Current Status: Cucky Upstart
Not the best e-mail subject I suppose but lets see how the spam filters deal with this one
Hello friends
It has been a while since I showed behind my scenes. I’ve been reading a book about the importance for artists to share their art, which involves also sharing your behind the scenes - helpfully titled ‘Show Your Work’. Now, obviously this presupposes that the nonsense I write is considered art, which is definitely a stretch. However, as we all know from post-modernism or visiting a modern art gallery these days, literally anything can be art, so it passes that metric. So anyway, if we assume what I send out to your inbox as art then I should show you it in process, apparently.
Because that’s what you crazy perverts are into. Not me. You. I don’t like ‘behind the scene” shiz, unless it’s like Stanley Kubrick shouting at his crew, in which case my interest is purely as a historian of cinema. You guys? You are probably doing a poo while you read this. And no, I don’t want to see behind your process… don’t call it science and expect me to believe you.
Anyway. life updates, methodology etc. I am once again doing a little personal re-assement of how this is all going. I absolutely love writing. I think what I am producing is funny. But it isn’t finding me new readers, I’m not growing my readership and I worry that aside from practicing my craft it isn’t providing me a platform for growth in my career.
That was until one of you, the audience, reached out to me and told me - without prompting - that it was funny and have I considered using instagram to get these words out to a wider audience? Which is a great idea, except of course I don’t have an instagram, and everytime my wife shows me a meme from instagram I look at her phone like I’m a grandad trying to work out which button I press when I urgently need to send £1000 to a Nigerian Prince. So what do you think? Should I attempt to do a word a day sort of thing?
I’ve always found social media a bit of a scam. It promises the opportunity to expose your work to the world, without gatekeepers, without anyone getting between you and them - raw, pure opportunity. Except it still creates barriers, dictates rules, and despite my best efforts I don’t ever get ‘found’, except one time I did and it was awful and wasn’t in any way related to my ability to write, joke or perform. Whats your {insert idea for social engagement}?? LIKE SHARE REPOST RETWEET RE-X UPVOTE REHASH PROMOTE GARGLE SPIT REPEAT. God, maybe it’s this sort of instinct to undermine my sincerity and express my displeasure for this whole repulsive charade slows me down? Who knows.
Writing
Since the last personable update (November! Yikes) I’ve published a couple of short stories which I think are all lovely; most recently I created a football adjacent story about the afterlife which has a paragraph in there which could make for an excellent sitcom concept. I also wrote a compelling story about a bogey fairy which might tickle your fancy - as well as a bunch of ideas still have drafted which I’m hoping to push out in the next few months.
I branched out into a new genre of pieces - insane faux-opinion pieces ruminating about evergreen topics like finding love, Elf on the Shelf, delivering a political budget, Strictly, the snooker, gracefully being a mother on mother’s day and most recently canvassing for local office. I’ve really enjoyed finding the character in writing these and believe these are genuinely funny enough to shamelessly plug as a bit more accessible than my niche ramblings.
Speaking of, I of course have been irregularly publishing some new wrds for your delight, including a Bumper World Cup Edition, Spring/Summer Collection, February, January and even our old friend December. I’ve streamlined my word creation process so I am now sitting on a massive bank of these, it’s all just about collating them together, but when I start that I just get inspired to write more and more and each edition becomes its own little world of madness, which I love. I just wish they could be contained and repackaged and be sigh accessible. But if you haven’t already, the March edition opens up the whole lore - as usual, the real jokes are in the footnotes - and frames the whole project in a new light.
It is very frustrating but it’s also a compulsion so I won’t be stopping any time soon. And who knows, I have written down a note to one day publish this all in a single collection: Dictionary 2 (the sequel to greatest story every defined). Thoughts on a postcard if you’d be interested in that.
Aside from all this, I have been working in the background on a full length book, the life and times of Jimmy Whobblers. It is by no means near finished, but I have the draft of at least a couple of chapters and an outline for the whole thing; when I get the time I love to plug away at it. It is so mad and silly and I am getting restless not being able to share it with people - especially as if I sit on it for too long, I’ll put oodles of work into it and no one will want it. But I’m hoping to start releasing extracts from it or talking about it through a podcast or something. If you know a publisher? Who am I kidding, you don’t know a publisher. Maybe you know a guy who works in a book shop?
Oh and this one-off list of an A-Z of ‘K’-Pop alternatives which is silliness personified.
Performance
I’m not doing the fringe again this year. I will be back, hopefully next year. I have plenty of ideas and I even have a specific idea that can channel all of it; I am maybe going to start writing something on this about fatherhood that will help me experiment on the way to a different show idea I have.
What else am I doing?
Oh well I’ve also been venturing out into the word of becoming a ‘digital wayfinder’ - what’s that I hear you ask? Well I made it up. But it means helping creative and small businesses find their feet with all things digital; an end-to-end lookat every aspect of their business from building websites, tools and workflows to socials, SEO and all that jazz. It’s for cool people that want a leg up in this crazy world. If you know anyone who could use that, hit me up!
What am I playing? Pokopia. Finally finding the time to play a few games I’ve been gifted. This is really great - it’s the step up from Animal Crossing we all didn’t know we needed (well you did, I completely ignored the hype and had no idea what I was getting myself in to). I will probably have to knock it on the head soon as it’s just taking up loads of time for not much reason. But it would be very fun if you had a kid and the whole of your summer holidays to fill.
What have we been watching? We are catching up with Taskmaster - not the latest series that is, we hit a ceiling after binging a lot at once a few years ago, and now we have been going back into that well and catching up from the many series we have missed. It is so great, and I was very grateful to have been able to tell Mr. Horne in person what a tremendous impact his show has had. It’s so admirable that someone gets to rise to the top like that without ever compromising - it’s niceness, it’s nonsense and it’s huge. Uncompromising creativity.
We also watched The Roofman which is, and I will shout this from the roof “not at all funny in the way the film is marketed”. But it’s lovely enough for sure.
Anyway that’s me signing off again for the week. Don’t stay up too late reading these e-mails you creeps. Mwah x