How many of you have watched the fourth season of Doctor Who on the BBC? If you haven’t, please send me an email with your address so I can send goons over to beat some sense into you. It was by far the best season of TV I have ever watched. I don’t want to take anything away from the actors but it was mainly the writing that blew me away. Russell T. Davies is a genius. I just finished the book he wrote called Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale which was essentially a treatise on writing. It consisted of the email correspondence between Russell and his interviewer for the past year. granted it was skewed more toward writing a script but I think it has benefits for writing in general. If you call yourself a writer of any sort you have to read this book.
It showed that even a writer on top of his game at the possible height of his career is besieged by the same self-defeating doubts and insecurities that the rest of us have. How many times have you been writing something and think “This is crap, no one will want to read this, I am wasting my time”. I know it happens to me all of the time but it is nice to know that if you push through that and keep writing, you may be able to produce a masterpiece. Which, in my opinion, is exactly what Russell did and I am truly jealous.
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