God, I’m glad I’m not waiting for me. Typically, I write in a fairly efficient manner, and developing treatments and meeting deadlines is something I take in my stride. But this particular feature treatment is taking forever. And I’m fine about that: progress might be slow, but I’m happy about the pieces that have been popping up, and which one by one are filling out the big picture. And since there’s been no deadline imposed on it, I’m fine about letting this project take its course.

Why is this story taking such a long time to appear? After all, I’ve trained myself to turn treatments round fairly rapidly. But this one is different. Primarily because it has its roots in my personal experience, and a particular set of events that were traumatic at the time but which I now view as very positive for what they did for me. Events which I’m constructing a psychological thriller from, that plays with the genre it is an example of. All of which is a way of saying it’s richer and more complex in some respects than stories I’ve tackled before.

Anyway, it’s nearly done now. Some of the bigger realisations about this story have come through sleep: I’ve woken a few times now with another piece of the story in my head, that’s worked better than the provisional piece that was there before it. And the whole is shaping up nicely.

The slow pace on this project isn’t matched by my progress generally: I’ve been working on a couple of television concepts which have come to me quickly, and that I know exactly where I’m going with. Helps that they’re animation projects that I’m developing with just the right people, whose interests and sensibilities I know, so that we’re working in tune with one another. So, all being well, those ideas should proceed at a fairly rapid pace, while the feature treatment just bubbles away by itself.

I’m getting a more complete sense of what the treatment is about than I ever have for a story I’ve developed, and when I’ve related it to people the feedback I’ve got is that it’s both original in conception and very cinematic in the way it unfolds. And I suspect that all of that means the script itself will be relatively easy to write when it comes time to do so.

All of this is about saying that different projects have their own rhythms. Some tv shows are easy to pitch for once you understand their ebb and flow. Danger is, you’ll write what amounts to a pastiche of the show rather than something that speaks to its core. Contrast a bog standard episode of Casualty with some I’ve seen that had boy wonder Paul Cornell’s name on: he brought those characters alive in a way that very few writers on the show ever have.

Other occasions, I’ve burned through treatments that I loved then and now in no time. After having spent ages developing low-budget naturalistic dramas, I got thoroughly sick of the real world and, in the course of a week, developed a detailed science fiction epic that remains one of the concepts I’m proudest of. It may never find a home, though I’m always open to possibilities (graphic novel, animated series, blockbuster movie…), but creating it taught me a lot about following my instincts in the search of something truly big and mythic.

Here, I’m following my instincts once again, enjoying what I’m finding; it’s just that the process is taking longer than I’m used to. But, at this particular point, I’m not on anyone’s clock… though I soon will be when I present the completed treatment to the production company who’ve expressed an interest in it since I first verbally pitched it to them. Fingers crossed, eh?