguilded truth

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Let me say something that’s really for me, then some things I think are for you, too.

The thing for me is partly that as of next week, I will no longer be Deputy Chair of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. But its mostly that I’m not going far. (For my entire writing career, people have told me I won’t go far.) I’ll still be involved with the Guild, I mean I’ll obviously always be a member but every possible way I can continue doing anything for and with them, I will.

I haven’t broken that news to them yet.

But here’s the thing for both you and me, here’s the thing I think is more important. Four years working with the Guild has been a lot of things I thought it would be, it’s certainly been everything  I hoped, but it’s also been one thing I don’t think I could have expected.

Frightening.

You may know that the Writers’ Guild is our union and that it is because of the Guild that writers have the rates of pay and the working conditions we do. I never tire of marvelling that the Guild has done this for all writers, whether or not they’re members.

The frightening thing I didn’t know and I don’t think many of us can see from outside is just how constant the fight is. I’ve never been in any of the rooms where negotiations take place, but I now doubt there’s been a day where there hasn’t been such a meeting, where there haven’t been battles being fought for us

I don’t want to make it sound as if studios and networks and producers are the enemy, they’re hardly that. Yet I now know that if it were not for the Writers’ Guild, studios and networks and producers would be able to pay us fantastically less. Up to you whether you think any of them would.

I feel I’ve spent my time holding the coats of the Guild’s tremendous team as they’ve ceaselessly done this. I’ll obviously know much less of what’s going on when I leave, but I will leave deeply glad the Guild is there. And actually, profoundly relieved that it’s being run by the current team. The Writers’ Guild has a long history of excellent people –– I aspired to become a member in part because at one time Alan Plater was President –– but the current team is special.

They’re the right people at the right time and having had this glimpse of our industry, I leave the Deputy Chair role reassured at who we’ve got.

If you’re a member of the Writers’ Guild, you’ll have had all the Annual General Meeting details so come see for yourself. I’m leaving solely because I have to: four years is the maximum term for a Deputy Chair and my time is up at the AGM next week. You won’t especially notice me going since the meeting is on Zoom so there’ll just be some point when my little video face will sink, but you will get to meet the officers who are working for you, for me, for all of us.

Guild edged

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I’ve been looking at you for ten minutes, easily ten, with my head going in two directions. Part of me wants to enthuse at you about a table reading I attended over Zoom last night, but I’m not sure I can. I can definitely tell you that scripts I’d read and very much enjoyed seemed even better performed by however many people in Celebrity Squares-style video boxes.

But I think what I really want is to talk about the Writers’ Guild. This week I was re-elected as co-Deputy Chair of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and I may never get used to that. Except this is my last year – the Guild is a trade union and it of course has rules, which of course include term limits.

I promise to hand over power peacefully.

It’ll be reluctantly, but it will be peaceable. And that’s not for a year yet, so in the meantime I plan to be as bleedin’ useful as I can. The Writers’ Guild raises the tide for all writers, which I think is amazing, and actually it does so whether you’re in the Guild or not, which I think is astounding. Pay rates, conditions, the Guild is constantly –– and I really mean constantly –– negotiating, pressing, arranging every possible aspect of professional writing life and doing so in our favour.

Writing is an isolating kind of job which might suit you and it might not, but it makes us vulnerable. I think it’s telling that during this hard time, Guild membership is going up. The more of us there are, the stronger the Writers’ Guild is, the better we all fare.

Take a look at joining and what membership brings you.