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'Somewhere out there, on the very fringes of memory, is buried the single word, 'effluvium'. And not far from that, my best stage direction ever; 'the stage fills with blood'.'
'This kind of swotting was highly risky in my state comprehensive, where any show of keenness was likely to be met with a great deal of jibing and jostling, in this case accusations of being teacher's pet.'
'Radio allowed me to develop a poetic and humorous ambiguity. In the screenplay, this proves difficult to maintain. My canvas expands, and the two men in Izzy's life lose their offstage status, and feature in actuality.'
'My dream of the countryside was, as I'm sure you've guessed, to lead to a rude awakening. The farms were not the pretty places I imagined; they were huge industrial concerns, with pigs in metal sheds the size of aircraft hangars.'
'Each rejection tends to have its own unique characteristics, and should therefore be responded to accordingly. There's always the first sadness to work through, frustration, perhaps anger. '
'Now I write books and TV for teenagers, and for adults. Some days I'll work on the new novel in the morning, and on an episode of TV in the afternoon. Some weeks it'll be all about a TV deadline.'
Simon Booker describes how a stint as writer in residence at a therapeutic community prison changed his perceptions for good.
'Watching a film or TV programme, no matter how good it may be, is a passive activity. A spectator sport. The audience has no part in it's making. Everything is there... Reading is active.'
'We are rarely 'in' the present. We are a jumble of past and future, trying to draw on our experience to decide what to do, where to go, how to be.'
'I'll have a pretty good idea about where I'm going, and I'll be fairly clear about some major points along the way, but I won't necessarily know how I'm getting from one point to the next. '
'Have confidence and believe in yourself as a writer just as much as you believe in your characters and the stories you want to tell. I'm not going to lie to you, it is hard at times to keep going.'
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