Deadline's past, everything's in and the readers are submerged in an intensive initial round of sifting the first ten pages of all entries submitted. We received upwards of 1700 scripts this time round - and that is without the majority of radio scripts we might have received were there not the coming soon. So that's a LOT of scripts.
But while the volume may seem daunting, we can reflect on what the end point was for the last , and the writers who did progress through to the final stage.
We had films from Rodney Lee, Joseph Quick, Hilary Frankland, Dave Allison , Patrick Ryan, Richard Paul, the Brothers Lynch and Tanja Rutanen.
Stage plays from Ian Townsend, Rosanna Hall, Mohsen Shah, Mwewe Sumbwanyambe and Harinder Dhillon.
TV comedies from Craig Silcock, Joe Hodgson, Lucy Guy and Daljinder Singh.
TV dramas from David Hendon, Dee Hughes and Daniel David.
Radio dramas from Vicki Bertram and Wendy Metcalf.
And a children’s drama from Dennis Zaslona.
But was it really an end point? I blogged before about how this cohort of writers convened, how they got to know one another/us, and how we are now looking at their 'action plans' for what next. Some have aready been along to a follow-up workshop on radio, others have graduated onto the writer's group run by Henry Swindell out of our Salford base.
Some scripts have been sent off to producers. All the writers are thinking about the what, where and how next with their work. Which is something they'll need to get used to, since it's the stock-in-trade and everyday-experience of a great many working and sought-after writers across the industry.
So you might say there never quite is an end point. Because it's always about the next script, and then the project after that, and then the idea after that. Which may (and probably should) seem daunting. But I also find it oddly reassuring.