Mourn Your Darlings
How to come to terms with creating and destroying worlds over and over again.
Usually with these Medium posts I like to take stuff I love as a fan and analyse it over and over until I suck all the fun out of it (I’m great at parties, I’ll corner you and talk about how St Vincent’s Masseduction is the greatest ode to late capitalistic excess and isolation until you ram vol au vents into your ears). This time I thought I’d try something different — a look at how rejection shapes the writing process through my own experiences, and whether it makes for better or worse creators. It could get very self-indulgent and earnest, but I’ll try to throw in a few pop culture references and weak political jokes along the way, otherwise it’ll be more of a slog to get through than a press conference by Dominic Cummings!!!* Hope you enjoy it, or at least don’t actively hunt me down and hurt me. I have very low standards for my work.
*Yeah, like that. But hopefully better.
I hate telling people I’m a writer because, like most writers, I feel like a fraud every time I say it. Sure, I write professionally in the sense that people pay me for my words, but answering a casual “What do you do?” in the park with “I’m a writer” immediately makes me cringe, as if the person I’m talking to now sees me as this Byronesque figure who spends all day lying on a fainting couch, waiting for inspiration to strike before groaning and writing “LAMENT” on a piece of parchment. I’m always tempted to follow up “I’m a writer” with “not like Shakespeare though!”, which is dumb, because a plumber wouldn’t follow up “I’m a plumber” with “not like Super Mario though!”
Most people’s reactions aren’t that at all, of course, and are actually very nice. (Occasionally someone will say “uh-oh, I better stop talking to you, otherwise I’ll end up in one of your sketches!”, not realising they have a much more annoying fate coming to them — ending up in one of my self-indulgent Medium articles.) But there is one response that I get that always interests me, which is something along the lines of “oh, having to come up with stuff all the time — that sounds hard!”
On the one hand, no, it’s obviously not hard at all, at least not compared to actually important work like [insert your job here, reader]. I mean really it is just a lot of making stuff up and typing silly words like “fart machine” and “Rumpelstiltskin” and “time-travelling influencer” into a Word document until the people in the coffee shop start giving you the evil eye because you’ve been there since 8am.
On the other hand — I’m not going to lie, even if it does make me sound like the aforementioned Byronesque cliché on the fainting couch — there are times when it can feel impossible, like trying to climb Ben Nevis naked armed with two plastic forks. Writing can be lonely and alienating, and can make you feel jarringly vulnerable — I’m of the belief that every piece of writing requires the author to bare a little part of themselves, tearing off a part of one’s identity and putting itself up for judgement. Every original joke, every original observation, every original thought is, up to a point, a reflection of the author’s own hopes and fears and dreams — even if it’s in no way autobiographical, or told through the prism of outlandish science fiction, 16th century politicians or a cartoon dog (or all three, if you’re me writing my latest screenplay Scooby Doo and Thomas Cromwell Break The Space-Time Continuum).
But I don’t think it’s the pressure of coming up with stuff all the time that is the worst aspect of it — although that can be frustrating and awful, especially when you have to write a fun little joke about Boris Johnson’s latest awful hateful bile and your brain has turned into a big lump of bad cheese. The worst aspect isn’t the creating — it’s the destroying, the letting go that you need to do to save your sanity and survive.
As a professional writer of a certain level (IE, successful enough to write for pre-existing shows but not yet successful enough to get my own show made), I spend a lot of my time writing scripts and treatments on spec. (“Writing on spec” means writing something speculatively — as in, writing a script without the security of a commission or payment from a production company or channel). Most spec scripts never get made, and certainly none of mine have — and when you think about it, why would they? As a system for actually selling a script, it’s terrible — I’m effectively throwing a fully formed script out at random producers who have categorically not asked for it and then expected someone to throw a bunch of cash down on it on a whim. It’s like a master carpenter turning up at your house uninvited and saying “here’s an ornately carved customised 10 foot staircase, I have no idea if it correlates to the measurements of your house or in any way fits your requirements, and you probably have one already in your house anyway, but would you like to spend ten thousand pounds on it?” It would have to be a really nice staircase that inexplicably fit in exactly with your house for you to even consider.
Specs are, for the most part, showcases — a little glimpse of what you can do. Many of them are destined to drown unseen in a producer’s inbox, quietly sinking between an e-voucher for Naked Wines and some notes on the latest John Simm detective show (you know the one, he smoulders the whole time and his daughter/wife is dead, it’ll run for 8 seasons on ITV3). The best outcome is that a producer likes it and gets you to write something else off the back of it. A good spec can open doors, and if it leads to the thing that leads to the thing that leads to the thing that leads to your big (or medium, or small) break, then it has done its job. But the chances of it actually being realised on the screen, as it was “meant” to be, are slim to none.
So there’s a strange dichotomy at the heart of spec-writing: you have to believe in an idea so much that you’re literally willing it into existence, building entire people and histories and dynamics and occasionally worlds, and yet simultaneously you have to be aloof enough from it that you can be at peace with the idea that this little universe you’ve created will most likely never see the light of day. It’s building a ridiculously detailed sandcastle right next to the tide, knowing that it will either be swept away by an uncaring sea (IE: the script is dismissed silently by a producer) or kicked over by an exuberant child and his grumpy dad (IE: the production company says they can’t commission it because they’re too busy making a show about Jack Whitehall and his awful father). Spec scripts are simultaneously futile and absolutely necessary — they must be written, but they must never be made.
Some people are amazing at dealing with this dichotomy. They can either write brilliantly from a distance — creating genius characters that they always keep at arms length, never allowing these ideas to burrow into their heart — or they can invest completely in a concept while writing it and then just put it out of their head once they’ve finished. This is the technique of my friend, the excellent writer Tom Neenan — he told me ages ago, while we were working at BBC Radio, that once he sends off a script, he just forgets about it entirely — it’s like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he wipes it from his memory and just cracks on with the next idea. It probably doesn’t hurt that Tom is the most irritatingly prolific person I’ve ever met, and has probably come up with 15 great sitcom ideas while you’ve been reading this, and none of them were anything to do with Scooby Doo or Thomas Cromwell.
I, on the other hand, am terrible at dealing with this dichotomy. Lord knows I’ve tried — every time I start writing something new I tell myself that it’s just a script, a job, a stepping stone to the next thing. The problem is that try as I might I can’t write that way — I can’t just create characters, with their flaws and humanities and quirks and dynamics, and not fall at least a little bit in love with them. I tend to get a bit obsessive. (I can hear you now: “No, really, Jack? You, the author of the 124-part, 7 hour reading time Taskmaster listicle? Getting obsessive? I refuse to believe it.”)
And sure, when I send it off, I declare loudly to an empty room that it is out of my head, that I will no longer give it a moment’s thought, that those characters are just packed away in a box until they’re needed again. But it’s no use. Despite what I tell myself, and despite what I know about spec scripts, the ornate staircase that no-one wants, in moments of quiet I start to imagine what it would look like on TV. I start to imagine the cast, the lighting, the director, what the papers will say about the first episode — “It’s like No Offence meets Frasier”, says The Guardian in a four star review. The Telegraph is less kind but who cares what they think.
In a particular moment of weakness, I imagine the trailer. And guys, it is such a good trailer. It’s got explosions, it’s got people running, it’s got a specially commissioned action-classical music version of Hot Chip’s “Over and Over”, it’s got a cool bit where the music cuts out and then someone says a witty line. I’m not kidding myself, the show isn’t perfect — there are a couple of bits that don’t quite work, sure, but we’ll iron it all out for Series 2. Because obviously we’re going to get commissioned for a Series 2. Why wouldn’t we? The show got nominated for all those BAFTAs! (Yes, that’s right, I have imagined myself getting nominated for a BAFTA. The show doesn’t win — we’re in a very competitive field, but in the afterparty loads of people tell me they think we should have won. “It’s an honour to be nominated!” I say to them, which is pretty classy of me.)
Of course, this kind of daydream only really happens for the first two or three weeks after sending it off to producers. I check my email every hour, wondering when some big shot producer is going to message me to say “hi, great to meet you, you’ve just written the most important work of art of the 21st century”, but there’s nothing but a few emails from eBay and another e-voucher from Naked Wines. After a while, the optimism fades and reality sinks in. No-one is interested in buying this world I’ve created. Maybe a few people want meetings, but nothing more. In that sense, it’s done the job of a spec script — all that could be expected of it, really. But it’s too late — I’ve let myself fall in love and now I have to watch it die.
No more daydreams about where the show will go — I stop imagining your characters getting up to new and exciting adventures in Series 2 or 3 or 4, or thinking of how they inspire people around the world, and realise instead that that one script, those 30 or 40 pages that you put so much work and effort into, is the full extent of their existence. I feel angry at myself for daring to dream that it could be anything more — I remember those instances where I imagined the trailer and the reviews and the cast and feel white hot embarrassment at my stupid, stupid hubris. But more than that, I feel sadness — I spent so many hours thinking about where they came from, about their families, about their dreams and hopes, about their ideal first date, maybe about what they think of the fishing crisis between France and the UK… for nothing. They’re gone now. It’s not even that they’ve died — it’s that they’ve never lived the lives I mapped out for them in the first place.
I know, I can practically hear your eyes rolling as you read this. “Wah wah wah! It’s so unfair! The fake fictional people I made up won’t get to live their fake fictional lives! Wah wah wah! Now I’m getting tears in my turmeric latte!” You’d be forgiven for thinking that really this is just the pretentious ramblings of a bitter writer who’s just sore that none of his scripts have been made. And I want to assure you, that’s not what this is. (OK, it is a little bit that, but it’s only 50%. 75, tops.) Genuinely I appreciate that no idea has a God-given right to exist, especially not something by me, Mr White-Male-Middle Class. I am also aware how lucky I am to be able to have a vaguely feasible life as a writer — if someone told me that I would spend the rest of my life pitching shows that went nowhere, while still working enough to support my family, I would be delighted. This isn’t some long-winded rant at the industry as a whole (although I do think the amount of work writers in the UK are expected to do for free in the hope of such unlikely rewards, with none of the writers’ rooms and steady career progression you get in the US, is a scandal which discriminates against working class writers and calcifies the same privileged voices in our media, but hey ho, that’s for another article).
What this is is an attempt to verbalise the grief that comes with constant rejection, of having to let the many imagined worlds go. Rejection in itself is fine — I’m one of those annoying people who believes that nothing is wasted in writing, that even when something is rejected you can learn what works and what doesn’t, that every word written makes you a better writer. (Hence why this article is about 5000 words too long already.) But if every rejection makes you a better writer, buddy I must be fucking brilliant by now. Since 2018, I think I have written sixteen* scripts and/or detailed treatments of potential shows or films, each time working out the characters, the dynamics, the sense of drama, the “why now”, the message that it tells about our time. All but one of them have fallen by the wayside, and the one that did get picked up was a Radio 4 pilot that did not get a full series.
I’m not saying this for pity (although I am always up for it, I’m a very pitiful man), more to give a sense of the number of characters and situations I’ve had to invent and destroy, invent and destroy, invent and destroy. It takes a toll — not least in the sense that it makes it that much harder to start up again. After so many of these scripts or treatments I’ve sat back and thought “this is the one, this is the pinnacle, this is the best thing I’ll ever write.” That’s not boasting, that’s a genuine belief that I’ve reached the limits of my ability. And then I see it crumble, and I have to rebuild once more. Truth be told I am starting to wonder how many times I can keep doing it.
The phrase “Do a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is, categorically, horseshit. That in itself is not necessarily surprising, as most things that one finds cross-stitched on a pillow in Wilko next to a “LIVE LAUGH LOVE” poster and a set of “Keep Calm and Wine O’Clock” book-ends are horseshit. But it’s only recently that I’ve realised the many different ways it’s wrong: it’s not just that “doing a job you love” is really just a great way to turn something you love into a heartless grind, or the dangerous implication that work you love isn’t really work so you should do it for free.
For me, the big problem with that saying is the suggestion that a love for your work makes it easier. It doesn’t. It makes you want to do it more, it makes you want to fight for it more, it makes you invest in it more. “Doing a job you love” means it can break your heart, it can gutpunch you and leave you winded for days, it can make you feel dizzy and delirious one minute and deflated and defeated the next. That’s me with writing — lovesick, daydreaming about the future when it’s good and wallowing in despair when it’s not.
I have come to accept that that kind of investment is the only way I can really write well, to fall in love with worlds that I will have to let go of immediately. So if I must keep having my heart broken, over and over again, why not do it wholeheartedly? To express the joy of truly caring about what I do, and the pain when it must be stopped. If I have to keep killing my darlings, the least I can do is mourn them.
*I’m including non-spec scripts and treatments in this — IE, I was paid to build the world of a show with a script or treatment by a production company but the idea then didn’t get picked up. In terms of purely spec scripts, since 2018 it’s about five.
