Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Paying your way

So, the job paperwork is complete, and so is the flat rental paperwork hopefully.

The flat rental form (Tenancy Application) is an interesting document, it's essentially an insurance form for the landlord. It's purpose is to determine whether I, as the tenant, am who I claim to be and whether I can actually pay.

This is actually the problem: I run all my business through a limited company, and the accounts are completed only up to 2006. At this time income was very low. Although my accountant did have the opportunity to say "your profit has doubled" between 2005 and 2006. This is not, however, saying a lot. But, by my estimates, my profit at least doubled again 2006-2007 and then they'll be doubling again for 2008.

But there's no documentary proof. However I can prove that my income for the next six months will be out the roof. Which will hopefully be enough.

It is my intention to catch up on my accounts, using the income from the new job, and get all my accounts properly in order. I suspect I'll get slammed with tax bills, but I'd rather be honest now than pay even more later when the Revenue men catch up with me and are less friendly.

Of course it was a double shock and a half when I found out how much I had to pay for this flat. I didn't really think it through: one month in advance, and one and a half months as deposit. Ouch. 2.5 x the monthly rent up-front. We can just about scrape this together.

Meanwhile other bills mount up, my membership of the WGGB is up and I have to pay them the annual fee. You pay a tithe on your income from writing but there's a minimum below which you cannot go. I made no money from writing last year. So they get the minimum.

No ScriptFrenzy writing yesterday, but my calculations were off. Even if I'd written nothing so far I'd only need to do 4.5 pages per day to win. So I'm probably on about 4 pages/day.

But I'm in a tizzy about what to work on:

Monsters: TV series which I intend to send to the BBC Writers Room , it's pretty much ready but I want to spice up the dialogue which could take a few days.

Movie Treatment: As described yesterday, needs a lot of re-working to get the plot into something that's actually working properly. But while there's no strict deadline on this, the longer I take the less likely it's going to be accepted.

ScriptFrenzy: 4-5 pages per day

Sometimes you need to sit down and evaluate these things. Particularly when there's so much other stress going on, and moving house is considered to be one of the most stressful things you can ever do. Even though it's only me moving temporarily.

So I suppose I need to write some ScriptFrenzy pages and then work on Monsters before someone comes up with the same idea and gets it made.

Onwards and upwards.



What's on the turntable? "The Great Beyond" by REM

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