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Two days ago I was in the very best place a writer can be. Today, I’m a long way from that, and heading for one of the worst places a writer can be.

Two days ago I’d just submitted my second draft of the script I’m working on. It was a tight turnaround - I had a week to do it in, in fact my writerly resistance to being backed into a corner (aka wilfully perverse streak) meant that I put off until the last possible two days. Anyway, I was right to do it that way - the instinct I had that the notes I’d received were all manageable was correct, and the second draft more or less wrote itself. I emailed it off, even coping with the fact that Final Draft started crashing every time I moved around in the screenplay just as I came to the end of the draft and I thought I’d lost a couple of day’s work.

(For future ref my time honoured technique for when this happens is to open the file up, immediately save it as text format, shut down and relaunch Final Draft, and import the text format version of the file. I had to reformat lots of it, which cost an hour, but it averted having to go back to the backup version of the file which was well out of date. This little trick pretty well always seems to strip out whatever has been corrupted and this time was no exception, thankfully.)

 So anyway I’d mailed off the screenplay, had nothing to do except feel good about my writing, and wait for the notes.

As it’s such a tight turnaround (it goes to the exec producer a week tomorrow for final notes) they had promised a quick turnaround. 24 hours or so, before I got the notes and onto 3rd draft.

That hasn’t happened so far. Not a word back from them. Three days later. So of course the paranoia’s kicking in. My mind is running roughly like: “Why haven’t they called? They hate it. They decided they are going to sack me and are just waiting to hire the replacement before they tell me. I hate writing for tv. I want to do anything but write. Maybe I could retrain as a plumber. Britain needs plumbers. WHY HAVEN’T THEY CALLED?!?!” etc etc.

 My rational mind tells me to stop worrying. The first draft went down great with them, and there’s nothing I could have done to that particular script that would have merited getting the boot. My rational mind tellsme it’s simply something like the producer is busy producing the other two eps he’s got on the boil at the moment, and the script editor hasn’t read it because he is busy in serial story conferences.

 Some, or both, of these may be true. Point is it doesn’t matter - I’m pretty sure I’m fine. But what’s interesting, and it’s the point of this particular piece to let you know that, how quickly the paranoia kicks - and that makes me want to mention the biggest ability you need as a writer.

 Forget creativity, command of story structure, ear for character and dialogue - no, before all these, to survive for any length of time as a screenwriter, a job where you are on your own for a lot of the time, and where the axe can fall at any time from any angle, the very first thing you need, the MOST essential thing you need, is you need mental strength. You need to be fine on your own. You need to be able to switch off any worries about the future, and whether or not you have a career.  You need to be doggedly determined to keep going, no matter what, because everyone gets sacked, and it will happen to you, and you mustn’t let it destroy you.

David Chase sacked armfuls of writers on the first series of The Sopranos. Any writer you talk to has been sacked, or been dangerously close to it at last once. I’ve been sacked once, and come close to it on several times. (But then I am a little outspoken at points I shouldn’t have been.)

 Being sacked is mostly no reflection on you as a writer, it mostly means simply that your vision and the producer’s vision didn’t mesh.

But it does hurt.

And I am paranoid.

Well, I’ve been doing this for years, so I guess I have the strength. And I’m not truly worried about the script. Not yet. The silence means they are busy, not that they hate it.

Of course it does…