Imagine how tiresome it would have really been being part of the Algonquin Round Table, with Dorothy Parker and cronies swapping wisecracks over martinis. I’m betting most of those bon mots were carefully rehearsed, and they were drinking so much because they were nervous.

Which is one way in to a point about writing. Don’t overpolish it. We can tell when you’ve sweated over a supposedly offhand remark, spot it when you’re trying to hard to emulate Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue. This is a phenomenon that affected my prose more than my scripts, which is one of the reasons I rarely go near prose. I have only to read a few lines of my short story The Calico Kid to be reminded that I was taken with J.P. Donleavy at the time. And – give me points for lofty ambition at least – one of my stabs at a Doctor Who novel, of all things, stands self-consciously in Thomas Pynchon’s shadow.

The thing with influences is transcending them. And I don’t mean full-on Buddha style transcendence here; more, the way that a child effortlessly outgrows early fads and peers to develop its own personality. Sometimes that means rejecting early influences the way teenagers do when they start to abhor a previously cherished band under the influence of new friends. Only, the harder you try to reject something that meant a lot to you, the more its influence will show in ways that you can’t control.

Sometimes, you can spot the traces of other writers in things you see. A good few writers have tried to emulate Paul Abbott, not least the ones who script his series Shameless. Few have mastered that Xeroxing, and I’m not sure that’s the best way to approach the show anyway: the giveaway is typically the way they approach writing Frank, who for me is still only written convincingly by Abbott.

At other times, a dialogue tic makes its way round tv shows. I don’t know who first wrote ‘I love the bones of you’, which is a lovely heartfelt way of expressing that sentiment…but I am mightily sick of hearing it from the mouths of various characters on Coronation Street who have no business saying such a thing. At least play with the structure a little, you know? Anyone loving their partner’s bones could reasonably be assumed to be fond of their flesh, their eyes, their arse, and even their words. Think, people: it costs nothing and is worth everything.

The key, as ever, is to keep your attention on the outside world, and note the differences between it and the model of the world you contain in your head and reveal in your vocabulary and sentences. The more differences you note, the richer your internal world becomes, and the more you have to write about. Sounds like a good deal huh? Then stop reading this, and go and note down at least three phrases that capture your attention in the course of today. And tomorrow. And the day after. And…