Plus working class writers, and the cats of Porto. Hi there, After a marvellous week off in Porto and a bank holiday yesterday, I’m now back at my desk looking at the apple tree from my office window and thinking| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus, what Labour can learn from South Korea, Richard Osman and Marina Hyde on the Edinburgh Fringe, and an update on Grabbity’s health. Hi there, We’re having another one of those melty days as I write this, so I’ve moved down to the lounge where it is cooler and am now surrounded by cats who […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Gymnasts get the twisties. Golfers get the yips. Can writers get the typies? In 2021, gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics saying that she was “having a little bit of the twisties”. Last week, she was back| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus genre hopping, top UK streamers, the ‘nivali’ mystery, and a fresh-faced Grabbity. Hi there, When I was a kid, my Dad defined summer as “Three sunny days and a thunderstorm”, and this week appears to be cleaving to that| Chocolate and Vodka
It’s just utterly boggling my mind, all the weird concern trolling and catastrophising that people are doing about the new Labour gov’t. Not just from Tories either – most of what I’m seeing is from people I know to be| Chocolate and Vodka
It might be a messy, complicated thing with a variety of causes and potential solutions, but it absolutely does exist. It’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last newsletter. I finished the first draft of Fieldwork, my half-hour sitcom pilot script, and wrote about how much prep went into it, compared to the 8 hours and […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus some more publishing industry angst and a detailed rebuttal. Hi there, At the end of the last newsletter, I promised to share my excess links on Substack Notes or Bluesky. Well, that was two weeks ago, and I’m afraid I got a bit busy. That’s probably a good thing, because I was so busy that I’ve […]| Chocolate and Vodka
How Shaun of the Dead, Ted Lasso and Cabin Pressure use callbacks and repetition to create gags, move the plot forward and develop characters. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve written about the insights I’ve gleaned from Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone, so this week I’m taking on his rather rambling chapter […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus audiobook news, Colleen Hoover’s writer’s block, SFF book length advice, and the state of British TV. Hi there, I’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of links for you today, so I’m breaking away from my usual newsletter format and where I’ve| Chocolate and Vodka
What does science have to tell us about writer’s block? A couple of years ago, Sarah J Ahmed and C Dominik Güss from the University of North Florida published a paper, An Analysis of Writer’s Block: Causes and Solutions, in the Creativity| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus Fieldwork progress, character creation, and a sleepy Copurrnicus. Hi there, It was a long weekend here in the UK, which was much needed. It’s been really drab and rainy for a long time, and so dismal I’ve even had my SAD lamp on to lift the mood a bit. In May. I’m hoping that […]| Chocolate and Vodka
And learning how to transition from research to pre-writing to writing. Yesterday, I published an update on my new sitcom, Fieldwork, where I compared the writing process for my unnamed and now trunked pandemic disaster novel (which I’ll just call Pandemic for now) and the process I’m going through with Fieldwork. Both stories are based […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus Joel Morris’s new book about comedy, Be Funny Or Die. Dave Cohen’s Build a Sitcom correspondence course started a couple of weeks ago and I am so glad that I signed up for it. One of the problems with| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus inside the Met’s book conservation lab, lots of AI news, and another rejection is balanced out by starting my Script in Eight Weeks course. Hi there, Suw’s News: Another rejection and a course started The rejection emails from Discoveries 2024 arrived in inboxes, including mine, late last week. Whilst rejection is never a surprise, […]| Chocolate and Vodka
This week’s newsletter brought to you by the letter S, for stubbornness. Sometimes, I find that my head is just… empty. I need to write something, but there’s not a single idea to be had. Not a light on in the house. I could skip a week, I suppose. People do. But if I skip […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus the state of UK TV, the power of curation and an early morning Grabbity. Hi there, The rain has finally stopped, the sun is trying to come out, the pigeons are ‘courting’ on the flat roof above my desk, freaking Copurrnicus right out with their noise, and I am feeling loquacious! So this issues […]| Chocolate and Vodka
You should probably say it to yourself more often. Some friends and I have an entire Slack channel devoted to celebrating the times we say ‘No’. We’ve made ourselves little loyalty cards and if we tick all 10 boxes then we get to buy ourselves an ice-cream. I’m currently stuck on nine, because these days […]| Chocolate and Vodka
Plus the London Festival of Writing, Coyote vs Acme, and Copurrnicus being Copurrnicus. Hi there, Catch up with Dr Dean Burnett If you missed last week’s webinar with bestselling author Dr Dean Burnett, you can now catch up with the| Chocolate and Vodka
How do we find a window to climb through? I spent Saturday at the Big Comedy Conference, finding out about the parlous state of TV comedy and rethinking my Fieldwork short film/sitcom project in the process. What was clear from the folks on stage is that budgets are shrinking and fashions are changing which means […]| Chocolate and Vodka
And how I’m adapting our project plan to account for changes in TV commissioning. Saturday saw the Big Comedy Conference take place in London with a slew of industry professionals taking the stage to share their accumulated knowledge and experience. I went last year for the first time, so this second go round made for an […]| Chocolate and Vodka