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How do i make a living as a writer/ generally louche work-shy scribbler

22:29 / 10.12.03

ola!

hi, thanks for coming to my thread. I am griffle (22). I currently live in Leeds with my parents. I work at the central library in town. I am trying to follow my dream of getting paid to write comedy scripts. Hopefully for radio, maybe eventually for TV.

I am gay too, but as i got bullied at school followed by a life threatening illness my teenage years and socialisation didnt quite happen.

Ive spent the last year working the bare minimum of hours possible whilst still managing to bum off to the continent/london at every available opportunity.

My main hang up was not being able to meet/pull cute guys. Anyway ive sort of found my feet in the chatting up blokes department and am currently taking a rest from the gay scene.

Anyway as soon as it struck me that id managed to resolve the sexual frustration and have men on tap. I realised the next challenge was to get into writing.

Basically tommoz im gonna try and find any writing workshop type things in the area and throw my lot in with any decent sounding ones.

what i want to know is , is this a good idea? what is the usual route into radio script writing? i feel like maybe i shud get my ass down to london, but am worried that would entail overdraft implosion and spiarlisation of debt.

im not in the slightest bit interested in newspaper journalism or website design

22:56 / 10.12.03

Please reply to this version of the thread, the others are up for deletion.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:02 / 11.12.03

If you're actually, genuinely work-shy, pick another job. Writing is not a soft option.

Usually, with any writing job, you need something to show. It's no good just having ideas - it's in the execution.

And writing groups... well, yeah. Okay, as long as they're a way to moitvate yourself to work. I'm not convinced that they're a huge amount of use for much else. They seem to be self-sustaining.

08:54 / 11.12.03

If you want to get involved in radio writing and want to join a writing circle, have a look at the BBC's Get Writing website here.

You can post your work for critiquing and there are tips for writing for the BBC.

But as Nick says, writing isn't a soft option. It's also a very solitary, frustrating and lonely pursuit.

And as far as your question "how do I make a living as writer/generally louche work-shy scribbler" goes, if you have to ask...

08:55 / 11.12.03

As Nick says, writing is not a soft option. In my limited - although published - experience wanting to write because you're work-shy really isn't going to work. For me, writing professionally is about 10% ideas and 90% hard work. That not only includes actually motivating myself to get the thing written (once a Herculean task in itself), but also the dedication to stick with what can be - and frequently is - a very demoralising process of trying to get your voice heard.

It's not all woe, of course. Getting my first work published, even though it was a small bit of poetry in a local magazine, was a source of pride, and a massive boost to my confidence, but, again as Nick quite rightly points out, you really need something to show prospective agents/publishers as very few, if any, are willing to risk taking a chance on somebody with ideas - however good - but no previous completed work.

09:40 / 11.12.03

id managed to resolve the sexual frustration and have men on tap

Congratulations! Find a way to market this unique talent you have and you can forget working for a living. Stay louche and work-shy and say hello to fame and fortune with your "have men on tap" formula.

Whisky Priestess

09:56 / 11.12.03

The TAPS scheme is very highly regarded

Web address is http://www.tvarts.demon.co.uk/

not much on there but contact details, but email them and ask questions.

I've been writing and entering competitions seriously since about 2000. This year I've earned just over £500 in prizes and payment, last year it was about £700, the year before that £200, and I have a resaonble success rate, it's just that the rewards are not high. It ain't, in a very real sense, a living wage, and I've had to work full-time for most of the last 3 years - I've been part-time for the last year or so and I now have a huge overdraft. I don't want to sound all mealy-mouthed and pessimistic but you shouldn't expect to be able to be a full-time writer unless you
a) have amazing connections
b) are amazingly talented AND prolific
c) have a trust fund/understanding parents

But, on the plus side, you may also be eligible for funding or bursaries because of your age/sexuality - it's always helpful to be a minority of any sort esp. when applying for funding or training schemes (esp. run by the BBC who are sensitive about their overwhelming excess of white male middle-class Oxbridge writers).

The Royal Court has a young writers' scheme for 25s and under which is also a stepping stone to higher things, but it's biased towards writing plays I think. Still, it's cheap/free and v good for your CV.

I'm afraid London is still overwhelmingly the place to be for a comedy scriptwriter but try your local BBC radio station and don't give up pestering them unless they keep sending you standard rejections or tell you straight out that your scripts are shit and you need to train/get an editor/mentor.

If you can write comedy about your personal experiences of life-threatening illness, being gay and getting bullied that could also be a good angle, but obviously it will have to be funny and fresh as well as true(ish). Of course I'm sure you know this ...

good luck!

10:22 / 11.12.03

Hey Griffle,

A friend of mine did her MA while working in a library, great for research and surreptitious typing she said. Leeds is a big-enough city, let your future agent pay London rents and bar bills!

11:33 / 11.12.03

thanks for that

11:33 / 11.12.03

A friend of mine used to write comedy skits for BBC radio. He also works full time as an accountant. If anyone asks him what he does for a living he does not nesitate to say he is an accountant, because it affords him and his family a standard of living that he could not hope to achieve as a full-time writer.

11:34 / 11.12.03

oh and just to add - my friend still writes, just he does less radio comedy stuff these days and more other stuff.

Tryphena Absent

11:49 / 11.12.03

Really? Radio comedy? I think you ought to know that I probably hate him*.

*disclaimer: no offence meant to individuals involved. I hate everyone who writes radio comedy and particularly people who write 2 minutes of one show thus affording me to enter 10 people at varying times for one half an hour programme.

11:53 / 11.12.03

*snigger*

11:56 / 11.12.03

I’ve observed a few people getting into comedy writing for the BBC, in Glasgow, and the formula seemed to be: write something funny then approach a few people and pitch the idea.
Some people seem to get into it through stand-up comedy, which might be worth a try if you think you can take the possible abuse – and not be that bothered afterwards if it goes tits up. There’s plenty of open mic nights around the place or smaller-scale comedy nights where you can go along and give this a try. It’s a good opportunity to test out material to see if it’s funny (although obviously pressure-testing it, and your own psyche, slightly).
If this seems daunting there’s always spoken word nights around the place – there’s the odd one here in Glasgow. Basically pub nights where people go along to read dodgy poetry or whatever, but you can do what you want. Although these often tend to draw some quite desperate, eightball-ish characters- hey, it might provide you with material

12:14 / 11.12.03

I hate everyone who writes radio comedy and particularly people who write 2 minutes of one show thus affording me to enter 10 people at varying times for one half an hour programme.

Collecting Society Psychosis (CSP) seems to be setting in quite heavily there Tryph. When you start yelling down the phone at icons of childrens literature, start getting worried.

12:25 / 11.12.03

"ROWLING YOU BEEYATCH, LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!..." I can see it now.

I think the general feel is that you can't make a living as a writer easily, all writers say the same- "Don't expect to get rich", they say. On the other hand, tell that to Stephen King or Rowling (beeyatch), I reckon it's worth a try. Just have a day job as well.

12:53 / 11.12.03

But how many Stephen King's are there to every talented young penslinger out there? Not many.

Wanting to be a writer is a common and appealing fantasy, thus all the bumpf adverts for writers course that turn up in the Sunday supplements. This is not to say it's not worth doing obviously, but y'know... have a contingency plan.

13:15 / 11.12.03

(Griffle, please don’t take offense if I fire off a salvo...believe it or not, I hope you do well)

It depends why you want to be a writer, which I can’t really work out from your first post. If you’re currently writing stuff then you already are a writer, and its just a short hop/skip/jump/stumble/jump again to selling pieces. Why you think you should make a decent living out of this is utterly beyond me. Proper writers live the bohemian ideal of existing from hand to mouth, day to day. Like, uh, Rimbaud dude. If you rather fancy a career with all the lovely things that this world has to offer, ie a mortgage on a nice flat, the ability to keep a pet, pay heating bills and buy food from Marks and Sparks, then get a normal bloody career like every other poor sucker, and stop pretending you’re really a writer. Nothing in this life is more irritating for someone who’s sacrificing/suffering for art than watching as some workshy fop coasts in and nicks all your best poses.

(BTB, if you’re hoping to make contact with the mysterious gay mafia that secretly run the London media, that’s a myth, man)

13:46 / 11.12.03

I thought it was a mythter.

14:45 / 11.12.03

hmmmm

I kind of like the idea of living somewhere cool like London, Berlin or San Francisco and meeting cool people. If i do well at university (studying anthropology) get and MA or PHD maybe i could teach in universities in these places.

To be honest my writing production is pretty thin. I do have a nice turn of phrase sometimes.

i just get full mof existential angst

Im sorry if this has been a bit pathetic but i have been in bed till 16.30 today

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:45 / 12.12.03

I kind of like the idea of living somewhere cool like London, Berlin or San Francisco and meeting cool people.

...which, when you get down to it, as others have pointed out, is not the point of writing. Or, rather, it's not the everyday reality. Writing to spec, meeting deadlines and attempting to fulfil the desires of people with a thin strip of responsibility more than you is the real stuff of writing, assuming it's actual for-publication, not castles-in-the-air-whee-I'm-the-new-Lester-Bangs shite.

Do you want to be a writer or do you want to live the romanticised life of one? Because most people who write professionally for a living, be they in the media or in the fiction/n-f worlds, will tell you that the money's shit and the satisfaction's variable. It's not romantic, and it's something you either do or you don't.

12:48 / 12.12.03

Why not just go and live in London, Berlin or San Francisco, have marvellous adventures and get into jolly scrapes, and write it all down and see what happens?

12:51 / 12.12.03

Do you want to be a writer or do you want to live the romanticised life of one?

I want to live the romanticized life, please.

14:35 / 12.12.03

Don't bother ... you don't appear to have any work ethic. And London needs another writer-cum-layabout like Westlife need another arsehole.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:41 / 12.12.03

Further to Whiskey's observations about the advantages of amazing connections and a trust fund, have you considered befriending, murdering and impersonating a wealthy young posho, Tom Ripley-style?

18:55 / 12.12.03

no, but i suppose i could 'befriend' some lonely (loaded) old Queen, move into his victorian villa in Hampstead and do a bit of dusting in just my apron. When he is away in Tazmania on business i could have all my lovely young beaus over to stay and run a totally fab literary salon with my housekeeping money.

Whisky Priestess

22:55 / 12.12.03

Now that's a business plan ...

Whisky Priestess

21:03 / 13.12.03

Griffle, I got confused about which thread was which and posted some stuff relevant to you in the "how do you write" thread - check it out.