And I'm back in the room

and I have so much to say that I just don't know where to start - the end result is that this is probably going to be quite disjointed.

Currently I'm having fan-girl squees all over TV writer Howard Overman - which sounds as disgusting as something he might write for Nathan in Misfits; now in its second season and as brilliant as ever (he created and writes the series - it's not for the easily offended). Plus he wrote the new Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency adaptation - on BBC4 no less, not known for its fictional drama.

Since the London Screenwriters' Festival I have been waiting on the results of certain activities. I foolishly failed to take my own advice and had high hopes of the Channel 4 mentoring scheme. My usual advice to anyone is "enter and forget", I didn't do this and was seriously disappointed when I failed to get in. Very silly me.

On the other hand the Shine Pictures competition I did indeed enter and forget- just as well.

There is one more thing I entered which I was expecting the results of before Christmas but I suspect I won't hear anything until afterwards now. Which is fine.

(Note to self: reprogram computer keyboard driver so that when I type ';' with a 't' immediately after it it changes the ';' to an apostrophe - because that is the most common typo I make and it's really annoying.)

(Note about note to self: learn how to reprogram computer keyboard driver.)

The site I was working relaunched pretty successfully - and rather better than the US version of the site which had problems every time they did a relaunch of each of its eight sections (which they did by stages). We received a personal congratulatory email from the person at the top. Very nice.

As previously mentioned I do my "I am a rock" impression during these difficult periods (though not with the bad connotations of the Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name). And today one of the staff referred to me as a "saint" - I think she was going for a Saint Peter comparison but didn't quite make it. Being a rock is all very well but, you know, sometimes even rocks need to cry. (See what I did there? No? Check the lyrics, man!)

It's Christmas. And we have rail network problems. This does not bother me. I ignore them. And travel long distances by train and arrive as required. It's been said that if someone comes back with the instant quip, he's a comedian. But if he comes back half an hour later with the quip, he's a writer.

Well, I was standing on a busy station with 500 commuters who were waiting for a train that was going to be packed, and two people decided to take out their frustration on a network rail employee. I will not stand for that sort of thing so I told them to leave him alone, in my extreme writerly cleverness I said "Why don't you leave him alone?" so then they tried to take it out on me, I gave them my best condescending smile and just turned away as in "I am not listening to your nonsense."

Of course, half an hour later, after replaying the episode many many times I realised that a much better line - played loudly to the entire audience - would have been "Do you understand the meaning of the word bully?" which would have left them speechless. Then I could have turned away without the condescending smile to thunderous applause.

Might have got a punch in the mouth though. But it would have been in the cause of art, and there is no better cause than that.

Speaking of writing (brilliant segway) I am in the middle of a rewrite of the feature script Running. Thing is this: I had two chunks of feedback from the Blue Cat competition this year and both readers liked aspects of it but there were things to work on.

I began by completely re-working the opening - not the first few scenes because they are cool - but after that. And then I got stuck. Took me a whole 24 hours to realise that I was making a huge blunder: the readers liked the story, and here I was changing the story. Major ooops.

So I threw those changes away and put back what I had before.

However I do have a slight problem: the original version of the script was set in a generic US city, so cops with guns is perfectly normal. The new setting is Edinburgh (because I have someone who wants to read it and it needs to be set in Scotland - and Edinburgh is perfect for the premise). So guns suddenly cease to be common. Bit awkward, still, I'll manage.

And then I realised the first few scenes, though very exciting and jolly good action, don't actually make much sense if you examine the logic. Ooops again. Now this is the second time this has happened to me in the last three months (I had also realised the premise of Winter made no sense either - yes, Jez, you did say that. What can I say? I can be thick as a brick.)

So, as I crunched through snow this evening I figured out how to make it make sense, which then allowed me to have the original scenes and the new scenes. Script writing can be very satisfying.

Which brings me to my last point, for now.

Writers often say that they must write. It's a curious thing to me, as if it's some obsession, because I look at myself and I think "I'm not like that". I have no compulsion to write, I enjoy it but I don't mind stopping. Failing to write does not hurt.

But my recent failure in the Channel 4 mentoring scheme made me wonder whether I should bother writing at all. I fell to imagining not writing - thing is, I couldn't. I am incapable of imagining myself not writing. So while I have less compulsion - the creativity is there and it just isn't going away any time soon whether my work gets picked up by a film or TV company or not.

Funny that.

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What's on the turntable? "All I want" by Joni Mitchell from "Blue"

Misfits

Did you watch it last night? I did. I enjoyed it enough to want to watch the next episode (which is more than I can say for Defying Gravity). Misfits is a 60-minute dramedy, and the balance was good for the first episode - I hope they can keep it up.

The next section isn't really spoilerific but if you don't want to know anything you better not read it.

I imagine Misfits has been described as Heroes for the UK: Small scale and very real. What we have is a bunch of loser kids on community service for various misdemeanors who find themselves with superpowers after a freak accident.

Note, there are four ways of being super: natural (it's in your genes), freak accident (radioative spider anyone?), gimmicks (Iron Man) and magic (Dr Strange, Juggernaut).

What was interesting from a screenwriting viewpoint is the type of powers the characters have. In Heroes the powers are pretty random but in the Fantastic Four movie the writers linked the abilities gained by each character to what they were doing, or trying to do, at the point they were zapped with gamma rays. (So Reed Richards is trying to reach for something - his ability becomes elasticity.)

In Misfits they have done almost the same thing but from a more writer-ly perspective: all the characters have been given powers related to their external wants - which, in each case, is the opposite of their internal need. (Well, I say "all" but there is one character whose power has not yet been revealed - though we ought to be able to work it out from what we know of his character.)

I think this is a pretty good start, and offers lots of character development opportunities - some of which are already manifesting.

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What's on the turntable? "The Long March" by Vangelis from "China"