Stirling work from BBC 4.

I have had to literally tear myself away from BBC4 just now, because otherwise I simply won't sleep. But I've just had a very informative couple of hours courtesy of it, and I was so tempted to watch (for a second time) the latest Andrew Graham Dixon program on Giogio Vasari. But had I done that I would have been dead to the world tomorrow.

Screenwipe was first up, and I very much enjoyed this week's episode. Charlie Brooker has assembled a line-up of some of the best screenwriters working in British television right now, and I'm just thrilled to find I share things in common with Russel T Davies. It was interesting to see people talk about the process of writing, and to be assured that everybody has the same problems, and the same doubts, and the variety of ways you can work.

What probably made me happiest was realising I was in the luckier class of writers, the ones that don't have to plan ahead, but can just sit down and start to write and go from there. It's a process that's written me (so far just the first drafty of) a book I'm very proud of, and as I found this afternoon I actually found fun to read when browsing through in preparation for a second draft. So I must be doing something right.

Mind, the program didn't answer the question I most want answered, which is whether these second drafts / rewrites is just editing what's there already, or actually starting afresh. And how you know when it's ready, for that matter.

Following that was Mark Lawson's interview with John le Carre, an absolutely fascinating program which I think has actually told me a lot. Actually no, that's a lie, it's told me a lot about him and his books, what it's done for me is help confirm things in my head and give me a boost of self-confidence. Both programs did that actually. In particular his attitude towards the genre-fiction / literary-fiction divide was extraordinarily nice to hear, and in the same way as Neil Gaiman and Susannah Clarke (among others) he's almost become a standard bearer (to me) of just how brilliant genre fiction can be.

Also le Carre's talk of his earliest books (the two early Smiley books, the second of which I have recently finished) and his attitude to them is helpful (very similar to Philip Pullman's attitude to his earliest books to my eyes). They're learning exercises in a way (the phrase he used was something like finger-tapping) it's alright to make mistakes, and it's alright to be overly imitative of your influences (something I'm quite acutely aware of when I look at my own writings).

It all leads me to confirm to myself what I've long known, Smiley absolutely pisses on Bond.