The Day I Inconvenienced Tony Jordan

I have the worst sense of direction on the planet. I have an 'A' Level in Geography. True, I can hold court on the finer points of glacial moraines and oxbow lakes (pay attention in class when taught about these, kids, because you're going to need that knowledge later in life!), but this has not helped my navigational skills one iota.

Which goes some way to explain why I turned up 15 minutes late to the Red Planet Workshop with Tony Jordan. I apologised and mumbled a joke about how I was using Zen Navigation to get there (just follow a car that looks like it knows where it's going). He was very gracious and he laughed. And it reminded him of a time when.... 

Tony Jordan has a story for every occasion. I'm a big fan of people like that. And he swears like a docker. I'm a big fan of people like that as well.

And there was cake.

He told me - told us - that we could write. That's why we were there. Aces.

Jason Arnopp's covered pretty well what we can talk about here

So, Tony is interested in what we want to write next. "Imagine you've got three months to live and you can only write one more thing. Something that you want to be remembered for. That's what I want to see."

What did I take away from the morning? Tony (See? I called him Tony!) didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Write what you want, not what you think people want to read. Don't get bogged down in technicalities. Be nice to people on the way up. But, Christ, it's the way he tells it! 

I've been struggling with the writing recently. With a full-time job, pregnant partner and psychotic children, I'm constantly tired. I'd hit a wall. I've been working on a new draft of a script for a producer for weeks now and I'd only managed to make it to page 18.

After the workshop, I jumped in the car, put my foot down (I was an expert in the minor roads of Bedfordshire by now) and made it home in record time. I burst through the door, immediately fired up the laptop and wrote 7 pages in 3 hours. OK, I immediately fired up the laptop and went onto Twitter. But then I did the writing. 

The passion's back. I love what I do. I love what I'm trying to do. And, just for that, I thank Tony Jordan. If I play my cards right, I'll hopefully have a lot more to thank him for.

Did I mention there was cake?