Sorry for no updates of late, been busy and frankly a little lacking in motivation. For the first time I have had real writers block. Never happened to me before, and because of it I stopped trying to write.
Big mistake, I recently realised, well I was reminded, that a writer should write. Basic knowledge I know, but a greengrocer isn’t a greengrocer if they don’t sell green groceries. A fishmonger isn’t a fishmonger unless they mong some fish. So how can I be a writer if I don’t mong some writing?
So I have been trying to write, just something, everyday. An NSD sketch here, a bit of Flux there, a blog post there, something nonsensical over there by the rubber chicken. Part of my problem with writing is that for some reason I see it as “work”. This is odd, as I have not been paid for my writing for a very long time, as I stopped many years ago, just as I was starting to do well. (Long story, it involves women. Frankly most of those sorts of stories do with me.) So I am trying to change that mind-set, I used to love to write, just sometimes for the sheer fun of it. To carve an uncut pile of words into a statuesque monster of linguistic , well, thingyness was just a task that my brain liked to revel in. Not coffee Revels though, they are disgusting, like licking the lid of a Mellow Birds jar that has been on the office kitchen sink drainer for a month.
Another problem is that I am frequently lazy and badly motivated. Also very very easily distracted, to the point where I have considered renting offices, going outside and also making a PC with no internet connection. Oh sweet sweet internet, you have given me so much and taken so much more in payment.
I use a bit of software called “Dark Room” which allows the screen to be completely blacked out. It is based on the Mac software “Writeroom” which is, I believe chargeable, Dark Room is freeware. And great. Cannot comment on the Mac version as I am PC, as that irritating ad says. I am no fanboy, I use Windows XP/Vista and also some flavours of Linux in this house.
Anyway back to the writing, many years ago I stopped writing as it got me down. It got me down as I felt like I was getting nowhere, I had some success with radio comedy and stagework, I had written a little bit for TV, and script edited a series but was getting nowhere. Then I thought that my big break had come. A certain person who used to be famous, let’s call him Picholas Narsons, a pseudonym I grant you but you could probably work it out if you tried really hard. Maybe you could get that Carol Vorderman bint to turn her mind to it, she is a bit short on work these days I hear. Picholas contacted me about a script that I had written and was interested in making it into a sitcom for TV. Yes! My big break, we met several times, and I worked tirelessly on the updates we had discussed. Unpaid, and as I was unemployed at the time, it was not always easy, but if someone like Picholas was on board, how could I fail?
Easily, he lied to me. Well, misled is probably fairer. I thought that he had studio backing for the project and so was happy to write the rewrites and plan the whole series. He did not have that support and was in fact hawking it around TV companies trying to get it. As he is at best a bit player these days it didn’t happen. Not much of a problem for him, it was for me though. I had put a lot of work into that and it was all down the drain. For a long time I could not write much at all, I met a lovely girl and started a job. I suppose I got onto the normality express. Tried to be like everyone else. Fit in, be the last piece of the jigsaw that was lost down the cushion on the sofa. But with one big blow the dust was gone, and the piece slotted back in like it had never gone.
I did this for a while. Almost believed it too. Unfortunately the girl in question really did. Shame.
I started writing again a while later, just bits and bats for radio and theatre again. I also wrote stand up with a friend of mine that we used to do together. We were pretty good too, not often you hear me say that about something that I was involved in. I started to not want to be that bit of jigsaw, the compulsion to be something else was back. I never really fitted that puzzle, I needed to be in a new one.
We performed, I wrote and for a while I was on a creative high. (Yes I am aware that this makes me sound bi-polar, more on that later.) I wrote some of the best stuff that I ever have at this point, not necessarily in a literary sense, but in a comedy sense I was makin’ em laugh. When we stopped performing together I went into a slump. I am too cowardly to do stand up on my own, too scared. I am very nervous and shy person in real life, although I try to cover it up by being an arse most of the time. I like to make people laugh, and I am, if I say so myself, quite good at it.
After the slump, I decided to try something new. I wrote a calling card script, which is a script that you don’t intend for production, but more as, well a calling card. The equivalent of a demo tape or a showreel for a writer. I intended to get into writing soaps, The Bill anything. I had some friends in the business at the time who suggested that I should be in no problem. I didn’t. I was too easily knocked back. I struggle with rejection on a personal and a writing level, not good for someone in this business.
I then wrote the basis of a children’s drama comedy and i was very proud of it, I put a lot of work into it. It was a teen drama not unlike a British Dawson’s Creek/OC etc, but before they had happened. The BBC were very polite and gave me constructive criticism and advice. Which they always do, I love the Beeb we should all be very proud of it. Hulking great behemoth of broadcasting that it is.
The other companies either sent back curt “Thanks but no thanks” style notes, or bugger all. I had only sent a handful of copies of it out and I got them all back.
All except one.
I did not realise at that time that it had happened, and being me I had moved onto another project by this time. It wasn’t until almost a year later I saw an advert on Children’s TV for a programme that looked disturbingly familiar. I watched the first episode and it was a straight rip off of my script. They had even left some of the names the same. Seriously. I sought legal advice and I was told in no uncertain terms that I would almost definitely win as I had good proof. One problem, I could not get legal aid and as I was working at this time I had no chance of any other help. I could not afford to pursue it myself as I was moving in with my girlfriend, soon to be my wife. Now soon to be my ex wife. Such is the way of things.
This hit me hard, I had been writing a panto for a local theatre group, I stopped. I could no longer write. It hurt me, physically hurt me to think about it. I had been so close to breaking through and it had been taken away.
People in my life that probably had my best interests in mind, although more likely their own best interests, brought me round to thinking that I should take this as an excuse to stop writing. To give up, and I did. I once again tried to be that puzzle piece.
I didn’t fit. Anywhere. I ended up depressed, really quite amazingly depressed. I took on a job as promotion that I really did not want and frankly could not do. The stress got to me and made me worse. I thought about suicide on a daily basis. My partner cheated on me, which pushed me lower…
This effectively went on for a few years, I would get better, then worse. I was stuck in a mire of my own making. People telling me to be ambitious, that I should want to succeed in business. That is not me, but I kept trying because people that loved me could only be thinking of me, right?
I tried changing the job, which worked for a while. Then I would change the job again. It ended up with me working for a large company, who were great with me and paid for me to have counselling after a pretty huge breakdown. I was lost, I had no idea who, why or what I was. I have never been more scared. I was a Dad of two lovely girls by this point, and did not know who I was.
The counsellor was one of the most amazingly perceptive people that I have ever met. Saying things like “Why do you use humour to cover your fears?” and so on. Obvious maybe, as was the epiphany that she got me to realise.
How could I call myself a writer, if I wasn’t writing? I was not a writer, I was a Dad and an employee of a large utility company. A well liked and good employee, but that is what I was. I had been forced to give up my dream to forego them for someone else’s. I did not know who I was anymore simply because I had left me behind somewhere.
The realisation was sadly, if slowly, the end of my marriage. Once I realised that, I questioned lots of other things, I had been forced down for too long, lost sight of the path that I should be on, and had been heading in the wrong direction for many years.
It has taken a long time since to start to realise the facts of this, and become happy(ish) with myself and what I am. I am now a single Dad, a driving examiner, and a part time writer. I am slowly, but surely enjoying writing again. I have been dusting off some of my old ideas and working on them, and creating new stuff too.
I am still thinking about stand up, I would love to be able to do it – but I am scared. I have lots of people to thank since the break up of my marriage, too many for here. The people who have put up with me, cajoled me, pushed me and so on. It means a lot to me as I start to rebuild myself creatively speaking. I have been a fool, and not in a good way, but then who hasn’t?
I would like to thank James & Beth Hart particularly for helping me get back to it with The North South Divide, and more recently Flux. There will be more of both, but with moving house it is not always easy.
I am ~deep breath~ a writer. Perhaps an unpaid one, but that should not stop me. I enjoy it, the words are dying to get out of my head again. I should let them really, in a literary trepanning type way. Or there maybe dire consequences. And you would not want that, would you?
EDIT: I would just like to make it clear that I blame no one but myself for my own shortcomings. I am just writing how it felt to me.
