Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Dave.


Today, I’m trying to work on my solo stand-up.

I plan to write 5-10 minutes of new material each month, so I can gradually edge towards putting together an hour. I have half an eye on doing the Brighton and Edinburgh Festivals next year, which may be a little ambitious. It might be better to make my first solo festival venture a split bill with another act, if that’s not too contradictory, to allow me time to hone the best possible hour-long set. I’d hate to waste my first solo show by doing something substandard. I’d also sooner be doing a show with Glyn at the festival as well, so I’m not focusing on just one thing.

This is not a step away from Doggett & Ephgrave, by the way. I cherish my work with Glyn. I just wanted to see if I had it in me to step up to the mic on my own. Not just step up to the mic, in fact, but say stuff.

The starting point for my material is my blog. By writing something every day for a year I’ve built up a reasonable resource, some of which might work in a live context. The problems with this are twofold: (1) anything I take from the blog has to be reworded so it doesn’t sound overwritten and placed, and (2) by continuing to post something new every day, I take a large chunk out of the time I could be working on my stand-up. This daily deadline may be self-enforced, but I still intend to keep it up.

The best way to tackle the first point is to just get on with it. Like most writers – and I hesitate before calling myself that – I’m lazy. I’m easily distracted by everything other than the blank page in front of me. I also spend far too much time tinkering away at a sentence, trying to make it as good as I can, which is sometimes a wasted effort.

To take a little pressure off myself, I’m going to try to make my posts more diary-based for a while (which a lot have been), so I can prioritise on what will work on stage. Whether I’ll keep to this or not remains to be seen. I know what I’m like.

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