Episode 117 - Time Management

Hello, welcome to sitcom geek time, Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey. And this is episode 117. It is.

And we are going to talk about how best you can use your time, time management. First we're going to catch up on the latest news or more really about what's happening on TV at the moment, have you been watching much, James? So the thing that I have, I'm usually pretty slow to watch most things. I have actually watched Good Omen's yet another show with Good in the title, along with The Good Wife, The Good Fight, The Good Place, The Good Life.

The Good Life, exactly. That started it all off really. And there's also a movie called Good, which is about Jason Isaacs and somebody else who are basically a Nazi in a Jew, starts at a terrible beginning for a joke, who were friends just before the war and sort of convergent. Anyway, so yes, I watched Good Omen's.

And it was an interesting watch because I know you haven't seen it yet, Dave, and there were no, I don't want to give any spoilers, although the book is quite old and the movie, and this is basically a parody of the Omen, isn't it? That's what Good Omen's is, it's about the Omen, because it came out not that long after the Omen movie came out. Yeah, I think so. It's got an antichrist in it, who is a child, and except it's a bit of a, it's like the life of Brian is, imagine being mistaken for the Messiah.

This is like, well, imagine if the wrong baby is delivered and the wrong person is the antichrist, sort of thing. But obviously the casting is amazing because you've got David Tennant, not Neil Tennant, and you've got Michael Sheen, not Martin Sheen. That would be a very different show with Martin Sheen and Neil Tennant, although watch that, that would be fine. Not sure what Neil Tennant's acting would be like, as long as he gets to do the songs, I'd be very happy to watch that.

Yeah, I imagine his acting would be rather effortlessly wonderful, you know what I mean? But anyway, so yeah, it was a frustrating watch overall, the first episode, terrific, but I just found in the middle episodes, not enough was happening. It felt like you had enough action for three episodes, and yet it just kept on, it was six hours worth of telly, and I spent an awful lot of time in the middle just thinking, I don't know what these characters are trying to achieve, and I don't think, and I'm not convinced that I meant to know what they're meant to achieve, given what they are achieving, or it just felt an awful lot of, and the rules weren't terribly clear in terms of, if you're an angel, and you can sort of do miracles, why are you worried about this or that, or why are you phoning someone to help them do this when you could just go there and do it, couldn't you? Do you think this is just on my head in this shiny new world of Netflix, where we watch 150 episodes in one go, or a new series comes up and it's big and shiny and got lots of stars, and it costs lots of money to make?

And meanwhile, on the internet, you can watch two minute sketches or 10 minutes it comes. Do you think there's some sort of amazing sort of regrouping going on, people are trying to find completely new and different ways to do, basically tell stories, and do you think that the form is taking over from the content, maybe? Yeah, I, oh that's a really good question. In a way, what was interesting about it for me was the fact that as a general rule of thumb, the more expensive something is the less funny it is.

But having said that, good omens was actually quite funny, it seems like it was as funny as it intended to be, and it did not look expensive. And what, the knock on effect of that though, is that I did watch a BBC drama, I watched the new Stephen Poliakov drama. Are you watched it so that I don't have to do this, James? Yes, of course, of like summer of thunder or something, and I had Toby Stevens and Keeley Hors in it, and I didn't really go bundle on it in the end, but my overwhelming thing watching it was just thinking, this looks quite cheap, they just aren't enough extras.

It feels like, if the camera pans left all right by a couple of feet, we're not going to see anything. It felt very, so everything you saw felt completely of the, I think it's like 1957 or something like that. It all felt very, very of its time, but it just felt like they hadn't really created a world. But you now watch good omens, you watch the marvellous Mrs.

Maisel, you watch the crown, and you just think you have created a world. I bet you these new, his dark materials shows, I'm not, you know, I enjoy quite... Does that Netflix? I don't know, it might even be BBC, but it's probably got some other money somewhere.

I bet you they're going to look amazing if they are, and will create a world. But it just feels like, if you build a world now with Game of Thrones as well, that TV is getting worryingly expensive. And I don't know whether that presents there for an opportunity for the contrivance of the audience sitcom, which is far away from the game of thrones and good omens that you can get. I mean, even the other good show, The Good Place, which you liked, and I've watched the second episodes and watched in the first time.

I enjoyed it, it's not in my, it's not a show that I'd say to people, you must watch the good place. It's just proper funny all the way through. Yeah, The Good Place, I didn't quite go for that either, but it just felt also very expensive. It's also niche, if you like jokes about philosophy and I realise that it's a very niche area, then yes, good places for you.

Yeah, I do like jokes about philosophy and I didn't go on it. For some reason I didn't really warm to any of the garages except for... Dance, Dance, Dance, it was amazing, but that wasn't enough to make me watch episode 3. But lots of people like it and they are not wrong to like it, and it's fine.

It is all a matter of opinion, pretty much. So anyway, that's the latest dispatches from my, and Abe has been working too hard to watch any TV. And there's a cricket world cup going on. And a football world cup as well.

I think that's the question that came to me in the moment, but I think there's probably a whole episode in that about the formats and what do you write now? Do you write a half hour? Do you write a three minutes? Do you write something that could run for 85 episodes?

It's all kind of, the system, the model is broken. And here's the frustrating thing because I suspect if we talks to a TV commissioner controller for a channel, like when we said, what is a comedy drama? At the BBC writers' office, and they said, it is whatever you wanted to be. And yeah, we all know that if you take an idea to a producer and then even they then take that producer to a controller, they will say, where do you see this fitting into our current schedule?

Given that it has to be 17 minutes. We don't have any 17 minutes slots. And you might then go, you told me to write whatever I wanted and just write it and leave the rest to you. And you're now going to turn it down because it's 17 minutes.

And it's not what you mean. So it feels like there's a little bit of a cloud cookie land thing going on here. But as far as prime and Netflix concerned, presumably they don't care whether it's 17 minutes or 22 or 109. But then again, how do you get a meeting with Amazon or Netflix?

I don't know. It's not easy. They are setting up in Britain. They are having meetings with drama writers apparently.

But they also have a negotiation system where they tell you how much you will get paid. That's it. They don't believe in negotiating. They have a raw Disney-esque approach.

I'm not sure they also believe in residuals and royalties. Exactly. So yeah, I was really thinking about how, you know, we get enough money to make the show, but that's sort of it. Which is fine if we're trying to get started.

And once you're actually trying to build something and also fund a development department, you need money from this show to pay R&D for the next show. I'm pretty sure a point will come as it has come with Sky. Sky when they first started doing comedy, everybody was so excited at the enormous amount of money they had to make it. And surprisingly, because nothing actually was a hit as far as I can tell.

And then gradually the figures have gone down and they make less in this company. And there's nothing that makes sense to be more comedy drama or like very more soap-like or like, you know, the show with Ruth. Yeah, it probably don't also, Stella, for example, which is like almost more like comedy drama soap kind of thing, which is exactly what audiences like and that's all fine, but it's not quite the cutting edge comedy that we might have. Although they will say Sky Atlantic is doing this and that and you, okay, fine.

I don't think Sky listening to this podcast particularly. Maybe they are and that's the end of my career. I'll get another end of my career. Oh, I've had a few of those.

You'll never work again. Well, again. Yeah, it's welcome to my world. Yes.

Anyway, speaking of the end of my career, let's talk about the beginning of my career or your career. Beginning of your career. Yes. We've had a few questions actually from Patreon.

People ask you about that. You can ask us questions via email, ziccomgeeks.com or via Facebook. We have a general Facebook page and we also have a Twitter handle at sitcomgeeks. So you feel free to ask us any questions through any of those things.

But obviously we are regularly contacting Patreon subscribers via a secret Facebook page. We have a Facebook group and several more ones with their questions. So I'm just leaping on you Dave there because you've said you mentioned the page on subscriber. The point about these specific questions is that rather than being necessarily about comedy and the machine of writing comedy, they're about more to do with the lifestyle of comedy and about things.

That's why we decided we thought we could do a whole episode about time management. And in fact, we've got various other areas that people have asked about. We can talk about like tax, tax money. Yeah.

It's right. It's got A1, make enough money to pay tax. That's not a problem for quite a lot of people, unfortunately. Anyway.

And we're going to do mostly, we're going to do these for just as Patreon only. But the specific one we're doing as a general thing, because it applies really, I think, whatever you're doing, wherever people are wanting to become writers or wanting to do something creative. But how do you make the leap? How do you manage to get from being a person in a job that they would rather not be doing to a person we have been lucky for these while working lives to be doing full time?

And this was a great question, Mr. Ojau Antonio and Sita. He asked what's the importance of setting goals when starting a writing career so that you're always on track and never sidetracked something I know a little about. He says, and that's, so the setting goals, but that is the starting point.

I mean, what would you say? Did you set goals or did you have goals before you knew what you were doing? Yes. I think I'm naturally, so I tend to come up with lots and lots of ideas for shows a lot rather than having a few and think about them a lot.

And that's just kind of the way I operate. But it's hard to know. So I didn't really have goals at the start because I didn't know what I was doing. And also I didn't have anything else going on.

So I was just trying to do everything. The advantage I have, as it were, is I went to university and got quite good at living on no money. And therefore the only smart bit, the only really smart decision I made which feels like it was, wow, did I make that decision? That was a really good decision, which was move to London and live on no money and try to become a company writer.

Because the moment you get a job becoming a company writer will become an awful lot harder because you will have to, you will have to basically work right in the evenings and at weekends when you're tired and you don't want to, or you will have to quit that job paying you a regular salary. And that might be too hard. So in those early days I was doing temp work. I was having, so I did temp work which I found boring and that was intentional because I didn't want to get a career that wasn't writing.

So I made it very hard for myself to get one that wasn't writing. So that's not a terribly helpful comment to people who are now holding down jobs and that kind of thing. But if you are listening and you are very young, make the most of having incredibly low standards domestically, you are having a very cheap lifestyle and make the sacrifices now because if you end up married with children, you won't want to make sacrifices then because the kids need food and they need shoes and it suddenly becomes very difficult. I did have a job.

I was a journalist because I thought I had no idea that anyone, you could make a living right in comedy. But I thought, well if I start, if I write for a living, which is a different attitude to a different approach to you, if I write for a living then I might become a better writer. As it happened, I did exactly what you did in a similar sort of way, although I was earning money. I was young and foolish and driven enough to want to get away from this job so that I actually would come home from writing eight hours a day and sit down and write comedy.

I wrote a whole series of a radio show which of course, as we know, is the thing that everybody says don't write more than one episode. I wrote six episodes of one show which I then sent to a producer which he lost back in the days when he didn't have a carbon copy and I sent that to him and he lost that as well. Oh my goodness. Which was a very glad that happened.

Okay, okay. It was terrible. But you know, it was obviously something that I needed to do to teach me, well this is how you write, this is what half an hour radio show must look like. So that was the thing that I had, I suppose, was that the whole alternative comedy thing was starting at that time.

And so there were people that I knew and things were happening in London when I was in South Wales being a journalist. And it was possible for me to quit that job and move to London as you had done and know that there were places I could work as a freelance journalist, which I did do to begin with. But very quickly I got very lucky and I was doing stand up. I had no intention of doing stand up.

I never thought I'd do stand up. So if I had a goal set, I think the goal I set was I thought I would like to write sitcom when I'm 35 years old. This was when I was in my 20s and I thought you can't write sitcom until you're 35. I don't know why I thought that.

Well, there's something in there. Step two and the sun was my favourite sitcom and they were coming in their 20s when they met in their writing Hang Rock in their 20s I think. But yeah, it was just some sort of sense that I need to have lived a bit. But I went to London and was suddenly earning money as a stand up comedian and I did that for 10 years.

And that was basically a distraction from what I wanted to do, which was to write. So the setting goals at that stage was kind of irrelevant. I think in wonder, well, you can then set yourself some short-term goals. So I moved to London.

I was aware of the BBC equivalent of News Jack back then was week ending. And so I did that and my aim was to get a credit on week ending. The money wasn't very much. And it took me, I think, five weeks to get one thing on.

And I'd had a lot of practice writing sketches at University of Durham where I was having failed to get into Cambridge twice. But I knew how to write a sketch roughly and I learned quite fast how to write a topical sketch. And then it was just a question of just trying to get some credits. There's like, get a credit, get an agent, you know, get a, I was doing a bit of live stuff as well because I had some mates and we were doing Comedy at uni.

So we did an Edinburgh show in 1999. So I think, I mean, I think in one level, it depends on what you're trying to do, but setting yourself a goal to do anything by then, I think is a very basic thing, isn't it? I remember that I did have two goals from when I was about 15 or 16. I thought I always wanted to write for week ending and I always wanted to write for the enemy, New Musical Express.

And within about two weeks of moving to London at the end of 1983, I got sketches on week ending and articles on the enemy. And it was just, oh, right. Those were the things that that was all I ever wanted to do. And I'm doing them.

But I only moved here about six weeks ago. What do I do now? And I didn't really, I mean, I didn't have a great sense of what I wanted to do. At this point, I met Sinclair and we ended up writing stuff together as well.

So that kind of decided it for me, I suppose, to some extent. But I think the difference now, I would say, though, is that there are more things in place. It used to be, it was week ending that was on for 40 weeks a year. And if you wanted to be a comedy writer, you'd try and write for that.

And you'd try to get the headlines, the news headlines on radio too, which was usually running about the same time. That was about 20 weeks. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was more, that's in front of an audience. So you kind of had to be funny. You could be making very good, interesting points for weekend. You didn't have to be gag, gag, gag.

But a lot of the news headlines are writers became the people who became the very successful writers because they knew they learnt how to write for an audience a lot quicker. So that's, in terms of the goals that you're setting, it's worth kind of looking at the calendar for the year of comedy writing. And very roughly, what we say is that in sort of around about January and February, and also in sort of September, October, there are six episodes of News Jack on Lucy Radio 4 Extra, which is the equivalent of week ending. So for six weeks, you can send sketches or one line as to these shows.

The Scottish show Breaking the News, which has been a successful radio show for a few years on Radio 4 Scotland. And that's now on TV as well. And that seems to be on an awful lot. I think it was on in 10 weeks over the autumn.

It might have been earlier this year on TV. And it's also on, it seems to be on two or three times a year, six weeks. So they only take one line jokes. But that's another show that is really worth trying to get your gags onto those shows.

And then, of course, in April, we have the BBC writers' room script. And that's also, that's just coincide with the Rolcliffe Award, which was a similar sort of time beginning of April, I think. So already you kind of think, okay, well, if I want to get a script in for April, I want to get my best half hour comedy script in for April. And you kind of want to be thinking about that sort of in the late summer, probably.

You want to be getting to the point where, like we're doing with soup to nuts on the patreon site, we're coming up with an idea. And we know that probably six months down the line will have something that's like a script or maybe a bit less than that. But you need to be thinking about the idea needs to be sort of gestating, I think. So that's, these are things that are fixed in the timetable.

So whether you've got an hour a week or two days a week or, you know, just 10 minutes here or 10 minutes there, you want to be, depending on what the time of year is, if it's writing a script for a competition or something, you want to be using the time a few months ahead of that. Yeah. Ten minutes here. Okay, I'm just going to write down three plot ideas or something or I'm going to write down a camera with two or three characters and just stuff that you need to accumulate.

So even if you've only got like an hour a week, you know, at the end of three weeks, you've got three hours of stuff, but you might something might come out of that. Yeah, I think that's all. Yeah, I think just making the most of those time when you do get time, it's sort of to know thyself and know when you can write and when you can't write and if you say, I've only got an hour now. And you know, my days have often broken down into hours or chunks or here or there.

And I just think, well, I could sort out a C plot in an hour and I can give that some brain space and I'm not going to worry about the whole thing. So I think having a big task, like I want to script into the BBC writers room by April and therefore you want to work back from there. I want it to be ready two weeks before the deadline. I want to be polishing it then.

I want to be having that needs to be my fourth draft and to work back. Well, back, back, back, I need to be coming up with ideas in September, October, plotting, planning October, November outlining scene by scenes, writing January, February, rewriting February, March, you know, or whatever it is, you know, and no, because if again, if you've got a regular job or a commitment or you're caring for someone or whatever it is, you have to just basically break it down into smaller chunks. And that's, you know, that there's no, that's how things are written by professional writers. It's just those chunks happen closer together.

And sometimes you might do something in the morning and sometimes something in the afternoon. But not always either. So I think just breaking it down into little chunks, not being overwhelmed by it and just thinking, I'm just going to push it, push it on a little bit more, push it on a little bit more. And you know, you're not going to write a script in a day or two days, but you know you can write a scene in that time.

And just say, right, okay, after work today, I'm going to write one scene. And then tomorrow night, I won't feel like writing a scene, but I'll rewrite the scene that I've just written. And so one of the things I do, for example, for me is I know when I'm, so for me, because I write, you know, all day, it will be nice, but I tend to try to write original stuff in the mornings. And I tend to, and also I'm quite good after 5pm.

I don't know why between 5 and 7 or those sometimes, you know, I'm cooking or having dinner with my kids or whatever. I like cooking. But it's to know when you're good. And therefore you say, right, I'm going to write a scene from scratch or from the outline, then, and then I'll spend the afternoon rewriting that or going back over yesterday or whatever.

And just making your life as easy as possible, rather than just intentionally attacking the hardest task you can think of in some kind of vain attempt to sort of declare yourself a writer, just cheat by making your life easier and know when you're good, know when you're not so good, and to sort of divide your tasks accordingly. I think if we could actually then move to specifically to News Jack, now that is, there are some things that you have to know if you are thinking I would like to write for News Jack. And the most important one is that the most time that you spend writing for News Jack is the weekend. And there's no way around that.

The show is recorded on Wednesday night. It goes out on Thursday night. And so there's no point in looking at newspapers for the following week until Friday morning. So you've got Friday morning is when you have to look at start looking at stuff.

And the deadline for script is Monday noon and the deadline for one line jokes is Tuesday at noon. So you basically have from Friday to Monday to write your sketches. And you will probably spend most of the time on Friday coming up with ideas, reading all the papers and seeing what you can. I mean, maybe you might come up with things.

I think you're only allowed to send two sketches maximum. Yeah. So you want to be writing three or four and sending your best to? Yeah.

And you want to be, you want a list of ten Friday and maybe get another five on Saturday. So you want to be, so you kind of probably are not really going to get down to the meat of writing sketches. Unless you have some great idea that sort of writes itself, which does happen occasionally. But generally it's hard work.

It's got to be hard work and rewriting and rewriting. So you kind of need to know actually I'm not going to be, you know, whatever your life style is. If you can't give lots of time on Saturday and Sunday, it sort of maybe think about, well, maybe I should just cut my losses and think I'm not going to write for that. I can use that time better coming up with other things.

Slightly easier for breaking the news because it's just one line. Or you may just decide, well, I'm just going to try and write one line as for News Jack, in which case you've got from Friday to Tuesday to just come up with one line as. Yeah. I think, I mean, those are all, you know, really good bits of advice.

And it's feels like you just think, well, why can't I just sit down on Saturday and just write a sketch from scratch? And you go, well, because you can't. And professional writers generally can't do that either. And so I think it's just also making sure that, I mean, as with all of these things within becoming a writer, it's trying to have a writing mindset.

And the writing mindset is, it is a process that I have to follow to some extent, and sometimes inspiration strikes you when you get it right for some of that's fine. But you can't, you can't allow for that or assume that or plan for that. You have to plan with spending some time coming up with ideas, spending some time coming up with some more ideas, picking the ideas that seem most fruitful and writing them. Some of them won't then choosing those and rewriting the best ones, and then writing them again, and then coming back to them a few hours later, having one more polish and then pick the rest two and send them off.

And that sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. Writing's a lot of work. And have a lot of them as well.

I mentioned earlier, his advice, he's written lots and lots of sketches and lots of shows. He says, if you're stuck on a sketch on a topical show and you've spent 20 minutes or half an hour and you just cannot find a way to make it work and just quit and go on to something else, just leave it. And that's why you need to have 10 or 15 ideas before you even sit down to write your one sketch. So I think it's, you do, and there's a lovely episode of Freakonomics podcast where there's one about how everything takes longer than you think it's going to, and that's just like a scientific fact that we tend to underestimate how long things take.

But the thing that a professional knows and you want to be having a professional writer's mindset is how long things take. And therefore, you know, you wouldn't try and rewire a house in an afternoon. You know that in order to do this, you have to switch that off, take that out, change that, go down to the IY store and get this thing, that thing, take it back, put it in, test it, change that, take it off, turn the electrics back on. You know what I mean?

There is a process that electricians follow that's not immediately obvious. And the idea that, oh, why can't I just sort of rewire it in an afternoon? Well, because you can't. So I think the time management thing does come down to having realistic expectations about how long things write because the problem is, looking at a sketch that's two pages long, you think, well, I could have typed that in 12 minutes.

Well, yeah, but it didn't take you 12 minutes. Why do you keep thinking it should only take 12 minutes? Also, there is something, this is my experience and I know from other writers that they have similar experiences and it goes back all the way back to when I was a journalist and it's always carried on, which is the deadline of concept. And the fact is that if you know that your deadline is 12 o'clock on Monday, I guarantee that you'll spend lots and lots of time on Saturday and Sunday staring into space thinking, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do. I've got maybe that will work. And finally, with about an hour to go on 11 o'clock on Monday, you write it and it comes out finally. So there is that aspect of the procrastination and the fear of the deadline that sort of sees it hold of you and stops you writing.

I know so many writers who think, oh, I've got three weeks deadlines and that's no problem at all. And they'll spend the first week and half just thinking about, oh, they are actually subconsciously thinking about it. But there's sort of something, well, I'll come to that. And then suddenly there's not enough time.

I think that is part of human nature. You have to accept that that happens as well. Yeah. And yeah, so the deadline to do focus the mind.

There's nothing more frustrating. I've got an hour now to rewrite that scene. I'm going to spend an hour rewriting that scene. I'll just check Facebook hour later.

I've been on Facebook that entire hour. Now I've got to go and look after the kids and beat yourself. That happens a lot as well. And so the other thing that we do here is whenever we have emails from people or send a script or don't send a script.

But if you join us on Patreon, we'll read the first 10 pages. If you join at a certain level and do a little podcast about it. But as a rule, don't send a script because we're not going to read it. So not as a podcast anyway.

They're asking reading services available and that kind of business. You can look up online for all that. But in general, when we have interactions with people, they say, oh, well, I entered the writer's in competition with this script, but it wasn't very good. And I didn't really have time to finish it.

And so if I may be honest with you listener, or if I may be honest with the correspondent in that situation, part of me wants to say, well, why didn't you finish it? Well, why did you send it in? Well, it's like, I don't say that because I'm British. And it's not for me to be brutal and somebody really wants me to be.

But people kind of sometimes plan for failure because they sort of sabotage themselves, because it's safer than trying your hardest and failing. I get it all. But equally, it's like, if you want to be a writer, if you want to act like a writer, and therefore you know when the deadline is, you have to have your script ready and brilliant by then. So work backwards from there, like you would if you were a professional.

So you have to start acting like a writer because also it's not just a question of writing a script, and that script will basically transform your life and suddenly you're a writer. It's just the beginning of the process of demonstrating that you're the kind of person who can write 10 of these over the course, over the year or two years or whatever, and come up with a whole different idea for something else too. So I think time management, I want to see within the subset of having professional standard goals and leaving yourself enough time to do things and to do things that require an hour or two hours. So you won't get them done in 20 minutes and stop pretending that you will.

And I do that too. I'm guilty of this, where I think, oh, that will only take two days and I know that it will take me three days or four days, especially if there's a World Cup cricket match going on or something like that. Yes, or a Women's World Cup game. Exactly.

So there's that. And so I think what Dave's been showing with that, with the News Jack thing, and there are episodes, if you go back into our archive, there are episodes about News Jack specifically with some really good advice where we talk to the producers and the presenter and all that kind of stuff, but have the same approach to writing a script so that that's ready for the BBC Writers' Room or the Rockcliff thing. And we could do a whole, I think we've done that since about the value of entering competitions, but there are good disciplines to get you into writing scripts and the BBC Writers' Room scheme is worth doing if you can get onto it. And that is something to aim for.

And then you've got a script that you can also send to agents and producers who might agree to read them and to anyone else. So you do need to focus the mind and actually have a script. I've got one other thought on that, but you might have something else. Well, all I was going to mention was that in September, we are going to be running a competition with British Comedy Guide where we are, if you join their BCG Pro, you can enter a script and we're going to offer a prize.

We will give you a full sort of critique for that script. So this will be hopefully something that you will be maybe considering for entering for the BBC Writers' Room in April, but we're going to do some critiquing for you. So it's not a big deal, a big deal of prize, but it is kind of hopefully something to give you a bit of a kick. But the other thing I was going to say was, so there's the script thing.

And so if you want to be a sitcom writer or a script writer, you need to write a script. But the thing is, and I think this is something the script notes podcasts is very helpful for, is reminding you that a script is only a document. And we don't want to fetishise documents and get people to be really good at producing documents because that isn't a script as a script and it was shown. And therefore it's worth thinking, I would say, with our do-it-yourself kind of attitude, and go back and listen to the episode called, I think, Do-it-yourself or something, where have a script on the go, but also then have a think about what you could write that becomes sort of a regular thing that shows what you can do in a different format that can be enjoyed by an audience straight away.

Now that could be making an audio podcast sitcom of your own. That could be writing a blog. Every week you write a funny blog, it could be a YouTube channel, it could be, you know, all of these things which can actually be done for free pretty much. And become a regular discipline because that's the other thing that people are sort of like, oh, I want to be a writer, what should I do?

Well, one thing is write, which sounds silly and trite. But actually, I worry that sometimes people want to be writers. And as if it's an enviable lifestyle, it isn't. You want to be that person in Starbucks with your mic.

Righting, creating, you want to be JK Rowling, don't you? In the cafe, in Edinburgh, writing Harry Potter. Good luck. Good luck.

Yeah, yeah, and if you want to be a writer, and basically if you want to be a writer because you want to be known as a writer and this author who's a writer, that's not going to work out. And also if you want to be a writer in order to make as much money as JK Rowling, or to make money generally, almost anything you do is statistically more likely to make you more money than being a writer. You know, the average writer's earnings are, you know, look at the stats and writers, you know, well, it's just a way to build your own. But the numbers are not good for earnings through writing.

So only try and be a writer if you actually like writing or like having written is the other kind of thing, which is the other sort of thing too. But yes, no, the average earnings for even professional writers is in the thousands and not tens of thousands, isn't it? Yeah, you know, plenty of people are on the booker long list, and writing is not their full-time job, let alone the, you know, let alone people who have books out generally. So I would say have a script that you're trying to get together to show that you can write a script, and that this is a show that you think should exist and that this, you know, answering the question, why this, why now, why you?

But then also try to work out how can I have an outlet for my writing that people can just click and enjoy. If you go back to last episode, you know, we suggested if you're trying to break into the industry and you, you know, you want a young white rich man, whatever, you know, you can do things and you can make things so that people can find them and find your voice. And so try to do whatever you think you could do to make that happen. Everything is changing and it's never been harder to get into the standard commissioning rounds, but it's also never been easier to get in on the basis of what you personally can do.

Yeah. And so, you know, even as a professional writer, I write things thinking, I don't quite know what's going to come of this. So my show, my live show, A Turbulent Priest, that's not going to make me any money, hardly at all, you know, I produce it. I know what the figures are and the figures are, please don't do this again.

Or please, please stop doing this because it doesn't make enough money to us. I really enjoy doing it. But also, I'm open to the idea that somebody might then watch it and go, Oh, could you write a movie based on the life of this historical figure, to which answer will be yes, I can, especially if you pay me money. So I'm kind of open to the idea that things will come as a result of it.

So I think that's why I'm, you know, I would advocate just finding an outlet for your writing that isn't just a script that only producers and agents can read, but it's a thing in its own right that your friends can read as well, as well as industry types who might sort of hear your voice and enjoy what you're doing. I've been writing 1000 words a morning since the start of this year. Well, there you go. You say yourself a time out of this, isn't it?

Totally. And you've stuck to me? I have, yes. And it's completely ruined.

All the other things, everything else has been shambolic doing my counts and everything. But I stuck to my 1000, well, it was 500 words a day and I went up to 1000, which I really impressed myself. I'm going to do that. And it'll be first draft will be finished, hopefully, end of this month.

And what was how many hours is that like you've got to do it by a certain time of the day or? Generally, I try and get it done. I'm able to start usually by about 8.30 and I try and get it done by 10. Okay.

Great. And then that gives me the rest of the day to sit around and un-money. And earn money. Yeah.

Actually do things that allow me money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But there you go. That's a great example of here is a tangible thing. There's also the writer novel in a month thing, isn't there? It's in November, I think.

Yeah. Right. Yes. That's a thing which I'm sure has worked for a lot of people.

Yeah. Deadlines do work, I think. And that's why you should be, even though you're not a professional writer yet, that's where your mindset puts you into professional writer. Because that is really, if whatever else is being a writer is about delivering script on time.

Yeah. And if whether you feel like it or not. As Arnold Brown's famous joke, because the secret of comedy is timing, is if I'm booked to a gig on Tuesday and I turn up on the Wednesday, then that's not going to happen. Yeah.

Exactly. That's very good advice. Yeah. But yeah, you do.

And again, you do need to go, well, I don't feel that writing. Well, that's too bad because the script is due on Tuesday. So you do need to have it in by then. So sort of forcing yourself to have a bit of discipline, I think that thousand words a day thing, I think is really good.

Cool. Well, those hopefully we've not really given you time schedules or management or something, but it is about working out what sort of person you are, what's the writer you are, what you can do in a day. Both time that you have. In something you have so that you can nudge it, you know, work out when you're good to write in the daytime.

You're an early morning person, you late night person, and work out how to nudge your career along incrementally. And having a big script that you're working on that shows what you can do and then having a project which is, you know, could be stand up. It could be a YouTube channel, it could be a podcast. Two minutes sketch.

Yeah, it could be anything. It could even be working hard just to make a two minutes sketch for YouTube, and that in itself is three months work. And that's fine too. But you just want to keep it moving, really.

You could win the Writers Guild online sketch award. Yeah. Both of the winners so far have been less than two minutes long. Yeah.

There we go. So hopefully that is helpful. And as we say, we have a script competition of our own coming down the pike. So look out for that in September.

Cool. Okay. I think we're done, aren't we? We are, yes.

We can email us as we mentioned before seek on geeks of Gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook. We have a Facebook group, and then you can find us on Twitter, sick on geeks. And also you can join us on Patreon and join our secret Facebook group, which we can.

We can't tell you anything about because it's secret. Exactly. So that's it. And loads of other benefits being Patreon members.

And so hopefully you can go and have a look at that. But I think we're done. Thanks very much for listening. Yeah.

Thanks a lot. And speak next time. Speak soon. Bye.