Who The Hell Does He Think He Is?

I'm a screenwriter. I have some business cards that say that, so it must be true.

Writing for film and television has been the dream since I was six years old, watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and thinking "I want to do that!"

I realised, even then, I lacked the organisational skills to direct or produce, but loved writing. I reckon my spec script for an "Aliens" sequel written at the tender age of 10 showed promise and a healthy disregard for grammatical conventions. Couldn't get anyone to read it though. It's all politics.

It's been around seven years since I completed my first "proper" screenplay. They say it takes, on average, ten years to make it as a screenwriter, so I've still got three years to remain above average.

I have an agent. Score. More about how that happened later. He's happy now that I've provided him with a project he can actually sell and hopefully I can keep you informed as to how that goes.

Along with the rest of the blogosphere, it seems, I'm a finalist in this year's Red Planet Screenwriting contest and, in October, I'm off to sunny Cheltenham for the 4th annual Screenwriter's Festival as one of the ten "Son of the Pitch" finalists.

I hold down a full time job and have two kids, with a third on the way (any suggestions for boy's names would be gratefully received, as my Better Half believes that Agemenon and Zeus are "silly") and it's going to be interesting to see how this blog fits in with everything else. I think I've planned out a daily timetable to make this work...