Is Google Book Settlement a rip-off?

In The Wall Street Journal, Lynn Chu argues that the copyright deal reached by Google and industry 'representatives' in America threatens to undermine fundamental principles.

We already have a good system. It's called the system of private property and free contract, designed for dispersed, autonomous individuals -- not command-and-control centers. The U.S. Constitution grants authors small monopolies in their own copyrights. Author market power is talent-based and individual, not collective. This class action seeks to wipe all this out -- just for Google. But U.S. law does not grant any single publisher monopoly power to herd all of us into its list.

For private gain, the Google parties now seek to destroy the health in the system that individual bargaining preserves. Disputes will be fixed in arbitration with no access to federal courts which have often shown mercy to authors. Arbitrators will be "you sign it you eat it" line-parsing bureaucrats.

Say goodbye to your rights, forever, authors, if this mess goes through.

BBC College of Comedy

The BBC College of Comedy is inviting applications for its second year:

The scheme will run for 12 months, and six successful applicants (writing pairs will be treated as a single applicant) will be attached to an existing production, and will also be mentored in the creation of original work.

The scheme is open to writers of half-hour narrative comedy, and to sketch writers from the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.

Applicants will have had their work broadcast; had work commissioned for development by a broadcaster or production company; or had their work performed professionally, either as a writer or a writer/performer. Applications which do not meet these criteria will not be considered.

The deadline for submissions is noon on 24 April 2009. Full details can be found from BBC Writersroom.

You can read about the College of Comedy's first year in Micheál Jacob's posts for the Writersroom blog.

Patricia Parkin obituary

Patricia Parkin, a much-admired literary editor, has died at the age of 64.

The Guardian has an obituary by the novelist Patrick Gale.

A notable working relationship at HarperCollins was with Fay Weldon, whose books she nurtured for 15 years. "Patricia edited without you really noticing," Weldon claimed. "She was a very light-handed editor, very subtle in how she made you change things or see things you might be doing wrong. And she was so widely read that she gave you the flattering feeling you were in the company of good writers."

BAFTA vote - Drama Series

Just for fun, and totally unofficial, a poll (right) to see who users of this blog would choose for best Drama Series from those nominated for this year's TV BAFTAs.

Voting closes 9am Monday 6th April. Feel free to argue your case in the comments...

Response to proposal for a digital rights agency

The Writers' Guild has submitted its response to the government discussion paper, What Role for a Digital Rights Agency? (pdf), that follows on from the Digital Britain Interim Report.

The Guild's response (pdf) welcomes some aspects of the proposals and also raises some concerns, including that:

We are concerned that the idea of a Rights Agency is introduced in the Digital Britain consultation documents mainly as a resource for rightsholders that are sizeable companies such as film and TV producers, broadcasters, etc. For this initiative to be truly democratic and effective it needs to be equally open to individual creators who either hold copyright and moral rights in their works, or have assigned/licensed/waived those rights in return for monetary or other rights under commercial contracts. This could be partially achieved by involving representatives of such creators – for instance, trade unions (such as the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain), collecting societies, and other associations, but to be entirely democratic and open, the Rights Agency will need to give full access to individuals.

Richard Ford on Frank Bascombe

In The Guardian, novelist Richard Ford explains why he never intended that the central character in his Sportswriter novels, Frank Bascombe, should be considered as an American 'everyman'.

In nearly 40 years of writing stories of varying lengths and shapes and, in the process, making up quite a large number of characters, I've always tried to abide by EM Forster's famous dictum from Aspects of the Novel that says fictional characters should possess "the incalculability of life". To me, this means that characters in novels (the ones we read and the ones we write) should be as variegated and vivid of detail and as hard to predict and make generalisations about as the people we actually meet every day. This incalculability would seem to have the effect of drawing us curiously nearer to characters in order to get a better, more discerning look at them, inasmuch as characters are usually the principal formal features by which fiction gets its many points across. These vivid, surprising details - themselves well-rendered in language - will, indeed, be their own source of illuminating pleasure. And the whole complex process will eventuate in our ability to be more interested in the characters, as well as in those real people we meet outside the book's covers. In my view, this is why almost all novels - even the darkest ones - are fundamentally optimistic in nature: because they confirm that complex human life is a fit subject for our interest, and they presume a future where they'll be read, their virtues savoured, their lessons put into practice. (I should add, as a counterweight to Forster, that I have also taken to heart Robert Frost's advice meant specially for writers: that what we do when we write represents the last of our childhood, and we may for that reason practise it somewhat irresponsibly.)

BBC National Short Story Award

The BBC National Short Story Award 2009, the largest award for a single short story in the world, has been launched. The prize is £15,000 for the winning story, £3,000 for the runner-up and £500 for the three other shortlisted stories.

This year's panel of judges are: singer-songwriter Will Young, broadcaster and journalist Tom Sutcliffe (chair), author Dame Margaret Drabble, Orange Prize winner Helen Dunmore and BBC Radio 4’s Editor Di Speirs.

The shortlist will be announced on Friday 27 November with the five stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4 each weekday before the winner is announced. The five stories will also be published in a special collection.

The deadline for entries is 5pm on 15 June 2009.

Full details can be found on the Story website.

David Simon interview

As The Wire finally comes to network TV in the UK (it starts tonight at 11.20 on BBC Two), its creator, David Simon, tells Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian about his approach to screenwriting.

The key principle of Simon's storytelling was encapsulated in a remark that caused raised eyebrows when he uttered it, late last year, on BBC2's Culture Show: "Fuck the average viewer."

When you want to write the truth, Simon argues, writing for those who know nothing sets the bar too low. "That's how they taught us to write at the Baltimore Sun: 'For the average reader with a seventh-grade education.' " But when he took a leave of absence to write Homicide, his account of a year with Baltimore murder detectives - it later became an acclaimed TV drama of the same name - he realised it was time for a new approach. "There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write," he says, "when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader ... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective." He wasn't aiming to please his subjects themselves, he insists; many of the detectives emerge from the book as racist, homophobic, sexist or some mixture of all three. "My guy in my head was some guy in Chicago I'd never met. Not the average reader. Fuck him! I want to write for the guy living the event. When I criticise him, I want him to think, 'That was fair.' When I don't criticise him, I want him to think, 'He gets it.'"

Government responds to PLR petition

The government has issued its official response to an online petition arguing that the current level of Public Lending Right (PLR) should be maintained.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport does understand how many authors significantly depend on Public Lending Rights (PLR) payments for income. The Government remains firmly committed to the PLR scheme, and since April 2008 has worked with the PLR on a number of efficiency measures to ensure that the organisation spends the minimum amount possible on administration. Consequently, in 2008/09 the rate per loan has been maintained.

It is now not possible to reopen the PLR’s funding allocation until the next Government Spending Review. Making funding allocations always involves weighing priorities, and in the circumstances of the last spending round, the allocation made to the PLR represented a fair settlement given the broad range of competing pressures. The Government has demonstrated its support for PLR and for writers through significant increases in previous spending rounds - in 2002/03 funding was increased by 35%, from £5.2m to £7m, and in 2000/01 the rate per loan increased by 58%, from 2.67p to 4.21p.

What Guild members are getting up to

SIMON ASHDOWN wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 7:30pm on Thursday 2nd April.

PERRIE BALTHAZAR wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Friday 3rd April.

TRACY BRABIN wrote the episode of Shameless going out on C4 at 10:00pm on Tuesday 31st March.

RAY BROOKING wrote the episode of Doctors "Strange Little Girl" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Monday 30th March.

MICHAEL CHAPLIN wrote the first episode of the new series of Robin Hood "Total Eclipse" going out on BBC1 at 6:50pm on Saturday 28th March.

PAUL COUTES wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Tuesday 31st March.

MARY CUTLER wrote the episodes of The Archers going out on Radio 4 at 7:00pm from Monday 30th March till Friday 3rd April.

TIM DYNEVOR wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Wednesday 1st April.

JOHN FINNEMORE wrote the episode of Cabin Pressure "Fitton" going out on Radio 4 at 6:30pm on Tuesday 31st March.

EMILIO DI GIROLAMO wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Friday 3rd April.

ROB GITTINS wrote the episodes of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Monday 30th and Tuesday 31st March.

DEBBIE HORSFIELD wrote the first episode of All the Small Things going out on BBC1 at 9:00pm on Tuesday 31st March.

JULIE JONES wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm on Monday 30th March.

JESSICA LEA wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Thursday 2nd April.

JANE MARLOW wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Wednesday 1st April.

NEIL McKAY has been commissioned by Channel 4 to write a drama based on the life and times of politician Mo Mowlam.

GRAHAM MITCHELL wrote the episode of Holby City "Locked Away" going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Tuesday 31st March.

JULIE PARSONS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Tuesday 31st March.

ALAN PLATER wrote the episode of Lewis "The Quality of Mercy" going out on ITV1 at 8:00pm on Sunday 29th March. His new Jazz musical Looking For Buddy is on at the Bolton Octagon and from May 6th will be at the Live Theatre, Newcastle. The last week of the current tour of Blonde Bombshells of 1943 is next week at the New Theatre, Hull.

MARC PYE wrote the episode of Waterloo Road going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Wednesday 1st April.

EMMA REEVES wrote the episode of Half Moon Investigations going out on BBC1 at 4:35pm on Monday 30th March.

HEATHER ROBSON wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Monday 30th March.

DAVID STAFFORD co-wrote the episode of Hazelbeach going out on Radio 4 at 11:30pm on Monday 30th Monday. He also co-wrote the radio play Tony's Little Sister and the Paradox of Monasticism going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Friday 3rd April.

BILL TAYLOR wrote the episodes of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd April.

JOE TURNER wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Monday 30th March.

NICK WARBURTON wrote the episode of Witness: Five Plays from the Gospel of Luke "Outsiders" going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Tuesday 31st March.

TREVOR WOOD'S new play Maggie's End is being performed from Tuesday 7th April till Saturday 18th April at The Shaw Theatre, Euston Road

STEPHEN WYATT'S dramatisation of Ripley Under Water is going out on Radio 4 as part of The Complete Ripley series at 2:30pm on Saturday 28th March.

Berthoud appointed Head of Radio Comedy

From the BBC Press Office:

BAFTA award-winning comedy producer Jane Berthoud has been appointed Head of Radio Comedy at the BBC, it was announced today by Mark Freeland, Head of Comedy, BBC Production. She will be the first woman to hold the post.

Jane has worked in BBC Comedy for 14 years, six of which have been spent exclusively in radio, and her credits are varied and numerous, including – for TV – Ideal (BBC Three) and Help (BBC Two).

In The Motherhood

In The New York Times, Brian Stelter reports on how an idea started online by a marketing company became In The Motherhood, a network sitcom that will debut on America on ABC tomorrow - and why the Writers Guild of America has got involved...

On the MSN.com edition of “Motherhood” (since discontinued), short segments about funny, frazzled mothers were inspired by the real-life stories that viewers submitted via an Internet forum. ABC, similarly, asked for story submissions on its Web site (itm.abc.go.com) and said that they “might just become inspiration for a story by the writers.”

But ABC’s call for ideas from moms drew the attention of the Writers Guild of America, which said this type of request for submissions was “not permissible” under its contract with the network. This week ABC abruptly removed the language about “inspiration” from its Web site, effectively saying that the writers may not be listening to viewers’ ideas, after all.

The last-minute changes are a telling demonstration of the differences between the Web video world — a mostly low-budget, short-form medium — and the traditional television industry. Just as most publishing companies don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, most TV and movie studios don’t accept scripts, ideas or jokes submitted by viewers. Unless the proper waivers are signed in advance, something as innocent as a fan e-mail message with a suggested joke can provoke a copyright-infringement lawsuit later.

Jez Butterworth interview

In The Guardian, Mark Lawson talks to playwright and screenwriter Jez Butterworth.

Admirers of Jez Butterworth tend to connect him with London, the location for his play Mojo, or with St Albans, the setting for Birthday Girl, his film with Nicole Kidman. But Butterworth, unexpectedly, turns out to be a Somerset farmer: "We've been breeding and eating our own pigs for five years now," he says. He has been supervising rehearsals of his latest play on day trips to London. Burly, with a sleek black-and-grey beard, Butterworth certainly looks the part, though he asks: "Actually, can you put smallholding instead of farm? Otherwise, the proper farmers around us will laugh themselves silly."

BBC Drama Writers Academy

From BBC Writersroom:

The 2009 Writers Academy will accept applications from Monday 6 April...

The Writers Academy is a major initiative aimed at discovering and training the next generation of writers for BBC One’s flagship drama series: EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City, and Doctors.

Eight writers are selected out of hundreds of applicants, to undergo an intensive 15-month programme designed to equip them with all the skills necessary to write successfully for BBC Drama. The course entails classroom training, lectures from the country's best writers, instruction in all aspects of television production, and direct writing experience on the four Continuing Drama shows...

You are eligible to apply if you have had your work broadcast on television or radio, or performed professionally at the theatre. You will need to send in an original sample of your writing.

This will be the Academy's fifth year. Full details, including the entry requirements and how to apply, are on the BBC Writersroom website.

There are also a number of posts about the Academy on the Writersroom blog.

BAFTA TV Awards nominations

The nominations have been announced for the 2009 BAFTA TV Awards. They include:

Single Drama

• Einstein and Eddington (written by Peter Moffat - BBC2/Company Pictures)
• Hancock and Joan (written by Richard Cottan - BBC4/World Productions)
• The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (written by Simon Block - C4/TalkbackThames)
• White Girl (written by Abi Morgan - BBC2/Tiger Aspect)
  

Drama Series

• Doctor Who (writing credits - BBC1/BBC Productions)
• Shameless (writing credits - C4/Company Pictures)
• Spooks (writing credits - BBC1/Kudos)
• Wallander (written by Richard Cottan and Richard McBrien, from the books by Henning Menkell - BBC1/Left Bank)
  

Drama Serial

• Criminal Justice (written by Peter Moffat - BBC1/BBC Productions)
• Dead Set (written by Charlie Brooker - C4/Zeppotron)
• The Devil's Whore (written by Peter Flannery - C4/Company Pictures & Power)
• House of Saddam (written by Alex Holmes and Stephen Butchard - BBC2/BBC Productions & HBO)
  

Continuing Drama

• The Bill (writing credits - ITV1/TalkbackThames)
• Casualty (writing credits - BBC1/BBC Productions)
• EastEnders (writing credits - BBC1/BBC Productions)
  

Comedy Programme

• Harry and Paul (created by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse - BBC1/Tiger Aspect)
• The Peter Serafinowicz Show (cretaed by Peter and James Serafinowicz - BBC2/Objective)
• Star Stories (C4/Objective)
• That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC2/BBC Productions)
  

Sitcom

• The Inbetweeners (written by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris - C4/Bwark Productions)
• The IT Crowd (written by Graham Linehan - C4/TalkbackThames)
• Outnumbered (written by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin - BBC1/Hat Trick)
• Peep Show (written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong - C4/Objective)
  

The Awards will be presented on Sunday 26 April.

NB: I've added written by credits where I can find them, or links to credits if there are a large number of writers.

Watching Doctor Who with Tom Baker

A curious tale from the Lancashire Evening Post:

A playwright is on the hunt for a Preston family who invited Doctor Who star Tom Baker into their home to watch an episode of the cult sci-fi series.

The star arrived at their front door on November 13, 1976, as he was travelling back from a fan convention in Blackpool.

He could not wait until his return to London to see the latest episode and so found himself sitting alongside a stunned family as they watched him on screen.

Now, Scottish writer Simon Farquhar is researching the incident for a new production he is penning for the BBC, titled Teatime with Tom Baker, and is asking for the help of Evening Post readers.

Guy Hibbert interview

On the Writers' Guild website I've put up the interview with screenwriter Guy Hibbert that appears in the most recent issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer.

He talks mostly about the extraordinary story behind his new film, Five Minutes Of Heaven, that will be shown on BBC Two next month and released theatrically outside the UK.

After Omagh, I was asked by BBC Northern Ireland to write something about the legacy of violence. I wasn't sure how to approach it but then came across a BBC documentary about the Troubles in which the perpetrators of crime were to meet the families of their victims. Through this I heard about Joe and Alistair. In 1975 Joe Griffin was 11 when Alistair Little, who was then himself just 17, drove up to Joe's parents' house and shot Joe's brother three times in the head. Joe witnessed the killing. Thirty years later both men were asked to appear in this documentary; Joe refused saying that "if I am ever in a room with that man I will kill him". I immediately knew this was my story and so set about meeting both men.

Update (25.03.2009): Five Minutes Of Heaven will be shown on BBC Two on Saturday 4 April

Jen Hadfield interview

On the RSA Arts & Ecology website, William Shaw talks to this year's T.S. Eliot Prize For Poetry winner, Jen Hadfield.

It's a silly thing to say to any poet, but language is obviously very important in your work.

I have a bit of anxiety about my own ability to read because I find it quite hard to sit still. At the moment I'm trying to learn to read while walking. But the flipside to that is that my appreciation of poetry is more the spoken end of things - not necessarily poetry in performance, but the stuff in books which is honest and attentive to what spoken language is. Certainly that's what lights me up. The spoken word is haphazard. It veers from the formal to the irreverent and the sophisticated to the downright childish, and I like doing that.

William Shaw has also blogged about the interview.

...it’s inevitable that anyone with Hadfield’s subject matter becomes political, in the sense that - as Siân Ede was saying - nature is no longer just out there as the ineffable, unstoppable force. “It is tainted. It is sad. It is ending.” It’s something broken, and if you write about it now you are inevitably writing about catastrophe. Hadfield sees herself as writing from within the ecopoetic tradition, but with that modern knowledge

Polly Stenham interview

In The Observer, Lynn Barber talks to playwright Polly Stenham, whose new play, Tusk Tusk, opens at The Royal Court next week.

It's so strange, when every twenty-something in the world seems to want to write for movies, to find one who wants to write for theatre. But she says her father took her to the theatre from a very young age and she always loved it. "And theatre's more for the writer really, isn't it? It's more your vision, whereas writers get sacked on films, or they have 17 different writers, and you're much more a hired hack. I'm not saying that I won't go there – and I am doing the screenplay of That Face – but I love the simplicity and kind of groundedness that you just write a play and send it in and they say yes or no, and then you get some actors and rehearse it for four weeks and it goes on. No crap about money, no million people involved, no diluting it – oldest form of storytelling in the world, you know?"

An ER post-mortem

As the final series of medical drama ER draws to a close, in The New York Times, Bill Carter talks to some of those behind its long-running success, including the first executive producer John Wells

There are so many versions about what happened at the pilot screening for NBC, but this is what I remember. Warren Littlefield [the president of NBC Entertainment] came out and said, “We’re never going to put it on the air.” Les went crazy and started yelling, saying we were going to test it ourselves. We called NBC after we tested it, and they didn’t believe our results. So we suggested a focus group. That went so well they then tested it. I was shocked at the results. It was the best-testing show they’d ever had.