{"id":199,"date":"2008-06-27T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblankscreen.co.uk\/selfdistract\/2008\/06\/27\/the-definition-of-success\/"},"modified":"2008-06-27T15:55:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-27T15:55:00","slug":"the-definition-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2008\/06\/27\/the-definition-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"The definition of success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend is just after saying that he avoids writing blog entries about rejections, he chooses instead to focus on the successes he has. I couldn&#8217;t fault that in the slightest, I&#8217;ve no doubt you see his point entirely: whatever else a blog is, or whatever else you claim it is when you&#8217;re excusing the time you spend on it, a blog is an advert for you. <\/p>\n<p>That may be a bit harsh: call it a promotion. I&#8217;m a professional writer so maybe it&#8217;s more apparent with folks of my ilk (I sell my writing, here&#8217;s some writing I do, I&#8217;m available through Thursday, rates on request, that kind of thing). But anyone&#8217;s blog paints a picture of them for us all to see, just as all writing is terribly revealing of the writer.<\/p>\n<p>So, successes. <\/p>\n<p>Trouble is, you get me talking and I feel more comfortable talking about rejections. I&#8217;ve got more practice. Plus, I should say that there are successes I cannot tell you about: projects that have gone well financially, for instance, but otherwise don&#8217;t have a lot of material to show for themselves. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll tell you about them some time, you&#8217;re certain I&#8217;ll never spill the beans about the beans they pay me.<\/p>\n<p>(Just as an aside. There&#8217;s a William Gallagher who used to edit Doctor Who fanzines. It isn&#8217;t me. But once I stumbled across an internet discussion about him\/me, lambasting my writing and being jealous of his incredible earnings. Even being one of the William Gallaghers involved, it was hard to unpick their confusion except that I&#8217;m guessing the incredible earnings are his. That would mean the lambasting was mine, but if I can&#8217;t tell from your writing who you&#8217;re talking about or what he&#8217;s done, I think there&#8217;s it&#8217;s a fair bet it&#8217;s not my writing you should be focusing on first.)<\/p>\n<p>(Another aside. There is another William Gallagher. There are loads of him. But there&#8217;s a new one, a new William Gallagher has started a blog. I can&#8217;t read it, I don&#8217;t even recognise the language for sure, but somehow Google&#8217;s references to it are in English and he appears to be greatly concerned about internet dating. If you&#8217;re here looking for advice on New Zealand dating practices, I thank you for your patience in reading this far and direct you please to <a href=\"http:\/\/gat10.info\/williamgallagher\/\">this fella<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now after all that, I&#8217;ve run out of time. Okay. Can&#8217;t tell you about cash, can&#8217;t tell you about contracts, can tell you I&#8217;ve had a great, great week. Three days on RadioTimes.com, two days on Doctor Who Adventures, five mornings and five evenings on Doctor Who Adventures, one day on Radio Times magazine. I realise this adds up to more than five days but that&#8217;s because it did. It has. Er, it was. It&#8217;s continuing to be.<\/p>\n<p>Doctor Who Adventures is a delight: instantly liked everybody, instantly relished the work. Can&#8217;t get enough of it.<\/p>\n<p>Then that short play of mine has been kicking up some dust for me. If you&#8217;d asked, I&#8217;d say you were mad to write a piece that short but it is doing surprisingly well for me. And right now it&#8217;s doing well on its own: I don&#8217;t even have to tend it, I just hear positive noises every now and again.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of plays and scripts, I&#8217;m doing a thing in the gaps this week that is definitely one of the best ideas I&#8217;ve ever had. Not 100% sure I&#8217;m getting it down as well as I could but it&#8217;s getting down and it&#8217;s working. <\/p>\n<p>And speaking of working, you&#8217;d be surprised how many people ask me to read their scripts. Hardly any. It used to come up a lot and I&#8217;ve even been a professional script reader for real money but a few months ago I had someone&#8217;s piece in front of me and I just had enough. I truly believe it when producers say there are very few good scripts around because I don&#8217;t see any either.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve stopped agreeing to read things. But I agreed last night and read something through that was a treat. Bit scary for my wimpy tastes, but dialogue that was alive on the page. Sounds so simple, but it&#8217;s so rare.<\/p>\n<p>As is my gushing. Sorry, I went off on one: it&#8217;s really been a bouncy, great week and I just had to bubble at you for a time.<\/p>\n<p>Did I mention how good Doctor Who Adventures is?<\/p>\n<p>William<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend is just after saying that he avoids writing blog entries about rejections, he chooses instead to focus on &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2008\/06\/27\/the-definition-of-success\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-3d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}