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Probably a bit optimistically I tried to get a day of writing in today, but I only managed to get one line down and it wasn’t a good one. I hadn’t had a good sleep and though I’d laid off the booze mostly yesterday was weary from over indulgence. Some days it doesn’t come and you feel like it never will. But experience suggests I should do better closer to the deadline. Once this script is done I actually have nothing in the work diary apart from RHLSTPs and the Bristol Slapstick Festival and I have to say I wouldn’t particularly mind if that was all that 2019 held for me.
In 2018 I attempted to get the work/family seesaw more balanced, but even with taking the summer off I feel that I didn’t spend enough time with the people who matter most to me. So I’d be quite happy to see if I can make the podcasts work as my only source of income. It’s extremely unlikely of course and knowing my shitty luck, 2019 will be the year when every TV channel starts to want making my sitcoms. The contrary fuckers.
Writing is so hard and podcasts are comparatively easy for me (though the booking of guests is just about as tortuous as creating a script). What if I just took it comparatively easy this year and the only story writing I did was for my kids.
Tonight I put my daughter bed and as she hadn’t selected a book I told her I’d make up a story for her. One of my happiest childhood memory is of the stories that my brother used to make up for me. They involved a central character called Brave Richard and his hapless side-kick, who like my brother was called David (though generously known as something like Stupid David in the stories. I can’t remember too much detail now, but obviously I enjoyed a world where everything was topsy-turvey and the powerless and cowardly five year old suddenly became the hero and his smart and scary brother became an idiot.
I borrowed a little from the Brave Richard franchise tonight and made up a story about Brave Phoebe (Plagiarism? What are you talking about? This is completely different) who went into a forest and met a tiger but wasn’t scared, but just rode the tiger through the forest, before arriving at the lair of the baddies who she said had to stop doing naughty things or she would set her tiger on them. So they were forced to help old ladies with their shopping and stuff, which they actually preferred. Except for one bad guy who questioned whether using a tiger to make people be good was in itself an immoral and thus hypocritical act.
Sometimes fathers tell their children stories and then go on to write them down and they become much loved books (like Watership Down), but I am to sure if Brave Phoebe and the Tiger is destined for such success. Though Phoebe, like her self-absorbed father, loved being the hero of a story and asked for more, mainly involving the tiger who she decided was called Flower (and more book royalties disappeared into think air.
I did about five stories for her, though I think she might have just been asking for more so she could stay up later. Let’s face it, this is no Men of Phise. I am not what I once was.
