Word Count 85: Philip Ralph on the state of the screen industry, Joel Morris's new comedy course...

Plus the open letter protesting AI scraping, Jane Friedman’s free email course on earning a living as a writer, and guest cat Adder.

Hi there, 

It’s hard to focus on much at the moment, what with what’s going on — gesticulates wildly — over there. But I have gathered a few great links for you this week.

Suw’s news: Fieldwork news

Now that Ada Lovelace Day is over, I am diving back into Fieldwork, my sitcom podcast about four ecologists working in a remote field station in the North York Moors. As part of my prep for crowdfunding Fieldwork, I’d love to ask you a couple of questions, so please take a moment to respond to these polls:

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!

Stop, look, listen: Just Get A Real Job, S151 – WFT has happened with the TV Industry? A Deep Dive with Philip Ralph

I discovered Philip Ralph, as I’m sure many other people did, because of his viral thread on Twitter about the parlous state of the British TV industry, which he wrote after the axing of Doctors. If you haven’t read it, you really must. 

So when I saw that he was in conversation with Jamie Mackinlay on the Just Get A Real Job podcast, I had to listen. And I’m glad I did, because although it is perhaps not a cheering listen, it is an important one — information is power. We can make better, more informed decisions if we know that the screen industry’s a mess and ‘survive to 25’ is bullshit.

One of the most important sections, I thought, was about the way that magical thinking permeates the creative industries and it’s just so, so toxic. People who should know better are encouraging early career writers to believe that if they just keep going, they’ll be successful, and that’s just not how it works.

The section of verbatim and docudrama writing was also fascinating. All in all, it’s well worth your time. 

Course: Joel Morris’s Writers’ Room

Despite being flat out in the run-up to Ada Lovelace Day, I did Joel Morris’s comedy course a couple of months ago, and it was a huge amount of fun. It’s a much more informal course than most, with Joel talking for about 45 minutes before opening it up to a Q&A. 

That was about all I had the capacity for at that point, but I still got a lot out of it. Much of it, for me, was about confirming my instincts, developing my confidence, and giving me some insights into the problems I’m trying to solve with Fieldwork. 

If you’re new to comedy, or you haven’t read Joel’s book, or just want to better appreciate the genre, you’ll find it utterly fascinating and incredibly helpful. Joel thinks deeply about the bones of comedy — what it is, why we laugh, and how it’s an important social glue. 

The next Writers’ Room course starts 24 November and runs for five weeks (£350 +VAT). 

Read this: Government AI consultation

The British Government is going to consult on a possible scheme to allow AI companies to scrape content unless copyright holders opt out (£). Silicon Valley tech companies like Google have argued that they need to be able to train their Large Language Models (LLMs) on whatever they fancy, regardless of its copyright status. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Ministers are facing a major backlash”, according to The Guardian:

The BBC is among the organisations opposing a plan that would allow tech companies to train artificial intelligence models using online content by default, unless publishers and other content creators specifically “opt out”.

Good.

I’ve been a critic of current copyright laws in the past, but the idea that we should just get let tech giants hoover up whatever they want specifically to create a tool that they intend to replace us is absolutely outrageous. 

The Society of Authors has released a nicely pithy statement on AI training: 

The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those work, and must not be permitted.

At the time of writing, 33,769 people have signed the statement, and I encourage everyone who writes anything at all to go and sign it as well. You don’t have to be a published author or produced screenwriter for your work to be under threat — anything published on the internet has probably already been scraped, and anything new will also be at risk.

The creative industries contribute £126 bn to the economy and employ 2.4 million people. If the government wants to juice the economy, try giving us some grants so we can do cool shit people want, instead of facilitating the development of tools that will put us out of work. 

Read these: Jane Friedman’s on earning a living as a writer

Jane Friedman, who writes the publishing industry newsletter The Hot Sheet, has a free email-based course on How to Earn a Living as a Writer. Some of the topics she’ll be covering are: 

• A look at common misconceptions about earning a living from writing

• Why book sales is not a good metric for success

• What it means to have a business model as a writer

• A no-nonsense discussion of platform (most writers don’t in fact land book deals because of platform, but it does affect earnings potential)

• How relationship building affects your career

• What it means to “find” your readers when you’re not a marketer or publicist

It’s free to sign up, and there’s an archive of previous posts so you won’t miss out. 

Obligatory cat picture

Today we have a guest cat, Adder, whose human is an old friend of mine, Paul Grimes. Adder is a perfect void, seen here modelling studied disinterest next to a vase of flowers. 

Paul rescued Adder when he was just four month old, in March 2013, and says:

Adder spent the first night with us sleeping between our pillows, and hasn't stopped trying to do that since. Which is annoying, because when he gets over-stimulated, he bites.

Who wouldn’t want to be nibbled on by such a handsome chap?

That’s it for this week! 

Ttfn,

Suw