The creative industries are a mess. Create anyway.
Don’t let the state of the industry get you down.
It’s nearly three months since I put Why Aren’t I Writing? on hiatus and it’s been a creatively very productive period, which is what I’d hoped for.
What I hadn’t thought would happen is a bump of nearly 100 new subscribers since November, so hello new subscribers! Welcome, to my newsletter and thank you for joining me. I hope you’ve found some valuable stuff in my archives and if you haven’t had a look yet, please do go and poke about as there’s lots to read there.
Don’t forget that Word Count, which covers publishing, writing, TV and my own news, is still coming out every two weeks. And Fieldwork, my eco-sitcom podcast newsletter, is currently on a weekly-ish schedule too. So feel free to take a look at those two newsletters and subscribe if you fancy it.
Meanwhile, I wanted to pop back into your inbox with a few words of encouragement, because pretty much every creative industry is a dumpster fire right now. But that doesn’t mean we should give up writing. Quite the opposite, it means we need to carry on, especially with our passion projects, the writing that brings us joy, that we are desperate to get out into the world, the stuff that other people will love.
Back in June 2022, when my collaborators and I started talking about doing Fieldwork, a sitcom aimed at engaging the general public with ecology and the environment in a positive and humorous way, we planned to make it as a short film.
As our plans evolved, I realised that if I wanted to do a short film, I’d probably have to learn to direct and I’m so very not interested in that. I’m not a film nerd and it felt like far too big of an ask. It also became clear that short films don’t enjoy much attention. There aren’t many places to show them and even if you put them on YouTube, people seem largely uninterested in watching them.
So instead, I decided to write a half hour comedy TV pilot. Except over the last three years, I’ve learnt that comedy is an endangered genre in the UK. Literally. Hardly any scripted comedies are being made and writers with long and successful track records in comedy are struggling to get commissioned.
Now the plan is to produce Fieldwork as a podcast – something that I can control and drive. Though even that is looking challenging. There’s just no money in podcasts and I am not sure if I’ll be able to raise the money for professional actors and sound design.
To top it off, I’ve just had a round of feedback, feedback I’ve paid for, which is unremittingly negative. Now, I’ve been here before. This is not my first rodeo. But it’s much easier to take the hit of challenging feedback when you feel optimistic about the project in general, quite a bit harder when you look around you at the industry and see only bin fires.
It’s easy then to ask, what is the point? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Maybe I should go back to one of my simple book projects. Maybe I should just give up and let the dream go. Maybe it’s all hopeless.
But, well, sod that. I love writing. I love writing Fieldwork. I love the interviews I’ve been doing with ecologists and the enthusiasm they have for their subject and for wildlife and the environment. I love the effusive responses I got last week as the British Ecological Society’s strategy launch event in Westminster – senior industry figures telling me that my idea is great and that they love the sound of it and want to find a way to help me make it a reality.
I’m not writing Fieldwork for TV commissioners or for reviewers. I’m writing it for ecologists and anyone interested in our natural world. I don’t feel the need to twist everything into a pretzel to ensure there are five jokes on every page. I mean, I’d love to be as funny as John Finnemore or the writing teams behind Ted Lasso or Ghosts (UK or US). But I am not John Finnemore and nor do I have an amazingly talented writing team around me. It’s just me. I can give you Ted Lasso if you give me Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein. In fact, pair me with Goldstein and pay me a living wage, and I will rapidly learn how to be much, much funnier. I mean, who wouldn’t?
We have to make the best of what we’ve got, though, and I’m actually quite happy writing for a very specific audience, making them laugh, and communicating some important science in the process. I know what the point of writing Fieldwork is, and it’s not to create some bland every-person characters that would do well at 6pm on a Friday night. It’s to serve my specific audience and to make them feel seen.
So does it matter that the creative industries are in an epochal slump? Well it’s certainly not great, and I hope that the government will do something to support the creative arts in the UK because a lot of people are suffering right now. Our culture and our industry is being eaten alive by Anglo-American co-productions that force uniquely British stories to take a back seat.
But knowing why I’m writing and who I’m writing for helps to keep me on track and maintain my enthusiasm. What I’m doing is important to me, and I hope that Fieldwork will become important to other people as I reveal more of it to the world.