You know what’s REALLY HARD as a writer?  Knowing which project to start next.  It’s a stone cold nightmare … committing to something that could take up months, years of your time.  What if you make the wrong decision?  It’s professionally, personally and financially devastating.

With a film in pre-production and another optioned and in script development, I’m already thinking about what’s next and I’ve picked up and put down dozens of ideas.  But nothing felt “right”.  Nothing ticked both the artistic (“I love it”) and commercial (“audiences will love it”) boxes: head and heart. 

But does it have to tick both boxes straight away?    My first film was heart … but has been shaped into something commercial.  So it now ticks both boxes.  And my second film was very much commercially driven, but I’ve come to love it.  Head and heart eventually.   

So I’m going for head (quite literally) and I’ll adapt my second novel Headhunters.  I love the premis, I love the story, I love the characters, and in particular I love the protagonist.  He made such an impact on me, he was the only character I’ve ever written that left me desolate when I’d stopped writing him.  Like a best friend moving abroad – suddenly he wasn’t with me any more. 

It’s been a terrible year and it’s great to pick up my old friend again.  The absolute joy of writing from the heart.  I’ll take a gamble with the “head”.