Friday, October 15, 2010

I'm clearly doing something very very wrong.

From this this guardian article:

"I'm a self-employed television script writer, sharing the care of two children and grossing about £300k."

*jaw drops to floor*

I am also a self-employed television script writer, sharing the care of two children. However the most I've ever made in a year is about a fifth of that, and more usually I make around twenty to twenty-five thousand a year. So not bad compared to my old job working in a bookshop, but not swanning about in a glass carriage money by any means. I suspect 'WireDuck' works in continuing drama (soaps), where the hunger for new scripts is insatiable, and being able to turn in decent scripts to tight deadlines is (rightly) highly rated.

Soaps aside, this isn't a great job for financial stability. One friend of mine made eighty grand one year, and eight the next, despite working equally hard on scripts both years. And the tax system isn't really set up to deal with that sort of fluctuation, so you always need as big an amount as you can manage put aside for scary bills from the year you were doing well, which always arrive in the year you're not doing so well.

Christ though. £300k!

8 comments:

GreatSheElephant said...

Not as wrong as me though. I'm barely going to make £1k this year.

James Henry said...

Maybe WireDuck will lend you a bit.

Stuart said...

I suspect WireDuck is a big fat liar. To clear that amount you'd probably would have to be writing for soaps and be on a retainer. However, most of the soap writers I know work very long hours, not a mere five hours. I think the sole purpose of the article was simply to make every other writer cry/gnash teeth.

Mike Booth said...

What the fuck is a "reward analyst"?

Kevin L said...

Now I'm depressed.

Valerie said...

He probably just slipped a zero in there to make people faint. If anyone ever figures out who he is and calls him on it, he can innocently claim typo.

I know a number of professional writers, and most of them are lucky to top $20,000 in any given year, and most of them teach part-time or something to fill in the gaps in the stomach. (The ones who write for American TV and have regular series do better, but not 300K pounds kind of better.)

Jayne said...

I think "self-employed television script writer" is a euphemism for Russian mobster.

PK said...

I haven't been here in ages (looks around) nice to be back. Also nice to hear Wireduck earns so much in a year (I will find him and I will kill him). And he 'shares the care of two children' (What does that mean? I will kill him twice!)

By the way, very, very belated and heartfelt congratulations to you both on the birth of child number two.