I am doing the research for a book on writing for television and came across this quote (in a tweet): 'Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self'. Cyril Connolly

I re-tweeted, commenting that what Cyril Connolly is saying is rubbish. It is simply not true for 95% of the thousands of writers I have met over the last 40 years. It is cute but makes assumptions about the purity of being a writer that suggests pure self-indulgence.

There are some writers who genuinely do not care if no one ever reads what they write. There are mss and scripts in bottom drawers that stay there. There may even be some masterpieces in those drawers, since writers are often not the best judges of what they have written.

The book on writing for television, which I am co-writing with Christopher Walker with whom I set up the MA in Television Scriptwriting at De Montfort University (check it out http://bit.ly/4BTnVd), is intended to be the best guide to actually getting to work for TV producers and broadcasters.

Why set up a post-grad course focused only on television? Because that is the only place where writers can more easily get hired, earn money and (perhaps as important) get the experience of going through the development process so that they can see how what they imagined ends up on screen, as it passes through many hands, from casting directors to script editors, producers, directors, actors and film or tape editors.

This is the coal-face, this is where the real learning is done, rather than in academia where all too often the teaching is done by academics not very experienced practitioners. And in far too many universities the industry guest lecturers are to few and far between.

I have no problem with writers writing for their bottom drawer. But most are desperate to be read and watched; most have something important to say and most want to earn a living from their writing. Quotes like the Connolly one need to be balanced by the famous Samuel Johnson quote 'No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money'.

Neither are 100% correct, but the Johnson quote is far closer to the reality than the Connolly one.