Short two, draft one (and a loaf of bread).

The excruciating hilarity of this one is that I ended up chucking out 100% of the idea I'd been trying to make work for five days (by the fifth, I had enough plot and sceneage that it had well and truly blown out to a goddamn feature). So, I rubber-banded my index cards and filed that concept away for "one day, but definitely nowhere near 2015". 

Rinse-repeat the rock-squeezing process. I went back to brainstorming across the table from my husband. Or more accurately, me crying into a bowl of soup begging the evil gods of film to tell me why the hell I couldn't latch onto a story I actually liked and felt I could realise with any modicum of aristry. My poor husband. 

I don't know what switch flipped after that. I think maybe it had something to do with me being close enough to giving up entirely, that my brain began to buzz in different areas. Although that's probably all just speculative mumbo-jumbo and what was really happening is that I was grasping at straws. 

This film has to be a no-budget one-room affair. And for the life of me I couldn't think of anything vaguely interesting that could happen in one room (my brain was not working, I tell you).

And so, the night before last - at my wit's end - I said to my husband, "The only story set in one room that I can remember enjoying reading, is this short little scene in an old John Le Carré novel about a crusty old spy and his female asset, and the fact that he's deeply in love with her, but there's nothing he can do about it. And she doesn't want to talk about them, all she wants to do is talk about her husband's love of pickled turnips or something." 

And Nick turned to me and said, "For the love of god, please write that film." 

Of course I have no idea what the scene in the Le Carré was actually about - because all I remember was the presence of a step ladder and the vague outlines of the two characters. Then I realised that the book in question has been leant to my father-in-law, so I couldn't even review it for inspiration. 

But we both figured that was probably actually for the best. Because, well - a) plagiarism - always best to avoid that, and b) better for the imagination to try to remember the feeling it evoked, rather than riffing off actual details on this one - details were what was getting me bogged down in the first place.

And therefore, very much an homage rather than an adaptation. A hat-tip. Plus, we've just finished watching season one of BBC's The Game so I think I have existentialist spies on the brain. (Who am I kidding? I always have existentialist spies on the brain. I'm obsessed with existentialist spies. They're a lot like existentialist artists.)

So, off I went. I sketched out the treatment last night, and wrote the whole thing in one hit yesterday. I lie. I interspersed the scenes with the baking of a loaf of bread.