Jacqueline Wilson at the Writers' Guild Centre - reminder

Tickets are still available to see Jacqueline Wilson at the Writers' Guild Centre in London next Tuesday, 6 February 2007, 6.30 - 8pm

It will be a fantastic opportunity to meet the Children’s Laureate and hear about her experiences working as a children’s writer.

Free refreshments will be provided before and after the event along with the opportunity to mingle with fellow guests.

Tickets for this event are £10 for Writers' Guild members £20 for non-members.

To book, contact Moe Owoborode at the Guild office.

British Library under threat

In The Telegraph, Sam Leith states the case for the defence of the British Library.

Nobody who uses the British Library in St Pancras can have read this weekend's reports on the subject without horror.

Facing the prospect of a seven per cent cut in its £100 million annual budget, the library has announced (not without a certain amount of calculation) that it might have to start charging readers for entry, reduce its opening hours, and/or – most horrifying of all – cut its collection of books and manuscripts by 15 per cent.

The British Library is an absolute paradise on earth. It is warm, clean, comfortable, accommodating and quiet. Its on-site catering, like its wireless internet access, might be extortionately priced and only intermittently satisfactory. But what it is supposed to do, it does – and does so brilliantly it could make you weep.

Patrick Marber interview

Screenwriter and playwright Patrick Marber, who was recently nominated for a best adapted screenplay Oscar for Notes On A Scandal (from the novel by Zoe Heller, trailer below), talks to BBC News.

"[The studios] have suddenly realised that these films, arthouse films, make money for them and they take them very seriously," he says.

"Every studio has its own independent division, so people like me who would have once been abused as artsy-fartsy idiots are quite respected.

"They recognise that good scripts attract the talent. And there's a whole generation of stars who genuinely want to be in good projects."

Bruno Heller

Dylan Callaghan talks to Bruno Helller for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Bruno Heller, co-creator of HBO's award-winning historically dramatic series Rome and son of acclaimed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? screenwriter Lukas Heller, readily admits that his father's successful career likely kept him from the scribe trade for years. “I'm sure there were some good oedipal reasons why I didn't put pen to paper until a couple years after his death.” Heller instead spent years working nearly every other below-the-line job in film, from location manager to clapper loader. “When I'd failed at everything else, I finally had a crack at this.”

BBC launches e-commissioning

From the BBC Press Office:

From March 2007 independent and in-house programme makers submitting programme proposals to BBC Vision will find the system quicker and less bureaucratic.

The BBC is to update its commissioning process through the introduction of a web-based system for managing programme proposals.

The new site will enable the BBC Vision to handle the huge volume of proposals it receives faster and more effectively.

Having submitted their proposals electronically programme makers will be able to track the progress of their ideas online.

The Cowards on BBC Three

Sketch comedy group The Cowards - Tim Key, Tom Basden, Lloyd Woolf and Stefan Golaszewski - are taking over the BBC Three website for the next six weeks.

Staffroom monologues

If you work or volunteer in a school, you're eligible to enter the Staffroom Monologues competition being run by Teachers' TV. The deadline for entries is Monday, 26 February 2007.

Writersroom success

In 2005, Stephen Riley sent his radio script, The Birth and Death of Daylight, to BBC writersroom. A script reader recommended the piece highly and in 2006 it was eventually chosen for The Wire on Radio 3.

Stephen takes up the story himself on the BBC Writersroom website.

To be honest, I originally wrote this piece for radio because I knew radio was a medium that's open to new writing. But I found the whole process to be genuinely collaborative, focused on the story, and extremely supportive throughout.

There were compromises and things I could have done a lot better, but the story is out there, and it was a lot of fun doing it. Now I've just got to try and do it again...

Jim Harrison interview

In The New York Times, Charles McGrath talks to novelist and screenwriter Jim Harrison.

Jim Harrison, author of rugged, outdoorsy books like “True North” and “Legends of the Fall,” is tough on vehicles. His current ride is a much-abused Chevy Tahoe that every day is pounded over terrain most S.U.V.’s experience only in commercials: splashing through creeks, lurching down hills, bouncing over rock-strewn dirt roads in the back country of southern Arizona, where Mr. Harrison and his wife, Linda, spend the winter months in an adobe casita on the Sonoita Creek. The shock absorbers are so overstressed they’ve gone a little spongy.

Mr. Harrison, who is 69 with a lot of miles on his tires, is not much kinder to his own chassis. He is half-blind in his left eye, which gives him a wild, cockeyed look, and a pack or two of American Spirits every day have left him with a voice like gravel. Mr. Harrison was once a legendary eater and drinker, the sort of iron-livered, barrel-chested trencherman who could hold his own at the table with Orson Welles and John Huston and who thought nothing of a 10- or 12-course lunch at Ma Maison followed by Champagne and a gross of oysters for supper. But that was back in his days as a part-time Hollywood screenwriter, when Mr. Harrison also befriended Jack Nicholson (whose watercolor of Mr. Harrison and four nude dancers at the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris hangs on a wall of the casita) and both made and quickly blew through a good deal of money, much of it spent on meals.

Online video theatre promos

On The Guardian Theatre Blog, Karen Fricker looks at how theatres are promoting themselves using online video. Examples include TAG Theatre's interview with Ewan McGregor.

Parsons and Naylor's Pull-Out Sections

Andy Parson and Henry Naylor begin recording their ninth series of Parsons and Naylor's Pull-Out Sections on 9th February. They're looking for topical gags to go into the "stand-up sections" that link the sketches, to be delivered by Andy and Henry. The show is made for Radio 2 and so subject matter needs to be relevant to the Radio 2 Audience.

Full details are on the BBC Writersroom.

Rocliffe New Writing Forum 21 February

Hosted by BAFTA at 195 Piccadilly in London, the next Rocliffe New Writing Forum will be held on 21 February 2007. The deadline for script submissions is 30 January.

The forum works as a development workshop, enabling writers to test extracts of new material with professional actors and receive feedback from an established industry guest.

Five Days - Gwyneth Hughes

If you've enjoyed the first two episodes of Five Days this week, a reminder that there's an interview with Gwyneth Hughes, who created and wrote the serial, on the Guild website.

Can short plays survive?

Unless they're by Pinter or Beckett, playlets rarely get a look-in on our main stages. It doesn't have to be this way. Festivals and double bills are simple solutions to the argument that short plays aren't commercially viable or value for money unless they star Michael Gambon or Harold Pinter, yet such events are relatively uncommon.

The truly short play is in danger of becoming a neglected form. Still seen as inferior and limiting, it's not afforded the kudos of, say, the short story. I'm not arguing against large-scale work or the admirable monsterist movement, just against losing the art of brevity, of finding the epic in the miniature and of making every word count.

More from Maxie Szalwinska on The Guardian Theatre blog.

Life On Mars trailer

Trailer for series two of Life On Mars (created by Mathew Graham, Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah).

2007 Oscar nominations

The writing categories often get overlooked in the Oscar coverage, so in case you don't see them elsewhere, the nominees for Best Original Screenplay are:

• Guillermo Arriaga - Babel
• Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis - Letters From Iwo Jima
• Michael Arndt - Little Miss Sunshine
• Guillermo del Toro - Pan's Labyrinth
• Peter Morgan - The Queen

The nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay are:

• Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips - Borat Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
• Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby - Children Of Men (based on the novel by P.D. James)
• William Monahan - The Departed (based on a screenplay by Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong)
• Todd Field and Tom Perrotta - Little Children (based on the novel by Tom Perrotta)
• Patrick Marber - Notes On A Scandal (based on the book by Zoe Heller)

The Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, February 25. Who will you be rooting for?

Joel Surnow - 24

Joel Surnow, co-creator of hit TV series 24 (starring Kiefer Sutherland, pictured, right), talks to John Patterson in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Right now, Surnow, his co-creator Robert Cochran and the writing team are writing episode 19 - with no idea as yet how the show will wrap up this season. They work a merciless schedule, necessitated by 24's pioneering non-stop format (other shows have two-month-long hiatuses per season, 24 runs for 24 consecutive weeks). After writing the four-episode block already aired, they had no idea what would be happening by episode six. If the writers aren't perpetually surprising themselves, says Surnow, how can they expect to keep surprising the fans?

"I don't know how we'll get Jack back in a good place so we can pull the rug out from under him all over again - but we'll try! It's brutal, it's rough. 18 scripts from July to January, six from January to June. So it starts to feel about now that we have the ending in sight - even though, of course, we don't know the ending."

Save the Theatre Museum

The Writers' Guild has signed up in support of the campaign to save the Theatre Museum.

On January 7 the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden in the heart of London’s Theatreland closed its doors to the public. It will, however, continue its valuable work in education and outreach until at least August 2007.

This is as a result of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s breaking its commitment under the Heritage Act 1983 to set up and maintain a separate Theatre Museum. The Guardians want to make the V&A keep its word and re-open the Russell Street site to the public. Otherwise we face the prospect of having no equivalent Theatre Museum at all for at least two to three years, and probably a lot longer. It seems completely unacceptable that we should have the Museum building and all its exhibits available, to say nothing of its potential for stimulating further activity, and not keep it open until a replacement is provided.

The vast majority of the UK’s major theatre organisations are backing our campaign. Will you join us?

Find out more about the background to the campaign, write to your MP and sign up as a 'Guardian' of the Museum.

Bryan Elsley - Skins

In The Telegraph, screenwriter Bryan Elsley tells Stephen Pile how showing a draft script to his son, Jamie, led to the creation of teen drama Skins (pictured, above).

Jamie was not impressed. "It's all turgid, middle-aged bollocks, dad," he said, and suggested writing about teenagers instead. "But don't do it in the usual way. Let me help you do it properly."

...In no time Elsley had set up a talented young writers' group with 16 members, all in their teens and early twenties. "The rule is that everyone gets paid for their ideas and writing in the group, but all the material discussed or written at the meeting can be used by the designated writer of the episode."

In this series, five episodes were written by Elsley and four by the twentysomething writers, including his son. "We have a mentoring system where the more experienced writers, the 23-year-olds, help the 17- and 18-year-olds. The 17-year-olds have written six-minute spin-off films for the website, but if we get a second series we want them to write their own episodes supported by the group."

Skins starts on E4 on Thursday.

Screenwriters' Festival 2007

It's been confirmed that the Screenwriters' Festival 2007 will take place from Tuesday 3rd to Friday 6th July 2007 at The Manor by the Lake (at Cheltenham Film Studios).

Confirmed speakers for this, the second Festival, include Jimmy McGovern, Guillermo Del Toro and Julian Fellowes.

The Pitch Factor competition will be running again and, for the first time, there will also be a spec script market.