Guild News

First of all, keep it down over there about Life on Mars. I haven't seen the season finale yet because I was watching football, and flicking to the cricket (not many writers are sport fans, or at least not the writers I know, which I find confusing and a bit disappointing).

Actually, I'm a bit behind as I still have to see last week's episode, not to mention catching up with the Doctor and Martha meeting Shakespeare. And then there's all those eps of Family Guy from BBC2, BBC3 and FX, and of course the latest series of The Wire, and Battlestar Galactica, and homegrown Holby, Enders etc, the list is endless... (someone give the inventor of Sky Plus a Nobel Prize).

Most of you have been gracious with a few non-spoiler reviews of what happened to Sam and the gang but the accumulative detail I've learned this morning has somewhat skewed my expectations. Need to catch up on my viewing to get to the climactic finish.

Anyhoo, the new edition of UK Writer, the Writers' Guild magazine, has hit the stands and on page 27, or thereabouts, you'll find an article from moi which, appropriately enough, is about the potential benefits of a writer possessing a website and a blog.

This neatly coincides with the "Websites for Writers" event the Guild are hosting next week, and I'll be one of the speakers/guests/panel person thingies to chat about my experiences so far.

Also, if you're not a member of the Guild, then why not? In this issue of UK Writer, Julian Friedmann (agent and editor of Scriptwriter magazine) says: "If every member persuaded one other person to join, we would all be much more powerful". He also encourages us to check out a new screenwriting manifesto (something which Tim mused about in a separate post).

So, this is my shout out for you to join the Guild. One of the benefits that I particularly enjoy is that you get free membership to the ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society), which keeps a track of the royalties that are due to you. So, every once in a while, I get a cheque for a couple of hundred of quid, and that's just for writing two episodes of Doctors. Nice.

And as a final link, the nominations for this year's TV Baftas have been announced. Check them out here. Congratulations to James and the Green Wingers for their nod.