A winter draft

At last the UCF portfolio for February has been completed, printed, bound and posted. Working on it has been a bit like running a marathon: tense, engrossed, pacing the emotions, alert to the slightest alien mark on the paper. Is everything included? Are all the page numbers in order? Will both copies fit in one envelope? Will the package be too big for Royal Mail? Is this my better side...?

It's not like having won the marathon; it has yet to be marked and yet the adrenaline is still flowing. What do I do next? What further project can occupy me so intensely? Will I go mad if I can't find something – anything – else?

I sit and watch television, but the only thing playing are scenes from my script and odd fragments from the accompanying critical rationale. This is the worst that can happen: I don't want to see my mistakes floating before me uninvited; the damned thing's gone, now, and it's too late to put it right. If it's wrong, then tough!

I know what's happening – and I know I had better get used to it.

And then the words of Blake Snyder come to me, "it is what it is", and I realise it's time to leave that story alone: don't think about it; pretend it belongs to someone else.

Now it's time to sit back, relax and make up for all those weeks sweating over the (unmentionable) story. But within five minutes another idea is taking shape...

Breaking and entering the rule book

Surely a writer's blog such as this one would benefit from some discussion of work by other fiction-masters? So far I have talked only about films and television programmes that I can be positive about.

But then, certainly at UCF, critical evaluation of fellow writers' work is actively encouraged – more so, in fact, because if we don't critique each other, then we don't pass the course.

This leaves me wondering – and I hope you can see my dilemma – about the ethics regarding the discussion of successful writers' work when I am merely learning the trade. I have already had one, unjustified, warning from a tutor who said I should not "diss the industry" in which I want to work. She was mistaken, but at the same time her admonition has acted as a kind of brake and caused me to consider every word that I write.

So is it okay for me to discuss the work of established writers? My current wife says, 'Yes, because if all screenwriting was considered to be on a par, there wouldn't be awards such as the BAFTAs and Oscars, would there?'

Then is it okay for me to make judgements? I mean, I'm supposed to be learning from the work of industry professionals and, in some cases, some of the material out there comes nowhere near the standards that, at UCF, we are expected to deliver.