The Boots Scribbling Diary
Every year, when I was between about nine and thirteen, I’d buy one. A Boots Scribbling Diary. On New Year’s Day, I’d open it up and gaze at the empty lined page, headed January 1st.…
Careful what words you use
Be careful what words you use. They say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Really? Words have hurt people throughout history. Words can stir up hate, foment violence…
What I learned from the World Cup
Bored with the World Cup? Take another look. Football has probably taught me more about people and psychology than anything else ever has. I mentioned the World Cup to a friend of mine last week.…
Small things can be important too
Small things can be important too. Sometimes, I sweat for an hour over a paragraph, a line of dialogue, a single word. I’ve known comedy writers argue for ages over whether the number 35 is…
Fighting yourself? Here’s a way to stop.
Fighting yourself? Have you ever started a project and found that for some reason you’re not moving ahead? Maybe you’re trying to write a book and not getting round to it. Making sales speeches that…
Do criminals have free will – or is it all down to good and bad luck?
If you ever thought philosophy was for people with glasses and sticking-out ears who need to get out more, you may be in for a shock. Every crime thriller you’ve ever read is steeped in…
12 top tips for quickly learning a language you’d love to know
Interested in learning a language but think it might be too hard? Planning a holiday or meeting people from abroad? It annoys me that language teaching is so bad in this country that it puts…
Can you defend yourself from verbal attack? Review: Verbal Aikido Green & Orange Belt by Luke A Archer
It may surprise you that a verbal attack can be much trickier and more difficult to deal with than a physical attack. And you never know when one might come. A few years ago, a…
Want to get ahead? Get good habits – Review: Daily Rituals
If you want to improve at something, you can’t do better than studying the habits of people who’ve already done it well. Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals aims to make this easy with bite-sized chunks…
Woody Allen on showing up
This is a great extract from a Woody Allen interview and it sums up for me the importance of what I call the Mental Game. That talent or – despite the X Factor – wanting to be successful…
6+1 ways to stop research becoming procrastination
Last week a writer asked for advice on how long you should do research and how do you know when it’s time to stop and start writing your screenplay or novel. How do you stop research becoming…
How to get writing by getting nasty
What links Tom Waits, suicide and the Klu Klux Klan? They’ve all come up in a recent podcast I was listening to about creativity, writing and the mental games we play. The more I write,…
Write as a Professional
I’m busy planning the Euroscript Professional Screenwriting Mini-Summer School (June 24-26), which is devoted to helping TV and cinema screenwriters develop their skills to a higher professional level – and I’ve been asking myself: what is it that makes the difference between a professional script and one that isn’t?
A tip to help you with the mental game of creative success
The more I write, and the more I work with writers, the more I am sure it’s the same. You need to work on your skills, and equally you need to work on your mental game. The trouble is, very few people teach us how to do this.
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