Does Any Of This Make A Difference?

On how an inert year lead to remembering my purpose. And other vaguely self-aggrandising, semi-inspirational realisations...

I guess the overwhelming question I face most days when I sit at my desk is, does any of this make a difference? I know not every writer wants to change the world, not many pieces of writing do change the world, and not often do we see directly or immediately the change we make. I know all that.

I spent a lot of last year wishing I was a different sort of writer. An agnostic one who could stare at the wall and conjure up takes on just about anything. I remember early in my career an editor’s reaction to my first novel being ‘the market for this work is way too niche but I love your writing; I’m just wondering if you could turn your verve and energy towards a story about a rural detective’. I found the suggestion kinda ridiculous. At the time, rural detectives were du jour. I have a feeling this was around the time ‘Midsomer Murders’ was being flamed online for never having any brown or black actors in it. (Aside: having lived in Bristol for nearly fifteen years and regularly ventured out into flagshagaramic Somerset, I’d say, entirely accurate for a reality-based show about Somerset. However, this was ‘Midsomer Murders’, not ‘Midsomer Flagshaggers’). The point is, I thought long and hard about whether I could do it. Did I have a verve-some and energetic rural detective in me?

Reader, I did not.

Last year, I hustled hard for screen work. Not an uncommon story for any screenwriter working at the moment. The combination of the strikes, the contraction of the industry following the strikes, the turn towards a conservative type of show (many rural detectives due on our screens shortly, I’m sure) all meant I found myself in January without much work on. Two projects disappeared within a week, both results of the desire to not work on anything political in these Trumpy times, a few of my simmering projects slowed down and everyone kept saying ‘fix in 26’ (having said ‘survive till 25’ the year before, without much plan of what might happen once we got to 25). Look, my screenwriting story is very common. Every writer I spoke to was going through in it in various ways. What I want to talk about is whether writing is useful to change the world, and I’m taking my sweet, damn time to get to the bloody point here, so let’s just move it along.

I hustled hard. I did many general meetings. I read many books that I knew people were taking pitches on (books I wouldn’t normally read; books that could generate work; books I wasn’t reading for enjoyment, curiosity or learning, books I was tearing apart in my head so I could pitch a take on them). I found myself down to the last few in a bunch of situations. Occasionally I was passed over for more experienced and illustrious people, who were, I found out, going up for the same writer’s room jobs as me. Occasionally I was passed over because my take, though good and very me, wasn’t what they were looking for. It was never personal. That didn’t stop me getting sad, annoyed and bitter and disappointed when I didn’t book any work.

However, in the background, I was still writing my own stuff. A novel, a couple of feature ideas, a show I was incredibly invested in. And they weren’t happening particularly quickly either. So it was a toss-up between feeling frustrated about the lack of momentum in my personal projects and the lack of ability to land myself on someone else’s projects. And it resulted in me not having the best year, not feeling like a particularly good writer, not feeling able to keep things like this substack up to date. How could I instruct you how to write when I was having such a terrible time myself?

Everything was poured into a bland yet bitter soup in my head. Meanwhile, there were live-streamed genocides, and racist attacks on children on the streets barely a mile away from me, and asylum seekers being tormented by the far right and the news the news the news always the news. And I kept telling myself, my work stuff is unimportant next to the news.

At some point during the year, I started up volunteering again, doing some direct action stuff in my community and things started to look up. I was working with young people again, I was organising movements, protests, events, community projects, I was involved. It felt like a bifurcation in a way. That writing was a thing I did and it was separate to the way I moved through the world. The way I moved through the world, the voluntary work, the community action work, that felt important, like it was making a difference.

Eventually, that work on the streets and in my community fed into my writing and I started to feel like the things I was working on mattered again. I could access my social conscience, my progressive ideologies and find a way to present them in my work without feeling like I was being didactic, preachy or like an op-ed piece. I started to feel inspired to write again, mostly because the work I was doing that wasn’t writing, was so inspiring. The people I was meeting. The situations I was finding myself in. The work I was doing. The tangible difference I was making.

Ugh, I still haven’t still gotten to the point yet.

Okay, here is the point, and it’s somewhat of a writing tip, and a promise to keep this substack going. If I hadn’t been living and doing stuff, I wouldn’t be able to write. I forgot, last year, that writing is living, and reflecting that world on the page. It’s not sitting at my computer and trying to find pithy ways to fix everything. It’s doing, being, caring, making, in person or on the streets, or even online. It’s then taking that feeling and putting it on the page. I spent too much of last year trying to be a writer for other people, trying to come up with my rural detective idea. And I forgot that being a writer involves looking up from the confines of this document, meeting the world where it is and engaging with it. And then taking that back on to the page. It may sound simplistic, but isn’t that what a New Year, New Writer piece is supposed to be? Vaguely simplistically inspirational? It’s stuff I forgot. Stuff I knew intellectually. But because I was so invested in the struggle, I forgot to do the work. The work is not writing. Writing is a reflection of the work done. Because the thinking happens once the work is done and then the thoughts emerge on the page. I had a static, inert year. I don’t know what will happen this year. All I know is, writing cannot make a difference. All it can do is reflect the difference made out there, in the world, away from the blinking cursor on an empty page. For me at least. That’s the type of writer I want to be. And that’s why what I do can be of use.

Now… what type of writer do you want to be?

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