So you're receiving this tiny letter on Saturday morning instead of on Friday evening. I missed this deadline because I missed another deadline and both make me feel ashamed.

I really, really, really hate it when I don't hit a hand in date and when I first started out that never happened. Now that most of my work is in television, the workflows are completely different and it's an environment where the draft turn arounds are much faster (a couple of weeks sometimes) which, combined with an unreliable brain, means that more often than not I end up with some slippage, no matter how well I plan. I - thank God - have not had that occur when too close to production but I worry it will happen one day. I'm having a think of how to alter my working habits in order to factor in my brain just going "nooooo" at some point. I'll let you know where I get to...
 

---

Today I wanted to talk a little about about how your writing differs depending on when you're doing it. As a young man, I was all about that late night writing, up til three or four in the morning. Then, when I first started writing professionally, I went the other way. I forced myself into the library by eight in the morning and would get most of work done by twelve. The latter is obviously a more sustainable and sociable way to live, and if you've got to be in close contact with collaborators you often have no choice.

Not that you can't have some pretty interesting moments of collaboration late at night, of course. My friend Katherine has just written a play for National Theatre Connections that touches on the interpersonal magic  that happens in the early hours of the morning and that feels vital too. Everything just seems a bit more, I don't know. Possible? Dramatic? Most my worst/best life changing decisions with other people have happened in those hours.

Mostly though, I associate that time with solitude. In his recent book Digital Minimalism (which I've read about in a lot of newsletters - surely not a coincidence), Cal Newport talks about the importance of solitude and having your mind free of other minds. I feel like the reason I used to stay up so late was because I was the most alone I could be and it's in that space where I found my truest sense of self and my truest writing. Pre-social media, the small hours were one of the few times in your hectic life when you had absolutely no other inputs to escape into.

It was the memory of this feeling that allowed me to connect with work that felt obtuse when I was trying to Understand Theatre. Before I started on my MA at CSSD, I was still working in my technician job, using my lunch hours to do the set reading. It was a thrilling time - doing my day job, whilst also having this exciting new thing that I was about to disappear into it. The reading had only enhanced that excitement and I was exposed to a huge variety of styles and stories. 

And then there was Sarah Kane.

God, I hated Sarah Kane. Knowing only the text, it felt to me so try-hard and miserable. It was antithetical to both what I wanted to put into the world and what I felt the world needed*. So there I was, eating my pub sandwich, dragging myself through the last of the Kane on my reading because I was excited enough about the course to still be diligent. That play was 4.48 Psychosis which felt like more of the same, a miserable, formless ramble and then I hit That Bit:

At 4.48
When sanity visits
For one hour and twelve minutes I am in my right mind.
When it has passed I shall be gone again,
A fragmented puppet, a grotesque fool.
Now I am here I can see myself 
But when I am charmed by vile delusions of happiness,
The foul magic of this engine of sorcery,
I cannot touch my essential self.

I remember reading that and having to just stop for a minute because it knocked the absolute sh*t out of me. I'd never felt so scene or acknowledged. I'd never had anything articulate so clearly what it was about that time that both made me despair and yet also settled me.

Kane's life, of course, was not the happiest and connecting with that part so specifically did put the fear into me. I think it was probably that which drove me to find more regular hours for my writing for the sake of my sanity. It wasn't the worst decision. Learning to work in the day time helped me get better with structure and thinking plots through with rigour and logic. I still struggle with this, but I am markedly better for seeing the daytime lack of absolute lucidity as the perfect time to get the duller stuff done with. 

Now I've also made a habit of making myself go to bed before midnight, I wonder how that will affect me as a person and a writer. My instinct is that I can be as great a day time writer as I want, but there will always be a time in a project when you need a good dose of the late night weird. I wouldn't want to shut that out of my life or my work entirely, even if it is often a terrifying and vulnerable place to be.

---

Otherwise, this has been a bit of rollercoaster week. Tonnes and tonnes of actual script writing, getting a little time to really work those scenes. As I mentioned earlier, because of the nature of the workflows, I don't get to go in as deeply as I used to but when you do and find yourself, say, making an otherwise dull scene in terms of the action work in a novel and fresh way...boy, does it make you feel mighty.

I also made two firm choices that are going to shape the back half of my year quite significantly but - I hope - will be projects that allow me to flourish again. 

Finally, I was absolutely thrilled to find out (from one of the assistants as I was leaving a meeting!) that my Doctor Who episode Demons of the Punjab has been nominated for a Hugo Award, alongside the neverlessthanwondetrful Malorie Blackman. I broke my Twitter fast briefly to talk about how much I loved writing sci-fi as a kid and it being where I thought I'd always end up. And then 7/7 happened and did a number on my thinking, both about myself but also about the stories I felt it was important to tackle in the world which led to a pretty hard pivot into more grounded drama. Still fun at points. Still playful. But real, through and through.

As much as that part of my writing has been both fulfilling and instructive, it's nice to know that there's an avenue through which I can pursue my first love as well. I suppose that episode of Who was a way to do both. Hopefully I'll get to do more of that.

Anyway. It's Saturday. I've got a cat on my foot and another tucked under my armpit (I didn't do that, he, alarmingly, loves it in there). Life is a joy.

(But I'm still late on my deadline.)

xx

*P.S. It would be that acclaimed revival of Blasted at the Lyric that appropriately blew apart that attitude in me and I properly got it and admired it. Best case I've seen for the text is not the play.

P.P.S. It's hilarious to me now that I hated Kane for being bleak when my most visible work has been Some Pretty Heavy Sh*t.