How do you solve a problem like finding a new writer?

I’m not a big fan of musicals. Hey, I admit it, I find it faintly ridiculous that a leading man or lady can just burst into song while midway through an important speech and then expect an entire street, or village or whatever, to leap in and sing the chorus while doing somersaults or some-such. And this is coming from someone who can suspend his disbelief at such films as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

But even I was sucked in by the recent show, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” And why not? It’s one of those reality shows where a nobody with a large amount of hidden talent is plucked from obscurity and given a chance at superstardom. It wasn’t because they were pretty (though they were) or could get their kit off, or could act like idiots and were pretty facile and vacant (Big Brother take note), but because they really did have talent. The quality of their singing alone was impressive and their acting on the whole would have been enough to get them through a few directors’ doors. No, these were not potential Z-list celebrities, but talented artists.

But the other reason I was hooked, was that I felt a certain empathy with them. After all, the winner was a girl who worked in telesales, a life-sucking job if ever there was. Now stardom on the stage beckons; it’s quite a turnaround and should give many out there – not just singers or actors/actresses – some hope that you can make it. For me, I was (and at the moment still am) working in a job I find quite mundane and while not life-sucking, I find it quite depressing that I never look forward to going to the day-job, yet I look forward to lunch-breaks when I write, and then evenings when I can go home.

And for a while that was all there was. My hopes and dreams of being published were as faint as the stars in a murky Sheffield sky.
That was until the writing equivalent of “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” began on Channel 4 in autumn 2004. I guess Richard and Judy’s writing competition is the closest thing to a reality TV writing competition there has been. Backed and ran by Macmillan Publishers, the competition received 46,000 entries – probably the same number of entries say X-factor gets, or Pop Idol, at the audition stage – and this was whittled down to 1 winner, and 4 runners up.
I entered the competition, and that is why I’m being published. Not because I was the winner. I wasn’t. Nor was I a runner up either. But from the rest of the huge volume of submissions, Macmillan discovered another dozen or so manuscripts they thought were high quality, and fit the criteria of their New Writing initiative. Of those dozen or so manuscripts I believe around half a dozen were taken on to be published, and I was one of those. Not bad for someone who was languishing in obscurity, and had resigned themselves about a year before to not being published, ever.

So, it got me thinking. After all, some of the singers on “...like Maria?” did not get through to the final, yet they are still winners. Just as there were only one winner and four runners-up published in the R&J 2004 competition, (but there were other published winners too through the MNW thing) I expect most of the “Maria?” singers will be performing at the West End or Broadway or some grand place over the next few years. You see sometimes those headline winners are not the only ones to find success.

And competitions on this scale breed talent...

So if a writing competition can attract 46,000 entries - with a good percentage being “high quality” - why not have another televised writing competition? Why not pluck more writers from obscurity? After all, in an industry that now freely admits they are struggling to discover new talent, how do you solve a problem like finding a new writer?