Writer's Block.


Today, I’m finding it hard to get into a creative flow.

I’ve spent the past hour working up a blog on the subject of a noticeboard I spotted at my dad’s doctors’ surgery. The topic is more interesting that it sounds. Despite knowing what I want to get across, I can’t seem to get past the first paragraph.

That's the way it goes some days. It’s very irritating. I become obsessed with the structure of every sentence, constantly adding and subtracting words here and there, until I eventually lose track of the point I was trying to make in the first place.

(I even did it with that one. Fuck off, David. FUCK OFF!)

This happens when you focus too much on the mechanics. Most ideas are at their freshest and most coherent at the moment of inspiration. If you don’t get it down quickly, when you’re still enthusiastic about the subject, it ends up sounding forced.

I remember this happening when Glyn and I wrote some material about a Dutch Phrasebook I’d bought whilst touring the Netherlands. The crux of the joke was that most of the phrases in the book that were listed as ‘essential’ were actually far from it. Two that spring to mind now are “I love you” and “Get away from me or I’ll scream”. I can understand the potential need for the latter, but not the former; could you love somebody you could only communicate with using a phrasebook?

While the gist of the gag was good, we never really nailed it. We still perform the skit occasionally; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Probably because we didn't strike while the iron was hot.

It was the same when we reworked out sitcom script, Nick & Joe, for a rehearsed reading at the Soho Theatre last year. We revisited the first script we'd ever written, adding a couple of new characters (played by Michael Barrymore and Norman Lovett) along the way. While the newer gags were strong and got laughs, the older bits didn’t sit so well; partly because I no longer found them funny. It’s always a bad sign when the material doesn’t amuse one of its authors.

Perhaps I’ll return to that noticeboard in tomorrow’s blog. Then again, I might not. If I don't, you could go and see it yourself and write your own jokes. It's in the waiting room at the Marymead Doctors’ Surgery in Broadwater, Stevenage. Knock yourself out; if you do, you'll be in the right place.

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