It is 9pm and I am on the brink of madness. This is because I’m entering a sketch in a BBC Writersroom thing and it must be formatted in Word with a hanging ident. And I cannot do it. Can. Not. Despite following Dan Tetsell’s instructions very clearly. My Word does not appear to be his Word. But as Radio 4 is the Word of God I crumble and beg my friend to do it for me by frenzied text and email (I’m surprised people give me their numbers any more).
Is the sketch funny? Who knows. But it is now in the approved format so it can shuffle forward towards Auntie in the grovelling mass of other hopeful outpourings.
Ah, writing competitions. Why do you end up on the brink of madness at 9pm on a rainy night in Surbiton? Because unfortunately you can’t just take it into your head to write comedy, then post it off to Victoria Wood or Meera Syal or John Finnemore with a nice postcard for them to make into classic entertainment. So you wake up to the world of competitions. Then it gets like when you buy a lottery ticket. Hey, you remembered to buy the ticket. You went to the shop and everything so you are bound to win aren’t you?
Poring over the rules gives you more agony than the 4am bleak reflection over whether you can write. There are two hurdles that get your brain churning. The first is how much time you have to make ’em laugh. The BBC tell you sternly that they read the first 10 pages. The Funny Women Comedy Writing Award gives you 15. If it’s ‘Meh’ by then, it’s thank you and goodnight.
The other Big Worry is, who is reading your script? Obviously, you want the Head of Comedy reading it. You want them spilling their tea and shouting out for their PA to find your phone number immediately. But you know you are very, very far from reaching the eyeballs of the actual judges until a good number of scripts have hit the bin in the first round.
You get a reader. Who is a reader? I’ll tell you who mine is. My reader is a bit tired. She has been reading the first 10 or 15 pages of doomed endeavours all day. Some failed the Ident Test and are on some kind of blacklist now. Still, is there time for another before she clocks off? She’s recorded ‘Call the Midwife’ and ‘Modern Family’ and there’s an M&S pie in the fridge. But no. She is dedicated to the comedy cause so she reaches wearily for my script.
Well, she laughs, she cries, she sort of re-evaluates this whole damn thing we call ‘life’. Now she must spread the word. But wait! The others don’t agree! So my brave reader stands up and it all goes a bit 12 Angry Men as she whittles away their wrongheaded notions about my writing and then it’s all thrown-open doors, sunshine and red carpet from there on in.
I think a rich fantasy life is a good thing in a writer, don’t you? It’s called the triumph of hope over experience. So do you go through similar madness? Let me know below and we can anguish together. Or come to the Funny Women stall at the WOW Festival on Saturday morning and we can do it over a biscuit. Even better.
