Just got a draft of an agreement in email - the legal equivalent of a handshake between writers and producer. So I did what all sensible writers should do: read it in great detail, and wrote some detailed comments which I ran by the composer and then sent to my lawyer.
Why do I know all these things? Why do I have to understand the legal terms, know the latest law that covers all this shit, and be practically fluent in legalese when I respond?
And by sending such a detailed response to him, why am I teaching my lawyer to suck eggs? (Metaphorically speaking.) He's one of the best lawyers in the business! He's also a very lovely person, in whom I have great trust.
Yet I have to understand what I'm signing. I have to understand what I'm agreeing to, else how can I agree to it?
The first world is generally very confused about artists. We don't quite understand the way in which any art is created, and in that I include the art of doing a job - any job. Take postmen, for example. Every individual postman delivers the mail in his own, unique way. The differences may be tiny, but they're there.
Mine just delivered something that wouldn't fit through my mailbox, so he left it on the steps (since it's a nice day) and lightly knocked on the door to let me know it was there.
Now, we have a door knocker. It's a big, black iron thing that makes a very loud noise. I'm sitting in my kitchen, working, and the door knocker scares the crap out of me. But my postman doesn't use the door knocker. He knocks lightly on the door, and then goes to the next house to deliver. I know it's him that knocked. I know there's something I need to pick up from the steps.
He also knows that sometimes I sleep late, and the bloody door knocker wakes me up. When he first started delivering mail and used to use the door knocker (because it's there), I would lean out of my bedroom window above the front door looking tousled and not very up yet. His light knock on the door doesn't wake me now.
I like that. It's thoughtful. My postman, as the person he as become through his life experiences to date, has decided on a light knock rather than a big, heavy, iron one. Maybe his mother taught him to be respectful of how he enters other people's spaces. Maybe someone used to bang on his door, and he hated it. Maybe he's made the decision that a postman should facilitate the delivery of mail in a subtle but active way.
Whatever the reason, that is the art with which he does his job. The fact that there is a reason makes it an art.
In EIRE, they understand this. No artist there has to pay any tax. They are allowed to live tax-free, since it is known that everything they do in life makes them who they are as an artist. In England, I'm allowed to claim all manner of things on my tax return: movies, books, magazines, but also theatrical props of any kind (a telescope was the last one of note) and lunches with producers. I can even claim some of my household bills, since I work from home.
But I can't claim everything, and I should be able to because everything in my life (most of which costs me money) continuously informs who I am, and who I am makes me what I am: an artist.
So why am I not advocating my postman being exempt from tax payments? Much as I love him, there are other people who deliver my mail sometimes. They do use the door knocker, but they still get my post to me efficiently. They do the same job as my regular guy, even if not in exactly the same way.
But give two writers the same exact subject for a musical, and they will write two completely different shows. Completely different. You could even give them a basic plot outline of the events that must take place in the show, and the shows will still be totally different.
They're totally different people. With different life experiences. They will feel emotionally drawn to different characters, or to the same character but for different reasons. This is what makes it so important to me that I treat the novel I'm adapting as basic source material like any other. I cherry-pick the bits I want to use because I'm not trying to write the musical Terry Pratchett or Geraldine McCaughrean would write. Or even the one my sister would write. I could never do that because I'm not them. So I just do what I can do and write my own musical.
This is one of the most useful tools I have as a writer in a very small and therefore competitive genre: I'm not actually in competition with any other writer of musicals. I can't be, because no-one else can write what I write. I am unique because that's just the way it is. It makes rejection so much easier to handle: no producer has ever chosen someone else's show over mine. They've just chosen the only show that they could choose. At that point, mine was never even in the running, because what I write was not what they were looking for.
It's like someone choosing an apple over an orange. If you went shopping for an apple in the first place, as long as there were apples for sale, it's inconceivable that you would buy an orange. Unless you changed your mind and decided you'd rather have an orange. At which point, it's inconceivable that you would buy an apple.
So why do I need to know all the legalese? It's not just about making an informed choice. It's also about the fact that no matter how amazing my lawyer is (and he is amazing) and no matter how experienced a producer is, the product I have for sale and the service I offer is totally, completely unique. The person best-placed to make decisions about the immediate future of that product is me, because I'm the only one who fully understands it right now.
Of course, once I actually hand the child over to someone else, I actively seek their input. That's why I'm handing it over. I just want to be absolutely sure I know what I'm doing when I choose to whom, and how, to hand it.
