It’s been ten years since I took my first tentative steps towards a desire to write for a living. A decade on, a whopping 0% of my monthly income is derived from writing. That can be depressing. As the application rejections pile up, thoughts of inadequacy are never far from the mind. Trudging to the office and back again each day can feel like an inevitability that will last my whole life. I don’t want my epitaph to read, “Hi, you’re through to Josh. How can I help?”
What a cheery way to live!
Strangely, as time goes on, I’m not losing hope anymore. I’m gaining it. After those first tentative steps and a decade of living, I know where I want to end up, and I’ve got a plan to get there. That plan, perhaps ironically, requires the office job. To people that truly need it, creativity is everywhere. How you find it depends on what you want your end result to be.
Below are some ways that I am using my day job to find creativity. I’m a writer and script editor, so how I find creativity may be meaningless if you’re looking for a career in cinematography. Maybe not, though. Maybe in my experience you will find solutions to your own stagnating desire to get out of bed in the morning.
I hope you do.
Aren’t People Strange?
When I go to the office, I see people. Strange people. Diverse people. Mother’s cooing over their latest HelloFresh delivery, qualification-less 20somethings with strong opinions that TikTok has told them is fact, and calculating managers that would prefer their team to be entirely made up of drones. When talking to customers on the phone, a vibrant canvas of the population of the UK is built up in my mind. On any given day, I could touch the lives of dozens of people. It’s tedious.
It’s also amazing.
For a writer, customer service is an absolute goldmine. Every story ever told has characters, and any time I have a conversation, a new character could be born. Keeping an open ear to those characters is the only way I stay sane day-to-day, and my writing has improved because of it. My latest script is a quest across a post-apocalyptic Great Britain, and I don’t think it would be half as good as it may end up being without understanding that my job is to serve the customer, but by need is to (quite frankly) steal their identity for my own narrative ends. In my line of work, those customers are also protagonist gold.
Nobody calls a helpline unless they want something, and my workplace makes genuinely long-lasting impacts on people’s lives. But not everyone reacts with gratitude. Some customers get what they want and are disappointed by it, while others hold lofty but fragile opinions of themselves. Some are passive, and others proactive, and the richer the customer, the more extreme and irrational they become (but that’s just a trend I’ve noticed. And my colleagues. And anyone with two braincells to rub together). Within the study of a customer’s character is also a study of their culture. Two people with similar post codes can have startingly different world views, but both hold them as absolute facts of the Universe. If you haven’t figured it out by now, my job entails one of the two certainties of the world. These world views, these cultural trends, and the diversity with which the whole nation spouts the same lie about my place of work is fascinating, and something enthralling to translate into fiction.
Off the phone, I’m in a culture and environment of my own, and as an aspiring script editor the opportunities to build transferable skills are endless.
When people start work, they require training. When they’re done training, they’re terrified. What if they make a mistake on a call and literally ruin someone’s life (a genuine risk in my line of work)? Well, step in the brainy bunch. Much of script editing is the reading and writing of script reports. A full knowledge of craft, writer, production requirements, and of course the story itself combine to make a standout script editor. Well, assisting new starters on the phone works in much the same way. My own experience and training have given me the craft and knowledge of material. Shadowing new employees on their calls teaches me about them, their issues, and their strengths.
Being a public service, our standards are fairly clear. For that reason, I operate in much the same way as a script editor. I will work with an advisor not to make them a script-reading robot, but to help them become their best selves. Some advisors have Sherlock Holmes level investigative skills, while others have the empathy of a hundred Paddington Bear’s. Like a script editor, I’m the go-between that marries the service expectation to the advisors’ strengths. It’s tough work but indelibly rewarding when it results in a confident and proficient advisor. Okay, I haven’t helped them pen an Oscar-winner, but I’ll be damned if I don’t now have the skills to do it.
Creative Problem Solving
Job applications always state ‘creative problem solving’ as a desirable attribute. What a dumb and vague thing to ask for. It’s quite literally meaningless. It’s also, annoyingly, not the standard practice for overcoming issues. All too often, decisions are made by higher management in all walks of life that reek of either box ticking or naïve lack of experience. Buzz words are thrown around by people who think yesterday’s business plan is the same as a dictionary, and the people forced to implement these ‘ideas’ cry out that they’ve seen these exact resolutions fail a hundred times. All this to say that, essentially, creativity is sadly lacking in the problem-solving department.
Luckily, my jaded attitude towards these changes has given way to something I never expected, a sense of opportunity. From my position, I’m never going to single-handedly fix the pessimistic culture that has festered and grown in my ever-shrinking department, but there are things I can do. Things that help to make today bearable, and tomorrow a little brighter.
Take, for example, the aforementioned culture. I think we’ve all worked somewhere or know somebody that works somewhere where there’s a factional office culture. No group talks to another group because it’s not the ‘done’ thing. Management can host workshops and push ‘company culture’ until they’re blue in the face, but when has that ever actually overcome the issue of employee apathy? And how is tackling it going to help my writing career?
The answer: a newsletter with outstanding and engaging copy. The office and the culture at large were unbearably sterile. So, I put my tongue firmly in my cheek and found new and engaging ways to bridge the gaps between the social pods. Within months, there was a tangible exhale around the office. People talked, discussing the funny anecdote from the ‘meet the staff’ sections. Questions were asked about when payday bingo tickets were going on sale, and department lines were crossed when an in-office treasure hunt got incredibly competitive.
As an employee, the newsletter is my pride and joy, as each edition teaches me more and more about the place where I work and the people that are employed there. As a writer, that audience engagement is invaluable to my developing style and practice. I’m not just writing the material myself; I’m also formatting, designing, and distributing it. Not only is my written copy developing, which helps with this blog and opportunities beyond, it’s also developing my design style. I’m learning about colour theory, basics of graphic design, and a whole host of visual skills that I can use outside of work on this blog, in my scripts, and in a whole host of other ways.
Outside Work
I work the fairly standard Dolly Parton shift pattern, which isn’t by accident. After years pulling pints, I needed the stability of a day-job to pull my head out of the company minded headspace.
Nearly half a decade on, I’m finally practicing what I preach when I say that I’m leaving the job at work. Much the same way as in Apple TV’s Severance, I have an ‘innie’ and an ‘outie’ life. My outside life has never looked so prosperous.
I’ve mentioned a few times (not in this article) that I’m a member of a local script writing group. The monthly meetings are a great focusing energy, and being around likeminded writers and creatives is inspiring. For the first time in my life, when I hear the expression “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, I have a whole host of people I can point to.
I also dedicate time to writing. I’m not an idiot, there’s no way I can mentally support two full days of work within 24 hours, one paid and one vocational. Instead, I try to get at least 45 minutes a day, every day, sat at my desk writing. So far, I’ve not missed a single day, and as a result I’ve progressed my new feature idea quicker than I ever could have done by simply dedicating one day a week to it. Writing is now a habit as well as a necessity.
Undertaking other extra-curricular activities also help to keep my head above the waves. Activities like the annual Iris LGBT+ Film Festival, where I volunteer, merge my work and life personas to further embed myself in the culture I want to turn into a career.
It’s a slow process. Coming up this year, I’ll be undertaking some script reading responsibilities within Script Club Cardiff, and I’ll finally be putting the play I wrote in 2024 in front of an audience with a closed table read. In a way, I don’t care anymore that progress is slow.
Progress is progress.
Conclusion
What was the point of this article? It feels like self-indulgent nonsense. Well, yeah. It is. In order to find regular paid work within the script reading, editing, and writing spheres, all I have to rely on are transferable skills. I’m done pretending that’s not okay, and that it’s not enough.
It is enough.
I’ve got two degrees that state I’ve got the knowledge, and I have over a decade’s worth of working experience that proves I’ve got the work ethic to implement it. So do you. Hopefully, as you’ve been reading this, you’ve realised one of two things:
01. You’re already doing the same thing, finding unique and creative ways to get through an otherwise mundane working day
02. You’ve got ideas on how to do it in future
There’s an eager, engaged, vibrant future for storytellers and creative workers. Hope isn’t lost, it’s just hiding, and it’s up to us to shine a light on it.
Remember: things will move, but only if you start pushing.
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