REDISCOVERING MY MOJO

About 15 years ago, maybe longer, I had an idea for a TV show. Actually... no. I had an idea for a something. I thought it could potentially have been a novel, but I know that I don't want to write a novel. At lest, not a conventional one.

So I pitched it to CBBC. They loved it. I had meetings. They wanted to make it work. But they couldn't wrap their heads around how to make it work. It's an expensive idea, a big budget genre thing, you see, and CBBC budgets do not lend themselves to expensive ideas. But I knew it was a great idea. 

Yet, it ground to a halt. I toyed with it on and off over the years, but somehow never quite found a way back into it. I got distracted with other things. Other shows. Life. Paying the bills.

I admit, writing became a job. A means to an end. It had ceased to be a calling, the way it had been in the days when I first tried to make it as a scriptwriter. Heck, I became cynical about it.

And then about 18 months or so ago, I got a call from one of the CBBC development producers who had read that original pitch. He was now working for a different company, and he said he hadn't ever stopped thinking about the idea, and felt that now - in the current streaming climate of big budgets - it had a better chance than ever of happening. In his words "It was the one that got away".

So I signed an option deal with his company - it's a small company, so we're talking very small amounts of money (£500, if I remember) - to develop it. I've been working on the series pitch document ever since, in which time the company signed a deal with Netflix, and became a slightly bigger company. And as I worked on it, I fell deeper and deeper in love with the idea. It's a show I want to see. That I'd go out of my way to see. 

Anyway, the next step in the process is a pilot script. That sounds fancy, but - again - said company remains a relatively small company, and so I'm doing it for a much lower rate, and offsetting most of my pay in the hope that it might get picked up further down the line.

I started writing the script... and it flowed. It wasn't like pulling teeth, like most scripts seem to be these days. I started writing, and I couldn't stop, because I wanted to spend more time with these characters, in this world, and I needed to see the story unfold. For the first time in at least 10 years, I was writing last night in bed, until 10pm. Not because I had to, not because I have a deadline, but because I was enjoying it, and it was pouring out of me.

For me, whether this show goes anywhere or not, if it gets made or doesn't, it doesn't matter. It has already given me something huge, and that's getting back my joy of writing. 

For a long time I thought I'd gone off writing scripts. My passion had evaporated. I'd lost that spark of excitement I used to have,  that giddy feeling where I find it difficult to stop. For the first time in forever, I'm no longer contemplating leaving scriptwriting behind; whether it continues to be the main way I earn a living or not, so long as I'm writing things I believe in, that I love, I will carry on.

I woke up today, eager to get back to it. Turns out I was just writing the wrong things. 

Paul