On My Writing Resolutions
Dear all,
Hope the New Year has treated you all well and that you’re ready and raring to go for the new year! Issue #2, below.
On My Writing Resolutions
Firstly, I should say that if any of us manage to do any sort of writing at all in 2022, we should call that a success. Things are hard enough out there in the real world without trying to tug things out of your brain, send them down your fingers and get them on a page.
But it’s probably natural, as the year turns, to try and set some stakes in the ground for what we want to achieve from our writing. This year, instead of trying to set resolute, concrete goals, I’m going to try and give myself a break and allow myself to be a bit fuzzier and less distinct. Rather than resolutions, I’m going to set a few directions to travel in and see where they get me.
Number One: write what I want…
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… which isn’t to say that the work I’ve done in the last few years has been against my will, or that it hasn’t helped — either with my career or my development as a writer. What I really mean, is that I want the stuff I work on this year (whether it’s my own or things I do, or as a gun for hire for other people) to have a clear and compelling reason for me to write it. No more: “it’s sort of a good idea” or “it has a catchy hook” or “I’m not sure about the project, but it’s with someone I want to work with.” This year, I want what I write to have a real and clearly articulated rationale, a rationale that is based in story and theme, and at its heart says something I actually want to get out into the world.
Number two: write slower
I’ve always managed to get things down pretty quick (not a terrible skill to have when you’re up against a tight deadline). When I’m really taken by an idea when it’s consuming me, I can dish out pages at a rate of knots.
The trouble with this approach is that sometimes it means that the thing your writing can come out a little undercooked. It can mean that you are pushing forward with a project when you don’t have all the foundations in place, leading to a shaky structure and a lot of re-work on the back end.
For a while now, I’ve been a big fan of the mantra: trust the process. Let it suck until it doesn’t. But I think this year I’m going to add an extra ingredient: know when not to move on. I want to be really conscious about when it’s worth giving a scene an extra day to percolate or trust myself when I know that treatment needs another pass.
Number three: write widely
And to be honest with you, the newsletter that you’re reading now is part of that. It’s sometimes easy, I think, to get caught up in doing a single thing, and I’ve been writing screenplays now for so long that there’s a danger that I start to think that they’re the only damn things I can write.
This year I want to write more prose: whether it’s generally wandering ramblings like these or fiction (I’ve got a number of projects that I’d kicked off as features, that I think could work better as short stories). Even if these experiments don’t lead to much (or, god forbid, money), I think by mixing things up I can come back to my main gig with a fresh perspective and a few more tricks up my sleeve.
Number four: keep the final goal in mind
Us screenwriters are freelance, precarious and are therefore reliant on other parts of the production chain to get our work made. The success of our projects is so dependent on factors outside of our control — whether it’s a project losing an attachment, or funding not coming through, or just gatekeepers standing between us and the real decision-makers.
It’s easy to get tunnel-visioned. “Let me just get this next draft out”, “let me just get through these notes”, to just get the task at hand done and try not to worry about things outside of our control. The trouble is that by only thinking about the next step, I sometimes fear I’m drifting off course.
This year, I want to try and lift my head up and fix my gaze on the final goal: i.e. getting the thing made, getting my work in front of an audience. Sometimes I recognise this will mean doing things that might seem like a step back: for example, not working with someone who might really love an idea but might not be in the best position to get it made. Or taking a bit longer in development, to make sure the script is everything that it can be before it goes out into the marketplace. Or, inversely, realising when enough notes are enough, and that the only way to move the project forward is to get it out to someone or to bring on a new collaborator.
I’m sure I’ll make the wrong decisions sometimes (I certainly have in the past!) but at least by focussing on the end goal, I’ll be making those decisions with my eyes out front.
Number five: fill up the well
This is a resolution I have every year, and every year I don’t quite do as much as I’d like. I want to read more. I want to watch more. And I want to get out and do more (unless, of course, we have to spend the whole year in our houses again). I’m a firm believer that in order to write well, we need to fill up on stuff that isn’t writing. It gives us time and space to think about the stories and brings us back fresh to the writing again.
New Year’s Eve in the Age of COVID
For a couple of years prior to 2020, I’d managed to establish a feeling of smug superiority at new years: designing for myself the most boring evening possible. While other people I know rushed around as 31st December approached: rewriting guest lists and working out catering and group texting increasingly desperate invitations, I stayed at home particularly pleased with myself. Turning over to Jules Holland’s is Hootenanny from BBC One was possibly the most exciting component of my evening. Now, over the last few years staying in has become de rigueur — and so this is yet another thing that COVID has robbed from me.
Strangely enough, my favourite New Year’s Eve in recent memory was actually rather social. While I’d planned my usual Scooge-ish night in, at the last moment we received a surprise invitation from a couple who we’d met a few days earlier (we heard some whispers that they were perhaps swingers, though we were never able to validate or disprove the rumour either way). We spent the evening semi-crashing, acting aloof and snooty in the kitchen while everyone around us played terrible music and party games. It’s possibly the closest I’ve ever felt to being the cool one at a party.
I’ve been watching… HAWKEYE
I finally managed to watch the last episode of HAWKEYE on Disney+. I’ve been a fan of the Marvel TV series so far: loved WANDAVISION, seriously admired LOKI, could take or leave F.A.T.W.S. HAWKEYE probably fits somewhere mid-table; it managed to get away with what felt like a slightly shaky story by having a whole cubic ton of charm. I’m not sure that it quite found voice separate to the general Marvel-ey-ness of the movies like WV and LOKI, but it was a brisk enjoyable action-packed time with all kinds of inventiveness around Hawkeye’s much-maligned arrow-only battle style.
I’ve been visiting… COLINTON TUNNEL
On one of our new year walks we wandered out to Colinton dell, which is about thirty minutes from where we live here in Edinburgh. There’s an old disused train tunnel on the path just before you reach Colinton itself, the walls of which have been painted throughout with an incredible mural. The artwork, the work of Mike Scott and artist Chris Rutterford along with volunteers from the community illustrates From a Railway Carriage, a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson who has links to the area. It’s a wonderful splash of vibrant colour on what was, when we visited, a pretty depressing day. Just as we were walking through, some fellow pedestrians started up a Scottish reel, and the notes of it echoed off the tunnel walls and off into the distance.
I have been reading… THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS-INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLOR-BLINDNESS
Published in 2008. Michelle Alexander’s classic work on the US criminal justice system is, despite many of its findings being already absorbed into the mainstream of modern liberal thought, still incredibly shocking. The case she makes: that the policing and penal systems (especially in the US, which is Alexander’s focus) are not just institutionally racist, but designed with racism as their end goal is difficult to dispute, particularly in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. When it was written over two million Americans were in custody (a level that has barely reduced since) with Black Americans massively over-represented (in some states Black men are more likely than whites to be arrested on drugs offences by a factor of twenty or fifty to one) with, incredibly, three out of four young Black men in Washington D.C. were expected to serve some time in prison. Reading it nearly fifteen years later, it still feels very current and very necessary.
Much love to you all for reading — and hope you all have a fantastic new year.
All my best,
James.