Enacting the F**k the Future manifesto

For those who weren't here yesterday, I gave myself a good scolding for waiting around in the hope of receiving an engraved invitation to become a TV drama writer:

Here's a belated resolution for 2009: no more excuses, no more waiting around. I don't want to hear myself talking about what I wish I was writing, what I'm planning to write in the future. Fuck the future. If you want to be a TV writer, you make something happen by bloody writing. That's not rocket science, it's common sense - but you need to embrace that reality and act upon it.

Don't be content to sit on the subs' bench, waiting for somebody - a script editor, a publisher, an agent, a producer or a competition - to invite you into the game. You want to play? Get your boots on, get your freak on and get writing.

Bit lacking in explicit political ideology for a real manifesto, but life's too short to sit round in coffee houses discussing whether this is a post-something-or-other approach. There's writing to be done and now's the time to do it. So, having kicked myself up the arse, I did some writing yesterday. Wrote and submitted three pitches to a script editor. One's new, one improves an old idea and the other's a flyer.

Today I'm going to get my episode for the Lighthouse team-writing TV drama project rolling forwards again. Need to dump the deadwood from all previous iterations and start from scratch. Tell the story, not get hung up on mythology and rules and all that extraneous shit. Introduce characters with clear, bold strokes. Make the reader, the audience care about the characters. Make people want to know what happens next. Simple, but effective.

Seems my F**k the Future rant struck a chord with Kay Reindl at Seriocity. She's written some groovy-arsed shows and has some interesting things to say about genre shows, mythology and the state of US TV drama. Go check it out.