David Nicholls blog

On his new blog for The Independent, screenwriter and novelist David Nicholls, considers the different status of these two types of writing.

In just under a month’s time the new novel will be published. The finished copies arrive from the printers this week, and then I’ll be invited to actually leave the house and promote.

In the four years since the publication of my last book I’ve been writing screenplays, and it seems that I very rarely get invited to anything. Screenwriters are famously held in low-regard in the industry and, equally famously, never stop moaning about the fact.

Unless he or she is one of a very select group, the screenwriter will wait in vain for their invitation to Sundance or Toronto or Cannes. On the rare instances that I’ve attended press junkets, I’ve sat entirely mute at the end of the table. At the premiere of my first ever produced screenplay a publicist asked if I wouldn’t mind stepping away from Sharon Stone. Instead I was placed at the very end of a long line while the photographs were taken. I smiled of course, delighted and surprised to be there, but unless that was a very, very wide-angle lens, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in the picture.