Last Procrast

.......before I absolutely, positively have to go and do some work. An actress on a show I write for either quit or was fired. I don't really care which. All I care about is that every scene she was in, in around 20 scripts, has got to be ripped out, re-storyed and re-written. Fortunately I got off fairly lightly. But as they've got to be in for tomorrow I better do something about it. But that kind of work feels a bit like digging up a corpse to change coffins.

So I got an email late yesterday postponing my Thursday meeting. The producer is away filming. I'm quite glad really, it'll give me a chance to immerse myself in the project under discussion, which I probably haven't looked at in 2 months. And give me a chance to psyche myself up. I've a bad head cold. Awwwwww.

Anyway, just when you thought things were tough enough, a writer friend tells me that an American writer friend of his, quite a big time movie writer has just sold 2, yes 2, 100 minute TV Dramas to the BBC.

Competition from abroad now. Isn't that just bloody great? Well, yes actually, I think it is. I've long argued that British Drama could do with a good smattering of American story sense. A bit less navel gazing and a bit more story. I think that any kind of cross-fertilization has got to be good.

Take Fred Barron. He created one of the few half decent mainstream sitcoms in My Family. In doing so he also instigated an American style writers' room for probably the first time since The Goon Show! The two are probably connected. This guy has serious chops, producing stuff like Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show.

There's always going to be competition in writing. It's there every time you are up for a show. The important thing is that you continually raise your own bar.

Right, now I've got to go and dig up a corpse.