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As always writing is all about application. Of your arse to the chair. 90% of the battle is persuading yourself to sit down and get on with it. Even just to write anything. I have a pretty clear idea of what’s going to happen in the first episode of Relativity and did pretty well today (comparatively at least), given that I had to go to Yeovil and do a show. But still I managed to distract myself away from what I needed to do, or convince myself I wasn’t able to do it. I haven’t got time to fuck around. I really need to at the very least have two of the scripts 75% of the way there by the end of this coming week. And there’s also another secret but major project to finish by the end of the month (along with two more scripts).
It never seems to change. I am always this bad and push deadlines to their limits (and occasionally beyond). If only I could work set hours, but creativity doesn’t work that way. Like Archimedes I had a bit of a eureka moment in the bath this morning, as a surprise ending suddenly occurred to me. I wouldn’t have come up with this if I’d been sitting at a desk trying to plot. It had to come into my brain unbidden when I was distracted with something else.
I never really like to plot out in advance, because if the twists and turns can surprise me, then hopefully they will surprise the audience too. And life is not written, as much as mine feels like it is sometimes. By a cunt.
I like to plonk my characters in a situation and then work out what they’d do, rather than having them moving towards some preordained denouement - though occasionally I know what things are moving towards.
The problem with Relativity is that most episodes have 9 major characters and I want to involve them all. But I suppose that’s also the joy of it.
It is fun to get this up and running again. I wish I hadn’t left it all so late, but to be fair to me, with touring, podcasting and parenting there just hasn’t been the time. But as the clock presses against me I suddenly can find the impetus. Very unusually (maybe for the first time ever) I actually did some writing during the interval of tonight’s show. It’s not usually possible or desirable to distract yourself from one thing when you’re deep into another, but I had had some ideas just before going on stage and wanted to try and get some of them down.
I was surprised to discover (and I may be wrong) that this is the first time I have ever played Yeovil. I found out that it was the first town to introduce a system where you had to have your finger prints biometrically entered to get into night clubs and also the first council to ban Heelies (those trainers with wheels on them). I casually mentioned this at the start without really planning where to go with these facts, but the repaid several times in the show. The unlikelihood of Yeovil being the front runner for future tech was probably funny enough on its own, but it was nicely juxtaposed by the pettiness of the ban on enjoyable footwear.
We drove halfway home and then stayed in a Premier Inn along the route. The writers of my life got me back for my biometrical fingerprint gags (even though they’d written them) by giving me a hotel room where the key card didn’t work. Twice. The man on reception had to come up and let me into my room. One thing led to another. And I went to sleep.
