Monday, 21 April 2008

Missing Lette


I've offered a wealth of insightful tips and techniques over the last year or so (stop that laughing!!!).
But (and I'll think you'll agree), here is the most useful tip ever to festoon this blog:

Don't make a last second change to your script or covering letter prior to sending out.

Because, if you cast a three-hundreth eye over that covering letter and decide that 'unleashing' sounds better than 'releasing', and you send it off and then notice that you actually typed 'unleasing' and that Word has underlined it with a red zigzaggy line ...
... Well, four months of hard work and study will probably come to nothing as you have instantly relegated yourself to the ninety-nine percent who are never taken seriously.

The real world is very different, of course. Authors, scriptwriters ... they all live on the edge, making alterations through to the last moment. And, if you have a read of some of those pro scripts on the BBC Writers' Room website, you'll find speling mistokes on every other page (the Ashes to Ashes script is the worst). It doesn't matter when you're a pro. The end justifies the means. But we amateurs will be judged by the word. It's harsh, but I guess it's necessary too.

2 comments:

esruel said...

Writing Life!
Wouldn't be worth it if it wasn't on a knife edge. Just we always tend to be sitting on that knife edge while it's going on.
Oh, the pain, the pain!

solv said...

Group hug!
Stay strong everyone. Keep learning and grafting, questioning and reinventing. We're all in this together!