When Aidan and Joe were working on the FX for the pilot, John Galloway gave them many excellent pieces of advice, but one in particular sticks in my mind because it’s equally relevant to writing. Make a list of everything that needs doing, and stick to that list. Don’t digress. Don’t start questioning how the list item you’re currently executing will affect another part of the job – just make the changes, cross them off the list and get to the end. Then you can look back and reflect on the whole. But if you try to do that as you go along, you’ll never get anything done. I think I’ve finally learnt to follow that advice when I’m writing.
I’ll probably regret saying this, but this draft seems to be going swimmingly. I feel disciplined. And it really helps to have a producer, a script editor and a novelist to turn to when you hit a snag. Thanks, guys.
Last week we had an interesting meeting with Film Education, a charity that supplies teaching resources about films. It seems there may be an exciting opportunity for the extensive behind-the-scenes material to reach a wider audience and spread the knowledge.
This meeting was in London, of course, and unusually I travelled by National Express. I have always preferred trains and didn’t even bother trying coaches until late last year, when I was surprised to find the leg room was superior and generally it wasn’t too unpleasant at all – which, coupled with the considerably lower price, threatened to knock train travel into a cocked hat. This time, however, the experience was less convivial. Partly this was due to my failure to take travel sickness pills, but mainly it was because the drivers were grumpy old farts who treated us like naughty schoolkids. Looks like it’s back to trains.