#22 - Like A Rocket
Mostly a one topic newsletter for you today because it's something that's been rolling around my head. I've discussed a little about what's here elsewhere but I think it probably bears repeating.
I mentor a couple of younger folks and, talking to them this week, the concept of breaks came up repeatedly. They mostly all want to know: When will my moment be and how can I make it happen?
It made me think back to when I was on my MA at Central and we'd have guest speakers come in to talk about their careers. I'd always go to these sessions and listen particularly closely to when they talked about their early years because, as a relatively late starter, I needed to believe that there were different shapes to a life in writing (and there are loads - never believe the mythologies or models).
However, I'd also always try and mark the point where their stories became useless to me. That point was always where there was no longer something replicable, just a huge heap of fortune. It was usually "someone dropped out and I came in last minute" or "I was just doing my day job when I ran into the artistic director of so and so" which is, I guess, a testament to tenacity, the humility behind the hustle and the idea that you make your own luck but it didn't really feel like that at the time. It just haunted me. Was the difference between me and them something so trivial? It flew in the face of everything I'd told myself so far - that I may not be the most talented writer on my course but I could definitely work the hardest and make a career for myself out of sheer grit. I couldn't take that.
A few years later, I came back to Central to give a day long workshop about writing and I was determined to focus on the replicable parts of the process. I did a reading of the first draft of the play I was taking up to the Fringe. Very deliberately the first draft, warts and all, and said: "The difference between this now and this being great isn't genius or luck, it's process. That's the same for your careers too." I was so proud to say that and really, really believed it and it is true.
To an extent.
Because while I made that play the very best I could make it with my abilities at the time, and everyone working on it threw their hearts into it, it wasn't some amazing, organic, career making hit up at the Fringe. Nor was it one of the finest bits of writing you could see there that year. True, it allowed me a proper introduction to the Bush which - as it turns out - became quite fruitful but nothing about writing that play and the public response would demand that I should be someone who 'makes it' (which is a terrible phrase and I will never use it again. Nobody use it again. Deal?)
My break came because the right person, hundreds of miles away, got handed that script after a casual conversation with a collegue and asked me to come in for a meeting for a job that was several rungs above my experience that I got with what I think was a decent - but not unique - pitch.
I'd become the thing that I found frustrating and it's impossible for me to not acknowledge that, particularly when talking with mentees who in part want to talk to me because of what that break afforded me. I have, in fact, been extraordinarily jammy in that I've had not one break but two in my being hired for Doctor Who off the basis of the script from that first break. Before any of the BAFTA recognition, before it had even finished being made. At this point, I have no useful personal story to offer anyone about making a career as a writer.
Happily though, I'm friends and peers with many people who have made their lives through that slow, organic build rather than sudden jolts. It is definitely a thing and the focus on those who rocket rather than climb is damaging to the industry and to individuals within it. Furthermore, if you're someone who builds their career slowly, I think you get to better hone your voice and interests in a way you wouldn't otherwise get to and there's less chance of you being trapped in something glamorous but intensely miserable. Breaks can also engender bad work and life habits whereas builds only tend to bring you good ones. The ones that let you become a viable big scale writer, a better showrunner, a nicer f*cking human being. The 'buildy' writers I know tend to be more diligent, good humoured and have more developed hinterlands. They're so much better to hang out with and they don't bail on you half as often either. I imagine they have incredible sex lives and know how to relax on the weekends.
Of course, it's easy to say all that as someone who has benefited enormously from fortune, but I hope you'll believe me when I tell you that the long game is a game worth playing.
You'll notice I didn't talk about the script I was meant to be half done with by this point. That's because this has been a week where I left my work more than once to just enjoy the lovely things life threw my way. I don't feel bad about it at all. It's something the grit-obsessed version of me at Central (or even of two years ago) would never have done and would actually have been appalled by. I have a lot of affection for the drive of younger me but I like older me a lot more. This, combined with turning down projects that I could do but don't overwhelmingly want to do, has been good for my emotional stability and made me feel like the man I think I am/want to be more than what I can too often become. Spending more time being this guy has fortified my soul and I think/hope I'm a better friend too. (Friends, please cure me of this delusion if it's not true)
Basically, I'll get the work done but I've missed a lot of summers because of deadlines. I'm going to have as much of this one as I can.
Speaking of summers...it was exactly a year ago that I was in the rehearsal room for An Adventure. The Bush's attic rehearsal space has a tempestuous relationship with airflow and my abiding memories are 1) how brilliant this cast is and 2) wondering when my skin would start melting. I like to believe that it provided an immersive quality for a bunch of creatives trying to truthfully portray life in India and Kenya. It was so magical though. As I've said before, the best reason to write for the stage is the chance to be in a rehearsal room. There's honestly nothing like it and I miss it terribly.
I'm also recalling a Skype call with Doctor Who composer Segun Akinola where I sat on the rehearsal platform and had a long conversation about the instruments and influences for Demons of the Punjab. It was slightly awkward because the announcements about the show and episodes hadn't been made yet and the stage manager needed to stay in the space...but there was no other time we could chat nor any other private location with good wifi to have this call so I had this incredibly joyful, secret busting conversation while the stage manager did a good job of pretending not to listen.
Whoops...blown past 1000 words so that's all from me. I wanted to talk a little about how starting projects from a place of "I have no idea how I'm going to do that" is the way to keep yourself going but I guess I'll save that for next week.
When I'll definitely be half way through this script. x
If you're an old hand, thanks as ever for taking the time.