Oh. My. God. #6

Good grief, how many posts this week?

Following on from my Business series, (specifically #7 that I wrote 30 minutes ago but I've put a delay on posting this) , here's an example of what I absolutely do not recommend because if everyone did it it would be really bad.

Back at the end of last year, after I knew I had Monsters in really good shape, I decided to do some general promotion. Based on some things I knew were going on in the TV market I selected three individuals who I felt were in a position to forward my career and wrote to them.

I did not know these people. I did not have any friend-of-a-friend connection. I found their actual street addresses on the Internet (I know how to do these things) and sent them a letter with the first 10 pages of Monsters.

The letter was very carefully worded - clearly I was overstepping the acceptable - I started off by apologising and stating I would never use their personal address again. But kept that brief as well. Followed by explaining who I was, what I was sending, plus testimonials from people in the industry who had read Monsters.

And finally said that if they were looking for a new writer ... there's me.

I sent them off, and forgot them. That was six months ago.

This morning I had an email from one of those people admiring my style of writing, asking to read the rest of Monsters and offering me an introduction for writing audio stuff.

As I said in the Business series, if you want to be successful as a screenwriter the first thing you have to realise is that you are a business whether you like it or not; the second is that it doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't push yourself out there no one will know that you exist.

This is a very exciting development which would not have happened if I hadn't followed my own advice.

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What's on the turntable? "Land of a Thousand Dances" by The Walker Brothers from the "Gala" compilation