It’s all work related. Some days I’m tapping away, words tumble out, I send them off, they get read, people say nice things, they even send me contracts and cheques. Other days I’m just tapping away, and all the things which I had convinced myself that were going to fall through so that I wouldn’t get my hopes up turn out to fall through just as I had expected.
I don’t feel like this often, to be honest. I think everyone feels this way every now and then. Even writers who are doing better than me moan about the writers who are doing better than them. The trick is not to resent the success of others; it’s not an either/or situation. Though in my experience, that’s often how it will be portrayed by those trying to let you down gently, ‘We would’ve done your thing, except there was already this other thing’. That’s not letting down gently; that’s trying to make me feel that the other writer was responsible for the failure of my project, rather than person who actually made the decision. I think it’s something television executives get taught in management classes.
Still have lots of ideas, though, ideas which I will think are brilliant right up until the point where they come to naught. I worry that I’m getting worse, as the more I do, the less time I have to fiddle and finesse. But that’s the bad day speaking. You don’t want to hear me on a good day, trumpeting my own genius and my many successes (which, unlike everyone else’s, are purely down to hard work and talent and have nothing to do with luck).
