I gave up a regular job for this?

It's 4.09 in the morning, and I've just finished outlining a plot for a new series that I'm not at liberty to say what it's about. Suffice to say this: it's under time pressure and the dialogue is in Malay. I suffer for my art, and worse, I choose to do so.

I have never (never) written creative work in BM before, not since I was twelve. And even then, it was never any good. I now write entire chunks of dialogue and am told they don't sound natural. Too much BM. Too much English. That's not how kids speak. You can't write this stuff, can you? No s*** Sherlock.

I create plots that are ripped up before my very eyes and recast into something that I then spend an age arguing about before a consensus is reached (based on a hungry stomach and tired eyes). And then I realise as I'm writing it how little of it makes sense.

I stay awake until the wee hours, since that's the only time that nobody rings me up and asks me questions about -what-the-heck-. Things that could have just as easily been answered over email. But I answer them because they're the real paying jobs, unlike this crapola I'm churning out that pays less than 15 sen a word (no, I don't get paid by the word, nor by the hour, I get paid by the number of rewrites. That's right, I get paid by the amount of pain I'm put through).

All this for the glory of hearing my words mangled by a clueless actor, seeing my name obscured by subtitles, of not knowing who watches and who is touched by what I craft.

And you know what? Tonight E said to me, "You wanted to write, you went out and wrote, and now people are paying you for the privilege". And you know what else?

I enjoy every single minute. It's just some of the seconds in between I can't stand.