UNWRITING TIPS

Imagine you’re a writer. Go ahead, millions of other people do it, and many of them dispense advice on the subject. Of course, we all know that any list of Top Ten Writing Tips should contain only one tip: ‘Stop writing lists of writing tips and get back to work.’ But the lists keep coming.

Now imagine you’re a successful writer, and someone asks you for your top writing tips. If you really knew the magic formula why would you give away the secrets that made you rich and famous, any more than Coca-Cola would reveal their recipe to help competitors put them out of business? You might offer some platitudes like ‘You can’t write the final draft first’ or ‘Try not to drink spirits before noon’ but that's it. So, given that all writing tips are bullshit, I offer the following UNWRITING TIPS, which are guaranteed to work, but not necessarily in a good way.

GETTING STARTED

When in doubt, begin with a sex scene. Then do some writing.

If your friends say you should be a comedy writer, forget it. Comedy writers don’t have friends.

Motivate yourself with the ‘Carrot and Stick’ approach. You can stick the carrot wherever you want.

Don't waste time on being jealous of more successful writers. Focus on your task of sticking pins in little dolls of them.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

Never use two words when one word will do instead of the two words you were going to use.

Always think about what you can leave out. For example, when sending work to agents, don't include a photograph of your genitals.

Write about what you know. But as if it had happened to someone much more interesting than you.

If you’re adapting your own work, ignore the original author. If you have to collaborate, work in different rooms.

Always take a break if you've spent more than six hours at a stretch in online arguments about punctuation.

If you can consistently write five thousand words a day you should probably drink less coffee.

Remember, writing is rewriting. No, wait. GOOD writing is rewriting. Or maybe, "The BEST writing..." No, the first version was OK.

UNWRITING FOR THE SCREEN

The key to writing an effective screenplay is tension and pacing. If you get too tense, get up and pace around for a while.

Write the film YOU'D watch if you were the kind of person who'd watch the type of film that someone like you would write.

Get to know your characters. Ask them questions. If they won't talk, lock them in a room with a rotting seal carcass.

Always know what your characters are doing when they're off screen. Make sure they're nor sneaking off to appear in someone else's screenplay.

It’s said that if Shakespeare were alive today he’d be selling scripts to Hollywood. But it’s more likely he’d be selling whatever's kept him alive all this time.

GENERAL UNWRITING TIPS

Always be concerned about plagiarism. If it's not happening to you, you're clearly not writing anything worth stealing.

If your agent is wearing a sombrero and you're not in Mexico, that could explain why you found it so easy to get an agent.

Always carry a notebook and jot down interesting things you see and hear. Except when you're in North Korea.

If your keyboard is sprinkled with flaky white powder and it's not drugs, it's probably time to wash your hair.

Never give up on your dreams. Except that one about the giraffe and the mayonnaise. That’s just sick.

Ensure your futuristic sci-fi script doesn’t go out of date by not writing it yet.

Always believe in yourself. Unless you’re a ghost. What kind of idiot believes in ghosts? Get over yourself.

Give your novel an exciting postmodernist vibe by writing about a character who strongly objects to being based on you.

AND FINALLY…

Always think of yourself as a professional. Then all you have to do is find a profession.

cartoon illustration at top by Dan Pearce

UNSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

You know how it is. You're at the end of your tether. Your hopes and dreams seem futile. You feel that the world is conspiring against you, and that you're a total failure. You're about to give up - and then it happens. You stumble across a few simple words that seem to have a personal message just for you at this dark moment in your life. And in that instant you realise that no matter how low you have sunk, and no matter how bad things seem, there is always some fucking idiot who can make it worse.

You were already feeling lonely, depressed and hopeless. But now, as you contemplate the drivel you've just come across, almost certainly on the Internet, a bitter, poisonous rage floods through you as well. For once again the glorious potential of human language to enoble the spirit and elevate the intellect has been debased and perverted by some unspeakable swine to spread the plague of toxic banality that is the INSPIRATIONAL FUCKING QUOTE.

In the earnest hope of alleviating a small portion of the misery inflicted upon us by this depravity, I offer the following observations, for which I've coined the term Unspirational Quotes.

Do not go where the path may lead, go where there is no path and leave a trail. That way they'll be able to find your remains.

Search for the hero inside yourself. If you can't find him, flush him out with alcohol. The bugger always shows up after a few drinks.

Don't waste your time being jealous of those more succesful than yourself. Instead, focus your efforts on sticking pins in little dolls of them.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And so does a journey to the pub, which is usually a lot closer.

Seize the day. Then cut off one of its ears and send it to the rest of the week with a ransom demand.

The secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles. And then drive past their house repeatedly, playing the song that reminds them of the person who broke their heart.

Never put off until tomorrow what you already put off yesterday. Today, put off something new.

Motivation is all about the carrot and stick. It's up to you where you stick the carrot.

Fools rush in where a big sign says "Fools, rush this way."

If a job's worth doing it's worth getting someone who knows what they're doing to do it.

It is a great undertaking to truly know another's mind. It's easier just to steal their identity.

To be happy, spend your money on experiences, not things. And buy a really good camera to record all those happy experiences.

Do unto others as you would if you gave a shit.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. But where's the fun if everything is predictable? So relax, have a drink and wait to be surprised. Even if it's a bad surprise at least you'll be drunk.

Two's company, three's a crowd, and four is ideal if you want to tie a monkey to a waterbed. 

I CONFESS

I'm sorry. Truly sorry. I've let you down. I've let my friends down. But most of all I've let myself down.

It was all going so well. I was basking in the status and respect I had earned by being the only person on the internet who wasn't promoting a book. And now I've thrown it all away. Because... God help me...

I'VE WRITTEN A BOOK.

And now I'll be promoting it to you. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me. In my defence, let me at least try to explain.

A few years ago I began writing a novel. I did it mostly to cheer myself up, to be honest. But you must have heard writers say that sometimes a book takes on a life of its own. And that's what happened. My novel took on the life of a tall, sweaty, slightly overweight woman with red hair. She is now calling the shots. She has kidnapped my dog. She continually threatens to play the bagpipes. She claims she can prove I am Welsh, and will expose the true parentage of my children, whose origins I have always attributed to a series of freak wrestling accidents. All this, and more, unless I promote the book to you. I'm sorry, but I have no choice.

And you know what's ironic? As I wrote the book I began to realise I was doing it all for you. I wanted to please you. I craved your approval and, yes, your love. So, in a way, it's not really my fault. It's your fault.

The book you are forcing me to promote to you is a comic novel called UTTER FOLLY. It's about a young man who visits the family home of a well-to-do friend, in a small Somerset village. By the end of a long Bank Holiday weekend he has learned some harsh lessons about love, loyalty and the landed gentry. He has desecrated a church, become a suspect in an international drug trafficking case, and discovered far more than he ever wanted to know about geriatric S&M. The English upper crust have always been half-baked, and the games they play behind the high, green hedges of their country homes are far more dangerous than croquet.

The book will be available soon. Once again, I'm sorry, but you have only yourselves to blame.

the war of the potatoes: a story

One morning I was watching a cloud that looked like a tiny potato. Then it got bigger. Then a potato hit me in the face.

Two days later a piece of broccoli fell on my head. The following week I was struck by a carrot.

Over the next few months I was hit by turnips, Brussels sprouts, onions, leeks, cabbages and parsnips. These events were irregular and unpredictable. When I was out of doors I spent a lot of time looking up at the sky. As a result I walked into many objects and persons, including a very young child whose leg I broke, and I was knocked down by several cyclists. I also fatally injured a tiny dog which I stepped on after dislodging it from a spectacularly thin woman's handbag, and caused a bus to swerve into the garden of a pub. Eventually I took to wearing a bowler hat.

Not once was I assailed by a tomato. This made me suspect I was not the victim of freakish natural occurrences, such as the rains of frogs or fish one sometimes hears about, but of an intelligent agency, aware that a tomato is classed as a fruit and not a vegetable.

After considerable thought I set about tracing a boy I had bullied at school. I was the ringleader of a gang who forced him to eat vegetables after he had refused them at lunch on his first day at the school, citing his parents' peculiar religious beliefs. Thereafter we tormented him continually. He was a scholarly lad who excelled at science, and now, after some diligent research, I discovered that in later life he had become an engineer, specialising in ballistics. My suspicions were confirmed.

I found out where he lived and went to confront him. The door to his house was opened by a tearful woman who informed me that he had died the previous day when a mysterious contraption of his own invention exploded. I questioned her about this device, but she told me she had never been permitted to see it. She pointed to the remains of a garden shed that had been violently demolished, and told me that what could be found of her husband's body had been removed in a small plastic bag. I offered my condolences and left, noting that the garden was spattered with traces of what looked like coleslaw, with a pinkish tinge. As I walked back to the station I reflected on the workings of fate, cautiously removing my bowler hat for increasingly long periods of time, and with an ever lighter heart.

Since then I have not been troubled by falling vegetables.

Make of this what you will, but when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I LOVE THE SMELL OF RADIO IN THE MORNING

Smell is the most evocative sense. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, the nose is the catflap of the imagination. 

If I could show you a photograph of you, opening a Christmas present when you were five years old, you might say, "I remember that teddy bear. I had him until he fell apart." But if you suddenly smell the particular fragrance of that new teddy bear as you unwrapped it, mingled with pine scent of the Christmas tree and the Terry's Chocolate Orange you'd been eating since dawn - WHAM. A flood of memory engulfs you. You're there, on that Christmas day, living through the moment again. Which is not always a good thing, especially if you didn't want a stuffed bear, you wanted a puppy. The Christmas moment you relive so vividly may be infused with boiling resentment, simmering Brussels sprouts and hot, salt tears.

why I am a genius

As we all know, genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. And 1% willingness to disregard rules, especially rules about percentages.

plus 1% persistence.

plus 1% even more persistence.

plus a further 1% of not knowing when to stop.

plus 1% just persisting now to annoy people.

But it's worth thinking about what the word genius means because most people misuse it. By most people, of course, I mean you. Have you referred to someone as a genius recently? Maybe someone you saw on YouTube doing something, like, totally awesome. Or maybe one of these people:

Einstein
Lady Gaga
The guy who invented that thing
Stephen Hawking
Mark Zuckerberg
That comedian, you know: total comedy genius
Tiger Woods
The guy who invented that other thing
Mozart. Or that hot chick who plays classical violin.

The word genius has become meaningless. I've been to the Genius Bar in an Apple store and I'm pretty sure those people aren't actual geniuses, they just know a lot more about computers than me. But so do most people, and it's no excuse to neglect your personal hygiene. Maybe we should go back to the earlier meaning of the word and talk about someone having a genius for doing something, rather than being a genius. For example, if I told you Mike Tyson was a genius you might disagree with me. Unless I'd brought him along and he was standing right next to me staring at your ear. But if I said that Mike Tyson has a genius for brutally battering his opponents to a bloody pulp you'd probably agree with me even if he wasn't there.

Or you might say to me, "Hey, Aaron Sorkin's a terrific screenwriter, isn't he? Great dialogue, what a genius." In which case I'd have to point out two errors you're making there. Firstly, what you really mean is that Aaron Sorkin has a genius for writing dialogue. And secondly, he doesn't. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue always sounds like what it is: dialogue rather than real speech. It's glib. That's just my opinion, of course. Which is one of the problems of applying the concept of genius to artistic or cultural activity rather than scientific discovery or technological innovation. Who knows who's any good? Some people don't even think Shakespeare was a genius. And some people acknowledge his genius but don't really like all his work, and find themselves sitting through a mediocre production of one of the so-called comedies simply to get into the pants of the person they're on a date with and then finding out, after it worked, that she didn't particularly like Shakespeare's comedies either but didn't want to say so.

Recently Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in The New Yorker about creativity (click here for summary). It was mostly about new technology, and one of Gladwell's points was that for every breakthrough idea there are dozens that don't make it, for a variety of reasons, and the most successful inventors and innovators are the most prolific ones who keep coming up with ideas until one of them works. To test this theory here's a list of inventions I came up with in the last 24 hours:

Unsweetened sugar
Oven hat
Humane mousepad
Sofa-bath (for very small flats)
Solar powered night vision goggles
Edible bicycle
Scrotum varnish
Musical cat litter
Scented emails
Raisin tidy.

I feel at least one of these has a future, maybe the sofa-bath. I'm not sure what a raisin tidy is; it was on the list by my bedside in the morning after a dream in which giant raisins rolled around my kitchen floor while I had an erotic encounter with a policewoman.

Genius brain

So, the argument is pretty solid for science and technology, but Gladwell's article then goes on to use the example of Mick Jagger writing lyrics quickly and prolifically, and quotes Keith Richards who declares, in his autobiography, "Sometimes you'd wonder how to turn the fucking tap off." But is Mick Jagger a rock lyric writer of genius? In fact is anyone a genius when it comes to writing rock lyrics? Maybe you don't want a genius to write great rock lyrics. Maybe you need Ozzy Osbourne. It's all about the form.

Your brain

Which brings us back to Aaron Sorkin. There is a place for an extensive discussion about literature in general, but not here. I have to go out later and I'm not about to leave you here by yourself. I have a lot of food in the fridge. So let's focus on the specific craft of screenwriting. Can a screenwriter be a genius? The idea sounds like an oxymoron: if they're so smart why did they embark on a career of voluntary penury, humiliation and frustration in the first place? And screenwriting is meant to be collaborative: everyone gets a chance to fuck your script up. But if you're a genius you work alone and obsessively for years on something nobody else believes in. Then, when it finally gets ruined or ripped off by other people you have the satisfaction of knowing it's all your own work.

But let's not forget the extraordinary case of Joe Eszterhas. In the 1980s Eszterhas wrote films like Flashdance and Jagged Edge. Then, in 1992, he was paid three million dollars, up front, to write Basic Instinct. It was hailed as the dawn of a glorious new era in which writers would finally get the money, respect and power they deserve. But it was all an illusion, largely fueled, like so much in Hollywood at that time, by gigantic egos and mountains of cocaine, which are often closely interconnected. But I still think Joe Eszterhas was a genius, just not as a writer: his next film was Showgirls. No, he was a genius inventor. He came up with an idea that nobody had thought of before: the highly paid, powerful screenwriter. It didn't last long but it was his best creative work by far.

So, do you want to be a genius? I propose a distinction that will let you know if you qualify. Just answer the following question:

Do you invent things or do you make stuff up?


If you say you invent things I want to see the lab coat. At the very least I expect you to be a geeky type, borderline sociopathic, working in a garage or your parents' basement, trying to figure out a completely new way to make or do something. If you're that type, there's a chance you could be a genius. You might come up with a revolutionary idea that has a tangible result in the real world. If, on the other hand, you sit at home and make stuff up, you're a writer. Everything you do takes place in the imagination: yours and that of your audience. And you can't be a genius.

Wait, what gives me the right to make this kind of ridiculous pronouncement? And surely it's a reactionary statement, now that the artificial distinctions between science and the humanities, that didn't really exist before the 17th century, are being eroded by new developments like string theory that require a certain metaphysical sensibility to be wholly understood? Yeah, but bollocks to that. I just don't think the word genius should be bandied about by people who don't know what they're talking about, which is most people. I can't prove that, but I don't care. However, if you want to disprove it, go ahead, genius.

the writer's voice and how to shut it up

As a writer I am passionate about the following subjects:

Food hygiene.

Mid range family cars.

Duodenal ulcer medication.

Well, I've written training, promotional or information films about those subjects, and I did the best work I could on them, and we all know that writers have to be passionate to do their best work, so I must have been passionate. I was definitely passionate about getting paid for them. At other times in my career I have also been passionate about many other subjects, including:

Airline customer relations.

Surgical gowns.

Conflict resolution for nightclub staff.

The history of the London Science Museum.

Some of those scripts were pretty good. The food hygiene film became part of a national training process. But is it enough to be passionate about how bacteria get into the food chain when someone doesn't wash their hands between taking a dump and making your sandwich? As a writer you must also WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW and only do so when you have FOUND YOUR VOICE.

I assume we've all got over the Write What You Know thing. Countless people have pointed out that many great writers have no first hand knowledge of what they write about. And in the digital age everybody knows everything anyway. Research is no big deal.

Research = Google.

In-depth research = Lunch with someone who knows their stuff.

High Grade Classified Inside Intelligence = Paying for the lunch.

The author, in an early attempt to discover the subtle cadences of his own quietly distinctive voice.

Of course, knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Any time you suspect we're all going to hell in a handcart you'll probably find a knowledgeable fuckwit directing the traffic. However, the cart is always pulled by an ignorant nincompoop, and a bit of information might at least help them see what a rotten job it is. But for writers, once we've acquired all the information we need to write about a transexual neurosurgeon who uses quantum mechanics to travel back in time and foil a plot to destabilize the 17th century Flemish potato market, the next step is to FIND YOUR VOICE.

The writer's voice I like best is the one I can't hear. By that I mean the one I can't hear drawing attention to itself. I'm not suggesting that writers shouldn't have a... what's the word? Style! That's it. In fact, let's stop talking about writers having a voice, and think about style. Ah, that's better. Now we can talk about good style and bad style, and the difference between style and content, instead of wondering if the writer has a distinctive voice, and whether it's an authentic voice or one he picked up in a creative writing class, which is where this stuff about voices came from in the first place. Yep, style is what we called it back in the good old days. Back when all this was open prairie, pardner, and a writer could ride tall with his trusty Remington typewriter on his saddle and spy nary a soul all day. A voice? Hell, in them days voices was fer highfalutin greenhorns and dancin' teachers and sitch like, and a real writer wouldn't say a single damn word out loud from one year to the next, 'ceptin mebbe to cuss a little under his breath at some inconvenience like his leg droppin off or his wife gettin ett by a bear. Yes, siree. Ptooeee. Oops, missed the dang spittoon agin. Hope them fancy suede shoes can be cleaned, my friend.

A REAL WRITER

Sorry about that, I'll turn the TV off. I was watching the news while I was writing and then there was an old episode of Bonanza. Let's get back to style.

What's your writing style? Are you trying to develop one? Really? Why? I mean it. Why do you want a style? Is it a way of making your writing distinctive or is it a way of telling your story? I believe that good style is about doing the job and bad style is about itself. The best writers use style to do something more than let you know what great stylists they are. They let you figure out what great stylists they are by working so hard to make what they write seem natural that you don't think of them having a style. You just hear their voice. Which is, finally, what you end up with after you've written and written and written some more and then, when you want to say something, you sit down to work yet again and there is simply no other way to write.

Some people claim that a writing style can be identified scientifically like a unique literary fingerprint. These people are often trying to prove that Shakespeare was written by someone else. Maybe the fact that none of them can agree on who, exactly, means that the methodology is truly scientific. In science if everyone agrees with each other they must all be wrong, but if everyone disagrees then at least one person must be right.

Meanwhile the rest of us can dream that we'll eventually write something so good that one day intelligent people will spend time trying to prove that someone else wrote it. All we can do is keep writing, and make sure we do our best work on everything we write, whether it's a food hygiene training video, a novel, a feature film, or a blog. That's as much as I know about how to develop a distinctive writing style. But I'm pretty sure that if it ever stops being hard work, that's when you've lost your voice.

So when you've found your voice, shut up about it.

how to have someone else's idea

If you tell a Hollywood film producer you've got an original idea they usually ask what it's based on. If you say you made it up, because making things up is what writers do, they laugh, narrow their eyes, and surreptitiously text their assistant, asking them to find out what writers really do. If you persist in pitching your original idea they press the button under the desk that tips you into the tank of starving piranhas, and snigger as they stroke a fluffy white cat with a diamond collar.

But wait. We're being unfair. Put yourself in the producer's shoes for a moment. Nice, aren't they? Italian. Hand made. And as a producer facing a writer across your desk, here's what you're thinking:

1. If your original idea is so great how come nobody thought of it before?

2. I bet someone has thought of it before. There are no original ideas.

3. I wish this idiot would shut up. Is that stupid little beard meant to look cool? What an idiot. Why hasn't my secretary buzzed me to pretend I have an important call, like I asked her to, so I can get rid of this idiot. What's he talking about now? Jesus, character arcs. I should never take meetings with writers. Writers. I forget, what exactly do they do again?

It doesn't matter if you don't agree that there are no original ideas. Someone paying for your script is also paying you to agree with them. You can make a film the way you want with your own money, and then you can argue with the producer by shouting at the mirror. But you'll only scare mainstream money away by claiming to be original. The real trick is to say that you're going to do something that's like something that's been done before and then do something different. You just need to reassure them by using ingredients that look familiar. Choose one from each of the following categories.

PROTAGONIST
Boy wizard, Teenage vampire, Brooding superhero, Robot, Toy, Cop with a drink problem, Crusading journalist with a broken marriage, Eccentric family with a cute kid, Sassy newcomer with an attitude, Feisty woman on a life-affirming journey of self-discovery, Wronged warrior on a rampage of slaughter.

ANTAGONIST
Bad wizard, Bad vampire, Bad superhero, Bad robot, Bad toy, Serial killer, Evil tycoon, Corrupt politician, Fashion magazine editor, Master criminal played by respected British actor with an unexpectedly large tax bill to pay.

THE GOAL
Save the world, Make the kid happy, Kill the villain, Serve justice, Serve dinner, Expose evil, Get married, Get published, Get rich, Get home, Get laid... mmm... cigarette?

THE OBSTACLE
Greed, Power, Corruption, Protagonist's inner flaw, Kryptonite, Lack of time, Lack of money, Lack of Julia Roberts, Irascible police lieutenant, Devious best friend, Bad breath, heart-rending moral dilemma, Bubonic plague, Death.

Don't forget to choose a genre. To help you, here's a guide:

SCI-FI:  In a distant galaxy, far away, everything explodes.

ACTION: Your mission, should you accept it, is to explode.

KIDS:  Everything explodes but no one gets killed.

ROMANCE:  Two people, an explosion of love.

COMEDY:  Whatever you do, don't touch th-- (BOOM!)

Okay, now just write the script you wanted to write in the first place. They'll never suspect it's original. There's only one danger. The idea you've come up with to make your original idea look familiar may actually be more fun than the original idea. The story with the vampire cop and the beautiful librarian who becomes an assassin to pay for her blind daughter's hospital bills could be pretty entertaining. Maybe you should actually get into that as a genre potboiler and make money so that you can take some time to write that original idea about the dying geography teacher who dreams of chess games. Hmm. That idea seems kind of boring now, though. Maybe it could use a little action. What if the chess pieces were these, like, really cool helicopter gunships, flown by wrongly convicted special forces dudes on death row as part of some kind of gladiator fight-to-the-death type deal? And one of them is this beautiful but deadly female special forces chick and she has a blind daughter? That could work. And it's original, in a way. If there is such a thing as an original idea. Which there isn't.

funny and not so funny (update)

It's funny if a well dressed, dignified man slips on a banana skin. It's not so funny if a tramp does it. But what if the rich guy fractures his skull, gets brain damage and becomes a vegetable? Is that funny? Depends on the vegetable. A cucumber is funnier than a potato but a potato is funnier than a mushroom. Comedy is in the detail. It's funny if your kid has an imaginary friend, but not so funny if your heart surgeon has one. In the following examples one could be funny and one is not so funny. Use your skill and judgment to tell which is which.


STRANGERS

1. A stranger smiles at you in the park.

2. A stranger smiles at you in the bath.

FINANCE

1. Bungling, inept bank robbers who keep getting caught.
2. Bungling, inept bankers who keep getting bonuses.

CARS
1. No sooner do you wash your car than a bird defecates on it.
2. No sooner do you wash your car than a neighbour defecates on it.

TECHNOLOGY

1. The crazy ring tone on your phone.

2. The crazy ring tone on anyone else's phone.

AIRCRAFT

1. Uh-oh, you're on a long flight and a baby is crying!
2. Uh-oh, you're on a long flight and the pilot is crying.

CLOWNS

1. A clown in a circus.     

2. A clown outside your bedroom window at 4AM.

YOUR MOTHER

1. You discover that your mother once wrote fan letters to Michael Jackson.

2. You discover that your mother still writes fan letters to Michael Jackson.

VOICES

1. Goofy voices a guy in your office keeps doing.

2. Goofy voices a guy in your head keeps doing.

CLUMSY IDIOTS

1. A clumsy magician.

2. A clumsy gynecologist.

POULTRY

1. A headless chicken runs around a farmyard.
2. A headless chicken runs around your kitchen.

DOGS

1. A dog chases its tail.

2. A dog chases its tail, catches it and eats it. 

AT THE ZOO
1. A monkey in the zoo masturbating.
2. A monk in the zoo masturbating. 

TV
1. You start laughing at a character in a TV show.
2. A character in a TV show starts laughing at you.

FLATULENCE

1. At a funeral the priest farts.

2. At a funeral the corpse farts.

BABIES

1. A tiny baby sneezes and looks surprised.

2. A tiny baby sneezes, looks surprised and curses, invoking Satan.

OBESITY

1. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a fancy restaurant.

2. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a burning restaurant.

HANGOVERS

1. You wake up and can't remember where you left your car.

2. You wake up and can't remember where you left your kids.

TRAINS

1. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female underwear falls out.

2. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female body parts fall out.

HEALTH

1. A doctor tells a patient, "I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that you have cancer. The good news is  that I finally screwed the receptionist last night!"

2. The patient is you.

           

failure is the new success

The world is suffocating in an avalanche of self-help books that promise to reveal the secrets of success, and every day more of them appear. Clearly, none of them work. If any of them did, there would be no need for all the others. There would be one book, and we'd all be happy. And so would millions of trees.

The internet is also choked with recipes for success, and writers get more offers of help than any other group except people who might be interested in enlarging their penis. But while gurus who promise literary enhancement offer only advice on how to do it yourself, at least the charlatans of genital transformation have the decency to send you tangible products like pills, creams and contraptions, even if they're ineffective and dangerous, rather than simply give you advice on how to pull your own plonker. Either way, none of it works. But why should it? Writers have no business with success. Face it: our trade is failure.

Writing is a lonely, obsessive craft, unless you're doing it wrong. But writers are especially vulnerable to the mirages of self-help, mainly because we have time on our hands, and finding ways to waste it is an essential part of being a writer. These days you hear a lot about the work/life balance, whatever that is. I suspect it's another formula that encourages people, especially writers, to become less interesting. With this in mind, here is an illustration of my own current work/life balance:

And now that writers are all in the business of giving each other advice, here's mine:

NEVER GIVE UP YOUR BAD HABITS.
YOU'LL BE JUST THE SAME BUT YOU'LL HAVE NOTHING TO BLAME IT ON.

Writers are meant to fuck up and suffer so the rest of us don't have to. Even if a writer has achieved success, happiness and wisdom they should keep quiet about it. What we want from writers isn't wisdom, we want art that shines an unexpected light on life and illuminates the road to our own wisdom. Give us lurid descriptions of the journey, not serene dispatches from the destination. Send us the news from hell, not the view from paradise.

I'm not talking about the "courage to fail" which is just bullshit about success disguised as heroic martyrdom. I'm talking about the courage to be a really bad writer. The sheer stupidity and ignorance required to write something truly awful. So that you can experience abject failure and humiliation, which just might make you a better writer. But don't count on it. However, failure doesn't happen often enough, and that's partly because of all the tips, steps and secrets about writing that we keep giving each other, and which, if applied diligently, can drag most of us from the swamp of inanity up to the foothills of mediocrity and dump us there, blinking in the feeble light of mere competence.

The problem is that we're being enabled to bypass the salutary experience of failure. There's a lot to learn from having your manuscript, book, script or film roundly rejected by readers, publishers, producers, critics and public, or have your play laughed off the stage. At the very least it might teach some would-be writers to give up. I know I'm not meant to say that kind of thing in this age of self-belief, and following your dream, and growth and actualization. But let's face it, some people are just not very good at writing. So, let's thin out the field, especially as it's now so overcrowded not just with writers writing whatever they're trying to write but also writers writing about how other writers should write whatever they're trying to write. So stop it.

Please, stop helping each other. Enough with the tips, and secrets and steps. And especially the lists of Rules for Writers. There is only one rule on that list:

STOP WRITING LISTS OF WRITING RULES AND GET BACK TO WORK.

And now I'll have to face the unwelcome prospect of taking my own advice.

tales from the fridge - season's eatings

A Happy Christmas to all our readers.

deadline fever - read this by yesterday

Ask the average writer how they feel about deadlines.  Remember not to use the phrase "average writer" to their face, by the way. But suggest that they jot down some thoughts on the subject. Maybe a thousand words. By tomorrow.

WRITER: "Tomorrow is tricky. It's my mother's funeral, I'm moving house, and my divorce is being finalized.

YOU: "I'll pay you."

WRITER: "What time tomorrow?"

However, not all writers are motivated by money. Of those who aren't, some are even allowed out into the community, under supervision. But the amazing truth is that nearly all writers can be motivated by a deadline even if there's very little money involved. Or even no money at all. This is one of the secrets imparted in an occult midnight ceremony to producers and commissioning editors, after which they cease to cast a shadow. Because while money talks, a deadline yells. A deadline is the most powerful incentive you can use to get a writer off the internet and down to work.

Scientists have confirmed this phenomenon by replicating a writer's normal environment in sterile laboratory conditions (for reasons of hygiene). A deadline is applied. The effects are dramatic and often defy the laws of physics. A recumbent or even comatose writer is galvanized into a frenzy of manic activity, the envy of hardened speed freaks, like the Tasmanian Devil in the cartoons you see regularly if you watch a lot of daytime television. So I'm told.

But how can a simple deadline create such amazing results? The classic deadline is composed of two main ingredients: Stress and Time. Stress is a volatile substance. Correctly applied it can stimulate energy, enhance performance and provide extra pep, zest, zing, zip, vigor, vim and other names for potent household detergents. But too much of it can create the opposite effect, paralyzing the writer in the headlights of the oncoming deadline: literary roadkill waiting to happen. To experience complete absence of stress means you're dead; to experience too much just makes you wish you were.

In scientific terms stress is the product of two or more opposing forces. For writers these forces may be, on the one hand, the need to think about getting up and doing some work, and, on the other, the desire to stay in bed and think about who to leave out of the list of people you're going to thank in your acceptance speech for the award for the script you haven't written yet.

Which brings us to the second ingredient: Time. We all understand now that time is flexible. In fact, we don't understand it but we've got that Stephen Hawking book somewhere, so that'll do. And for writers time slows down when you're waiting to hear from people who might commission your work, and speeds up once you find out when they want the first draft.

But what if nobody has been intelligent enough to commission you to write something, and you don't have a deadline? Easy. You're a writer: make it up. It's not so hard if you remind yourself of one simple truth: 

WE ARE ALL ON A DEADLINE FROM GOD. Yes, our mortal span is limited. The script of our life must be delivered to the Great Executive one day - maybe soon. For some, the deadline looms close, while others believe they still have plenty of time, the deluded fools. Shit, this depressing. Why did I start on this elaborate metaphor in the first place? Or is it an analogy? Let's have a drink.

That's better. Okay, let's forget about the clock of life ticking away and focus on what you can do today. Your big advantage as a writer is that you're an imaginative type. So, go ahead, imagine a deadline.

Let's say you're writing a screenplay. First, imagine a producer. The producer you visualize should be a cross between Harvey Weinstein and Jabba the Hutt. Wait, it's quite possible that Harvey Weinstein is Jabba the Hutt. But you get the picture. Next, imagine a meeting where you pitch your idea successfully. Imagine a contract, and sign it. Imagine getting your first draft commencement fee, and go out and spend it. Now imagine you finish the first draft in three weeks. Well done. Imagine getting paid your fee for first draft delivery, and spend it while waiting for the producer's notes before you collect your next fee, for first draft revisions. You may as well spend that as well, while you're waiting. Imagine a call from the producer. They're firing you and hiring another imaginary writer. What? But you've already spent all that money! They can't do that, can they? Of course they can. You should have looked more closely at that imaginary contract you signed.

Having established that writers will work tirelessly to meet deadlines for little or no money, the big question remains: why? The answer is simple. It makes us feel needed. We feel special: someone wants us, urgently, for our unique gifts. They must love us. It's pathetic, really. But it works. I myself am writing these very words against a tight deadline, and not only am I not getting paid, I invented the deadline myself. I convinced myself that you've been waiting desperately to read this. Oh, God, is that the time? I'm two minute away from the deadline I set myself. I need to come up with a good ending for this. I know. It was all a dream. No, wait. As you read these words you realize that you've been dead all this time! And that bit at the beginning, about a funeral - that was actually YOUR funeral. Hahaha. And now nobody can see you and you discover you're really Bruce Willis. All right, it's a bit lame, but I'm on a deadline here. Give me a break. Or give me more time. Yes, that's it. I'll finish it tomorrow. I promise.

Some of the above first appeared on www.twelvepoint.com (formerly Scriptwriter magazine)