So, I’ve been wondering what to write a blog about and then today, I went to the gym… and fell off the treadmill.

Not that I’m complaining about the gym. No. It isn’t their fault that I had loaded several Jessie J tunes to my phone for the kids amusement when travelling in the car, and they started playing in my headphones as I began my second workout in two years.

‘Oh no, fast forward!’ I said – to the phone – which promptly decided now would be a good time to demonstrate to the whole place just how hard the treadmill was bouncing about with me jogging on it, by springing out of its pocket and clattering onto the floor.

It was then I learned the one thing they don’t teach you on your induction day. The emergency stop button on a treadmill doesn’t ‘emergency-ly’ stop – you know, like your car does when a cat runs out and you face-plant the windscreen? What it actually does is think about it for a second:

‘Emergency stop? Are you sure? I’ll just wait a few seconds before slamming on my brakes… ooh, where have you gone?’ 

Do you remember that moment when you visited the fairground as a young, carefree slip of a lad/lass and thought what awesome fun it would be to try and navigate the moving floor in a fun house, full of Diamond White cider?  Just me then? Oh… well anyway, my accident went a bit like that…

My fellow gym members learned a new sound today:

‘Kerrrassshhhh.’

And I saw my life flash before me as my knees-met-my-face-met-rubber on a fast-moving conveyor belt in what can only be described as a horrible reconstruction of the BBC’s Generation Game. As my arse made it’s own way south to the machine behind mine, I was just waiting for the guy on it to shout, ‘cuddly toy!’

But, as it turned out, the guys around me weren’t going to be put off their workout for anybody.  They weren’t even missing the phonesex-esque huffing I’d most likely been doing – without being able to hear myself thanks to Jessie J – just seconds earlier as I started to accept death at just 5kmph.

After finally rescuing my phone (always my first priority in the face of potential disfigurement), I pulled myself up and looked around for evidence of sympathy – or filming  –  and found everybody had remained eyes front, in a fully fitness focused stance. Or just not wanting to meet my eyes in case they laughed, which is exactly what I would have been like in their gym shoes.

My saviour came in the form of a Virgin Health employee I only know as John, who not only raced over from his post way over the other side of the gym to help me, but then proceeded to spend five minutes telling me how many people he’d seen doing far worse auditions for You’ve Been Framed than I just had, to make me feel better. Which it did. When I told him I was likely to write about the whole episode, he requested that I mention he was a devastatingly handsome young fittie. About now he will be regretting that.

For those that might be worried, I wasn’t hurt. Except for a grazed knee; which I may have got after whipping off my sports bra at high speed in the changing room afterwards and racing away red-faced.

Ask me if I feel fitter after my workout today – go on, ask me! Or better still, ask me what song I was trying to fast forward before said catastrophic accident?

Refer to today’s blog post title…

I kid you not!

Please note: no treadmills were broken during the creation of this particular day of my sitcom life.

This used to be MY office

For those of you that don’t know, I live in a country lane with few neighbours and my coach driver husband often goes away overnight. This is not a Craiglist personals ad, (well, it was meant to be but I started typing in the wrong window..)

No. This is the beginning of my excuse for giving in to years of family pressure. Three months ago, hiding under the duvet as some fox-hybrid-type creature howled outside my window while Mr was away overnight, I resigned to get a dog; for security you understand. My eldest three have now fled the nest and so I was beginning to feel quite vulnerable with only a teenager, a nine year old and two cats to throw out before me in a hostage situation. A dog, I thought, was just what I needed to feel safe at night.

Hmph! This is boring

A trip to the local Dogs Trust, some owner training and a home visit later and we had our newest family member, Sally the Collie-lab. Sally has now lived with us for around three months and has turned my writing world upside down. If you have been a follower of my posts, you will know that everything I create begins on actual paper as I am a fan of working longhand. My ‘office space’ is propped on a cushion, in front of the fireplace which I now have to fight to only share on a daily basis. And you will have to see The Longhand of the Hill – Fifty Shades of Graphite to fully understand how much I loved the mechanical pencil I discovered chewed and broken when I started work this morning. Garrrggghh!

How about I finish it for you?

As I write this line, longhand, she is here pressed by my side huffing like a petulant teenager because it’s not playtime yet. And so my dog days are begun, with me, the reluctant, once indifferent pet owner who went very quickly from referring to her as ‘the new pup’ to ‘Sally-Wally-Woo.’  And everyday, in every way, she tries to stop me from messing with that paper and rather tasty stick thing to come and play; even after my taking advantage of some nice weather to work in the landlord’s field behind my house. A couple of acres to play in didn’t stop her sabotage efforts as she tried to nick off with my ground sheet. Although, she did enjoy chasing twenty pages of blown away manuscript round the field with me as I sang the ‘oh f*ck, noooo!’ song.

Right! I’m taking this…!

So, the Mrs David Dando rewrites continue regardless, with the usual family distractions plus some nudging, pressing and pencil stealing from Sally-Wally-Woo, whom I now – begrudgingly – love dearly in a completely over adjective using way. Even if she will only be protecting us at night by licking intruders very noisily to death, giving us precious minutes to escape.

Anyone thinking of getting a dog, beware; you may just fall in love. You may also fall over as they drag you across ice to the toilet corner in the garden at 5am. But it’s all worthwhile.

And I’m taking this…!

I’m still scribbling away, working with the help of the fantastic proof-reading and editing assistance of Flora Napier, who is excellent and very reasonably priced for new, hard-up writers like my good self. I highly recommend her and am very confident and excited to know I’ll have this book out for submission very, very soon.

PS I am advised (from a source that I cannot reveal) to tell any potential burglars reading this post that they can take everything except my sons Xbox…

Yawn.. it’s a boring book anyway!

Have a good week!

Yesterday was my birthday and I was 42… no really! And I spent it in the company of many other aspiring writers listening to an enlightening talk at The Scottish Writers’ Centre on the submission process from Conville & Walsh agent Jo Unwin. I should point out I had not gone there to pitch – given that my novel is far from ready and on the first rewrite, which I learned should now be the first of at least three(!) – but stood up to do so anyhoo. What a scary experience! I won’t say I was nervous, but I should probably have introduced it in a Donkey from Shrek style-ee with, ‘I’m making waffles!’ You know that mantra we all should have – do one thing that scares you every day? That was mine I babbled on about the main points of my novel – ‘porn’ ‘sex’ ‘blowing up a baked fish’ – that kind of thing. Thank God I didn’t go on to mention electrocution by pelvic toner… but I may have managed to shock regardless. In short (oh dear, there I go again) it was good fun, very interesting, a great experience and I am really grateful to have someone so busy give their time to offer advice to us newbies. I got to blow out my birthday candles (OK it was a tea light on top of the icing on my cake) with my understanding and wonderful kids when I arrived home at 9.30pm. Lovely!

And so, following on from my MUST READ Blod, Sweet & Tears post, where I talked about how to keep motivated in the face of unpublished writer destitution and how I have been lucky enough to have gathered messages of advice and encouragement from many kind professionals that have influenced and inspired me in the world of comedy – this week’s post is from British comedy writer and stand up comedian, Tony Cowards – voted by Chortle as the 46th Most Influential Comedian on Twitter.

As a stand up comedian and comedy writer people often ask me to divulge the secrets of comedy writing and it seems an obvious truism but the only way to be a writer is to write.

It’s a scientifically proven fact* that 94.7% of all people who claim to be writers actually spend their time sat drinking coffee in internet cafes or at home bashing away on their laptops (not a euphemism) telling people on Facebook, twitter or internet forums that they are writers without actually, ever writing anything of more value than a status update.

So, in no particular order please welcome to the stage Tony Cowards 7 Golden Rules of Comedy Writing;

1) Be Famous

If you are famous people will pay you to write any old rubbish. Katie Price has sold more books than almost anyone else on the planet, believe it or not this isn’t down to her amazing literary skills but because she’s almost permanently been on the cover of “Heat” magazine and the like for the last 10 years.

If you are a famous comedian then you’ll have little trouble getting your sitcom commissioned, especially if you are young, attractive and can secure that all important advertising revenue. If you aren’t famous then expect to slog away for years trying to get that, potentially, award winning show made. Unfortunately without the fame you’ll have to make it using talent and an unshakeable ability to hang in there, beating your head against the door until it opens enough for you to get your foot in it.

2) Write everyday

Writing is a skill, it needs to be worked on and practiced. Write something everyday, whether it’s jokes, one-liners, a blog, a novel or even just random thoughts, write for an hour or two everyday, keep what you’ve written and occasionally go back over it to see what can be utilised for other projects or can be edited to make it better. It supposedly takes 10,000 hours practice to become a “genius” at something, so put in those hours now and who knows, in 10 years time you might be a genius. If you don’t put in the time though you certainly won’t.

As someone who makes a (meagre) living from comedy writing I would say that the most important things to remember are the 3 P’s, “Prevarication, Postponement and Procrastination”, if you can avoid those then you have a chance of making a living as a comedy writer.

3) Turn off the radio, the TV and, especially, the Internet

Try to make sure you have a quiet area where you can write, away from all the distractions that are so present in modern life. In order to write properly you need to be concentrating fully, you can’t do this with Steve Wright chuntering away in the background or if, every 30 seconds, one of your Facebook friends is posting a video of a sneezing panda.

4) Write as much as you can and never throw anything away

The secret of writing good jokes is writing lots of jokes, most of which will be awful. Even the best gag writers in the business will have a fairly poor hit rate of good/bad gags but the more you write the more gold you’ll hit upon. Also, never throw away the rubbish, put it in a folder somewhere and look over it from time to time, especially when you are struggling for inspiration. That terrible joke you wrote about the French Prime Minister might suddenly become topical or adaptable to become a brilliant joke about the Eiffel Tower.

5) Never stare at a blank screen or piece of paper

Nothing will cause writer’s block more than the sight of a vast empty white space with no source of inspiration. Always have some ideas that you’ve previously jotted down on a notepad or on a handy Word document. If you are really stuck pick a news story and write as many jokes as you can about it or select a random article on Wikipedia and do the same.

6) Always carry a notebook or phone with you

A funny thought can strike at the most inopportune of moments and you need a method to record them as quickly as possible. Never trust your brain to remember it, every comedian and comedy writer has lost masses of brilliant jokes because they didn’t write them down straight away.

Also one of the secrets of comedy output is to maximise your raw material input, so read as much as you can about any subject there is comedy in the most unlikely of sources. Jokes are often found at the connection of two unrelated subjects, so the more you know about a vast variety of subjects the more likely you are to see the connections.

7) Get your writing out there

Whether it be tweeting, filming sketches, blogging, self-publishing or whatever, get your writing out there so people can find it. Send your jokes to comedians, greetings card companies, Christmas cracker manufacturers. Listen to the end of radio comedy programmes, pick out the names of the important people and google them to find out their email addresses so you can send them samples of your sitcom pilot. Listen out for open submission shows like “Newsjack” and send material in every week.

Try not to turn into a comedy stalker but also don’t give up easily and try not to take rejection personally. Once you get a name as a writer then it all becomes, slightly, easier, but at the start be prepared to write for anyone and anything, get as many credits as you can.
*not actually a scientifically proven fact.

You can find out more about the comedy genius that is Tony Cowards here: http://www.tonycowards.co.uk/

Last year I wrote a sitcom pilot and sent it out to several producers. After seeing it returned with some encouraging comments but mostly a ‘better luck next time,’ I decided to do a little more reading on the subject, take some professional advice and then put it away for a time and write something else.

A fortnight ago, I completed the first draft of my comedy novel for women, MRS DAVID DANDO -  a project that was started immediately after a dear friend of mine who I met through Twitter, Hywel Jones, passed away. At the beginning of 2012, Hywel told me, ‘this will be your year Heather!’ It wasn’t, because sadly, I lost one of the most amazing people I have ever met. But one of many things he taught me was the truth in the saying, ‘live to regret the things you did do, not the things you didn’t.’  If you ever doubt the power or usefulness of Twitter, you can read about my inspirational friend Hywel and our bizarre/funny/extraordinary conversations HERE. Suffice to say, I truly fell in love on Twitter and miss Hywel everyday. And he is, without a doubt, the reason I set out to write my novel.

I have met, chatted with and listened to some amazing people through the social media channels from many varied and fascinating backgrounds and have found it a fantastic training ground.  The onset of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc has allowed me, a humble, unknown writer to get a grasp of what people I never thought would give me the time of day have to say about the comedy writing industry – and, indeed, the publishing industry in general. It has also resulted in a deluge of well-meaning folk sending me links on how to handle rejection since I announced my plans to start sending out my novel to literary agents in the New Year. If you have been following this blog, you will know that I have a saying of my own when it comes to rejection, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try eating the whole bun.’  If you missed the original post about my motivation for writing, please see HERE.

And so this week, I have an email I am permitted to share that was sent to me from TV writer and Executive Producer at Wild Rover Productions Kieran Docherty. Kieran has written extensively for the BBC, Sesame Workshop and The Jim Henson Company among others:

“I always thought of myself as a writer, but I think my career only really started once I started thinking of myself as a business. I knew I had to sell my scripts, but I also started to view myself as a product that needed to be sold too. Once that little switch went off in the back of my head I started to view the industry differently. I started to research agents, production companies and even broadcasters. I hated my job (I worked in an outbound call centre by day and as a barman by night) so I started to dig my escape tunnel by reading industry magazines like Broadcast and Film Ireland. I wanted to sound like a knowledgable professional to offset the fact that I looked like a scruffy student! 

I found out the names of all the local producers in town and managed to befriend a comedy producer who just so happened to drink in the bar I worked in. He agreed to read some of my stuff. He liked it and asked me to send him some more. I did that for about a year and a bit. I didn’t get payed, but that was OK because I hadn’t jacked in the day job yet, and eventually I got a shot at writing on a real radio show.

I still hated my job but I knew I couldn’t leave just yet, so I developed a new plan – to try and find a job somewhere in the industry. I figured it would let me meet the important people in a professional capacity as opposed to a drunken capacity. I took days off work to take on runner jobs at no money. I meet some nice people, stayed in touch with them, and kept myself on their radar. This lead to a development job at a local TV production company, which lead to a format development job, which lead to where I am now. It’s quite an interesting place to be – I’m a producer now – so I’m seeing the industry from both sides. I don’t know whether I prefer hearing the word ‘no’ or saying the word ‘no’! 

I have no idea if the approach I took was sensible or not – I was making everything up as I went along – but thankfully it worked out for me! The only thing that I know for sure is that, even if none of the above had ever happened, I’d still be writing and plugging away. If you want something bad enough, don’t settle until you get it.” 
Kieran 

There is a general theme to all the advice that I have received, that normally comes at around the last line: ‘Don’t settle until you get it!’  I’d hazard a guess that all successful writer’s have this in common.

Hope to catch you here reading next week!

FINAL THOUGHT: Huge congratulations to Midway-Media.com - owned by my brother Barry & his wife Tracey – on winning The East Midlands Best Wedding Videographer Award

Keep writing…