I sat down yesterday and talked with a director about my play Xmas Carol. It was a really emotionally difficult meeting because, well, I was having someone talk to me about my baby and my decisions and questioning one after another choice I had made. But for me it was amazing how, for nearly two hours, I was able to explain why I had made so many of the choices I had in the script. "See, here Cameron is starting to be repulsed by Thatcher's philosophies and he's starting to draw away ...." It was hard to believe I'd thought so hard about it while writing it but also hard to believe I'd remembered so much about the process. We had one dispute, though, over the use of Jimmy Saville as a character: he thinks it will cause me to lose my audience. I can't tell. So we're intending on having a staged reading in October to find out. I love it - we're going to do a test with a play!

Now I have lots more work to do but I'm excited about updating it and pushing some of the relationships to raise the comedy level. The whole idea, though, of having script writing be an interactive activity is a very odd one for me - but I'm writing plays, not books. They need to read on stage and I can't see that on the page.