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It’s been really lovely to be home for an extended period of time and to be able to go to bed early because I don’t have a gig in the evening. The grumpy fun of tiredness has lifted enough for me to feel relaxed, attempt some exercise and even get a bit of mental clarity.
I bumped into a writer at the gym. I have known him since the 90s when our paths crossed in the now destroyed LE department at BBC Radio, but haven’t seen him for a bit. I don’t think he recognised me to start with (or maybe he was hoping I wouldn’t see him) and I wasn’t 100% certain it was him, but I stopped and chatted with him for a bit. From my perspective he’s a wildly successful sitcom and comedy drama writer, having won international awards and being involved in many hit shows, but he seemed as frustrated as me (who hasn’t had a scripted piece on TV for nearly ten years now) about the difficulties of getting commissioned as well as motivating yourself to get on with work. “How do you do so much?” he asked. Which is odd because I consider myself an incredibly lazy writer and find that getting a script completed is like pissing out a cricket ball sized kidney stone. I waste so much time. I was in the gym because despite having a whole day to write AIOTM I had been sat in my office unable to get the required run up to have a go at some scripts (even though I had a good idea of what many of them would entail). It’s true that I produce a lot of stuff annually, but a lot of it is improvised or comes out of blogs that are also written on the hoof (if then later polished up to make articles and stand up routines). I write a new stand up show most years, but that is relatively easy (and again draws on the work I do each morning on the blog) and I eventually manage to churn out a TV script most years, but only after months of fretting and refusing to apply myself to the work or my arse to the chair.
I wish I was one of those people who can write like it is a job and sit down for eight hours a day and just keep churning it out. I am sure it’s the best way to do things (even if a lot of the stuff you write might not be great). Ultimately I have to do that when a deadline or embarrassment at my laziness force me to do so. If I could even write for four hours a day I would get way more done and never have those last minute creative panics. But I sort of need the creative panic. Even with these blogs (and yes the standard is very variable and very few of them give me ideas that I can use elsewhere) I know that if I don’t write them quickly then my unbroken run of nearly 5000 days of blogging will be over.
Writing is a solitary pursuit and it’s easy to imagine that you’re the only one struggling, so this chance encounter in the gym was good for us both (I think), in that we shared our worries about getting old and losing our mojo and realised that the other was not quite the prolific writing machine that we had imagined.
Because writing is stressful and mentally painful, especially in the early stages, it’s easy to forget how lucky I am to have this as a job. And somehow this little chat spurred me on to get back to my desk and do a small amount of work on the short film “Silent But Violent” that I want to put in one of the AIOTMs. There’s still a long way to go with this and that’s only 5 minutes of the 3hours plus that I will need to create by February (I suspect it might be nearer to six hours once all is taken into account), but I had some perspective on my own good fortune. With AIOTM I have the opportunity to make something on my own terms that hopefully shows off my abilities. Whist a lot of it will be slapdash it is a chance to prove myself and show what I can do with more considered stuff. Obviously it’s a lot of work, almost certainly for no money, but if the other podcasts (apart from maybe Meaning of Life) have shown me anything, it’s that the money isn’t important and in any case will probably turn up later one way or another.
With the stress of touring and the demands of our fucking hilarious baby (when I say “What’s the time?” she now looks at her wrist as if checking an invisible watch and tonight made me laugh for five minutes when we gave her some humous in a little pot to dip her cucumber in, but she instead just picked up the pot and tried to lick out all the humous, like a more chick pea obsessed Winnie the Pooh, and got it all over her face. Unusually she didn’t join in with the laughter and looked extremely serious about what she was doing, which just made it all the funnier), things have got a bit fractious and I’ve got pretty unfit, but this evening, with an hour or so of writing under my belt (and maybe an eighth of the short film) and a more positive attitude and some perspective I realised I had to pull myself together. I mean obviously I will forget again soon, but moments of clarity will be few and far between whilst I still have a stupid humous covered human being who thinks they can tell the time from their wrist to look after.
I hope I can make AIOTM everything it should be.
First guest announced for new series of RHLSTP
13th June Ben Bailey Smith aka Doc Brown
27th June just waiting for text confirm from very exciting big name guest - worth booking now as it will sell out when it’s announced.
Get tickets here.
We're hoping to part fund the filming by using all badge donations from May, June and July (we will probably do a kickstarter for all the 2016 episodes in September, but the more we can raise now the lower that target will have to be), so head to gofasterstripe.com and bung us a quid or more.
Remember if you give a pound or more a month you will get an email letting you know about RHLSTP guests before everyone else, plus access to a secret channel with bonus extras (including backstage interviews with all the guests), plus entry into a monthly prize draw (you get one entry per month for every pound a month you're giving) and a badge. All your money goes to making more online content.
