I suppose I should be more specific.
Late last year I was snuffling around down the rabbit hole of ‘Contemporary British Comedians, Writers, and Television Presenters’ and, via a foray into the territory of David Mitchell, I discovered the angry, sardonic, hilarious glory that is Charlie Brooker (who you may also recognize as the writer of the popular Netflix series Black Mirror). So off I trotted to Amazon to pick up a few of his books — anthologies of his weekly article for The Guardian, among other things. One shipping period and several work-lunchtimes later, I came across this gem.
“Ooooh! Advice from Charlie about writing! He’s awesome! This will be awesome!”
And it was.
In the way only Mr. Brooker could make it awesome.
The gist of his advice is: If you want to write, you should get a deadline.
That’s it.
That’s all he offered.
But guess what?
It works.
This is ::checks calendar:: week fifteen of me pounding out one of these with a deliverable of six o’clock AM Pacific on Thursday. In the beginning I was concerned about being able to come up with content on a weekly basis. “What am I going to talk about? Nothing is ever that interesting in my life. This is going to be a disaster!” Once I decided to let go of that worry (And it’s a Big Deal that I did, I have generalized anxiety disorder, for fuck’s sake!) I began to realize that the world was always offering me intriguing, thought-provoking, and occasionally completely ludicrous things to explore. Sometimes they fall flat, sure, but they still show up on time, every week, like clockwork.
For me, however, it’s not enough just to throw the words (however thoughtfully) onto the page and have done with it. Everything I post here goes through my Resident Volunteer Editor/Proofreader, without whom I would surely die. (Shoutout — Love you, Pip!) When my fingers work faster than my brain, she manages to un-screw whatever I’ve made a complete hash of. I guess what I’m really getting at here is that there’s more to this writing lark than readers may appreciate. I’m not saying you’re a pile of ungrateful twits, I’m saying that, like most things, the process is far less straightforward than you might think. Let’s explore mine, shall we?
- Thursday AM — “Oh, good, it posted as scheduled”
- 24-hour period of not thinking about blogs
- Somewhere between Saturday and Tuesday — Something is written
- Wednesday evening — “Pip! Help! Fix it!”
- Thursday AM — See above
That’s the weekly schedule. When I actually sit down to write, it’s a whole other kettle of fish. In the writing of this post, specifically, I have:
- Checked Twitter no fewer than 87 times
- Eaten breakfast
- Written 6 words
- Solved world hunger
- Had two cups of coffee
- Topped up the rat kibble and given Big Dutch a scratch
- Written 3 sentences
- Checked my YouTube subscriptions twice to see if anyone has posted anything
- Gotten out the space heater because it’s frickin’ freezing in here
- Reapplied chapstick 5 times
- Discovered the cure for cancer
- Written an entire paragraph(!)
- Debated wearing my unicorn headband around the house, just because (Decision was rendered against, because it was all the way over there)
- Marveled at the existence of the universe
- Thought about topping up the water in the fish tank and not done it
- Told myself to knuckle down already and get on with it
- Written one more sentence
- Taken a nap as a reward for writing said sentence and also because it’s Sunday, dammit
- Binge-watched an entire season of Archer on Netflix (BTW, they’re taking it off on March 14th, so if it’s on your list, you’d better get on it.)
- Realized it’s Tuesday and panicked
- Made Pip want to murder me and had 27 embarrassing errors and a sizeable handful of suggestions for improving just about everything sent back to me
- Posted
I will point out here that it is inadvisable to piss off your editor.
It’s a flawed process, admittedly, but it’s significantly less harmful to the internal organs than Hunter S. Thompson's.
Bottom line, that proverbial fire under one’s ass (I totally just realized that was a pun, and I apologize. But I’m not changing it.) really ought to be all one needs to get the lead out and produce something already. Deadlines are deadlines, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop them. They are a necessary evil if you want to accomplish anything. You really shouldn’t be afraid of them, they’re there to help you, not hurt you.
Of course, our hero Mr. Brooker also said, “Just pay someone larger than you to kick your knees until they fold the wrong way if you don’t hand in 800 words by five o’clock. You’ll be amazed at what comes out.”
But I ignored that part.
Moral: Only take 50% of any advice offered by Charlie Brooker.
Sorry, Charlie.
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