I hope you and yours are having a fun-packed/no-activities-packed/delete as applicable festive season. As I write this, Greatest Hits Radio Christmas is playing in the background (damn right I’m going to keep listening to Christmas songs after 25th December), and Freddie Mercury is opining ‘Thank god it’s Christmas’. Right now, however, I’m thinking: thank god it’s Twixtmas. A time when the main activities in our house are, delightfully, getting up late (and then eating chocolate), watching movies (while eating chocolate) and going for long walks (only stopping to eat… you guessed it, Christmas cake).
My husband and I have a tradition on our Twixtmas walks to talk about the year we’ve each had, and share our hopes and goals for the year to come. So in the spirit of that, I thought I’d write about five things (fiiiive gooaaal thiiiings!) that 2024 taught me – or at least reminded me of – which I’m going to try to take into in 2025. They’re largely work/creativity-related, but not completely. And whatever work you do, or whatever your life may look like, I hope that one, some or all may be helpful for you, too.
1. Be your full self – and bring it to your work
This is a life’s work (thought I’d start off with something easy and small), and so I’ll be trying to bring it into not just 2025 but, I suspect, every year thereafter.
Whether it was sticking to my guns and writing my first TV pilot spec script in exactly the tone I wanted (‘warm drama’, since you ask), nervously but delightedly giving a guest lecture to a group of Leeds University students about my experience in the creative industries, suggesting sweeping changes to a feature script I’d written when the producer/director just expected me to ‘have quick check’ of what he thought would be our final draft, or having my 80s jukebox musical spec – the most on-brand ‘me’ thing I’ve ever written – picked up by two smashing producers who loved and ‘got’ it, after others had passed or never responded, I was reminded over and over that being your true self in life and work – trusting your instincts and learning to be at ease with your own tastes, opinions and ideas – will a) go down absolutely fine with the right people and b) bring the right people to you.
And aside from the fact that I believe there’s value to any creative work you want to make: even if an industry (or some people within it) tells you it’s Not What They Want Right Now, I bet you there is evidence all around you that the sort of thing you love and want to make is wanted. I took great heart that one of 2023/24’s most beloved and critically acclaimed movies was The Holdovers, that Cord Jefferson won an Oscar this year for his screenplay of American Fiction, that the delightful indie comedy-drama Thelma was put out in the world… because all of these are exactly the kind of scripts I aspire to write. And that’s not to mention the evidence all around me (and you!) that there are other creatives out there doing work which may not be to one’s own personal taste but which is clearly meaningful and fulfilling to them – ie it’s true to them, just as you aim for work that’s true to you – and in its own way, that is just as inspiring. And just as much a marker of success (measuring success being another thing that’s been on my mind this year, and something I’m sure I’ll write about more fully in 2025).
In short: lean into who you are, and what you love. I honestly believe it is the key to happiness and fulfilment in life, and in our work. It can be scary (like I say: it’s a life’s work), but trust me: the world will reward you for it.
2. If something feels like a good idea, it probably is (so go for it!)
This is connected to the above idea of trusting your instincts, your tastes and yourself – and I suspect I’ll come back to this, too, in a future post. Because it really hit me this year just how much we are taught – by society, by the Ghosts of (usually privileged, male) Creatives Past – to second-guess our instincts and abilities when it comes to our creative ideas and choices.
We are told that creativity or being an artist must be difficult and/or painful, that things must be worked on over and over and over, that our first idea can’t possibly be the best (spoiler alert: sometimes it is!), that if something comes easily to us then it must have come too easily… so it shouldn’t be trusted.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in learning skills, and developing craft, and I absolutely love the iterative nature of screenwriting – the problem-solving of it, the work of multiple drafts over weeks and months or even years that take you from a crappy first draft to something you’re proud of. But creativity is also fun, and joyful, and play, and something we do naturally as children – and your instinct, your talent, your natural creativity, your natural storytelling ability (whatever it looks like in your chosen art form) are all real and just as valid in your creative work. Not to mention your increased skills due to literally doing this kind of work over and over: ie. maybe this particular idea/project has come easily or quickly this time because, y’know, you’ve just got better at this stuff?!
And this extends beyond art and creativity. For example, there’s a business project I’ll be launching in 2025, and I knew instinctively as soon as I had the idea for it that it was a good one – it felt right, and exciting – so have tried not to second-guess it (though more on that below). As a result, I’ve taken initial steps to make it happen, and underpinning it all I’ve been experiencing that very strange but wonderful feeling akin to manifesting: that this idea/project and its success is already assured, decided, somehow inevitable – I just need to take the action to make it happen. Because it felt like a good idea… and so it probably is.
Or as Henry Ford put it: ‘Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.’ And guess what? I bet you can!
3. Expect the unexpected
Both good and bad. Shit happens. Life happens. Illness happens. To you and your loved ones.
I was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 2023, yet unexpectedly, 2024 was in many ways harder for me on that front. If last year was all about clinging onto a rollercoaster – literally just focusing on surviving, on some fundamental level – then this year, now being ‘safe’, was about feeling the repercussions of all that in glorious technicolor: emotionally, mentally, physically and financially.
I am now prone to anxiety and panic attacks – neither of which I have really suffered from before in my life – and it’s been a year of broken nights’ sleep and at times overwhelming fatigue. I have also felt what I can only describe as a force field of depression and pessimism (again, neither of which I have been prone to) enveloping me, something which curiously feels outside of me rather than generating from inside of me.
All of these changes have been as unwelcome as they have been unexpected, and a big part of the work I am now doing around all this has been about just that: welcoming them. Or at least learning to accept them and the potential changes that this life-changing illness may have brought about in me. There was a clue in a cancer diagnosis being ‘life-changing’, clearly – but I guess I expected it to change my life, as opposed to changing me. And I’m still working out the ways in which it has done that, whether temporarily or fundamentally – and being OK with those changes, with the post-cancer me.
On top of this, researching my latest film project turned out to be far tougher – emotionally and mentally – than I had foreseen, as I uncovered more trauma than I had bargained for and thus had to take my time with it. Oh and a debilitating pain entered the mix in 2024, too (hello frozen shoulder, my old friend!).
But there were plenty of wonderful unexpected things this year, too. I didn’t see the big new project I mentioned above on the horizon as I entered 2024 and nor did I know that, relatedly, I’d be applying for Arts Council funding, having a brilliant woman about to mentor me, and setting up a fortnightly Write-In in my new hometown – with all the connections, friendships and warm feelings that have stemmed from that. I didn’t know that despite starting the year in hospital and ending up reliant on oxygen 24/7, my mum would be doing OK – and that I would be ending the year plotting how to put her first novel out into the world as she approaches her 88th birthday.
All this to say – as 2023 taught me, and as 2024 reminded me in spades: we never know what’s around the corner. So be kind and gentle with yourself if – or rather, when – life events, personal discoveries and unknown unknowns lead you to change your plans, derail your goals or send you off in a slightly scary – yet unexpectedly delightful – new direction in 2025. It’s to be expected.
4. Celebrate the wins – large or small, and in all areas of your life
As mentioned above, this year I’ve made new connections and friendships – and deepened others. I’ve had producers come on board my scripts trying to get them made, and my work has been on the desk of directors whose films I love and production companies I’ve dreamed of writing for. I rewrote a script of mine with a new-found clarity that made it a million times better (thanks for the enforced break, pesky cancer!), I applied for opportunities and got rejected – and yes, I regard applying as a win – and the production company I wrote a feature for came back to me and said: “What shall we work on next together?”. My first mammogram since being treated for breast cancer came back all-clear, and our family managed to secure a flat for my learning disabled sister in a wonderful residential home where she is now thriving, and surrounded by warmth and community.
As we say goodbye to 2024 – which, as Freddie Mercury sang, may well have been a long hard year – I really recommend writing down your wins and achievements from the past 12 months, and recording them as they happen for you next year, too (here’s something I wrote about how I do this). Negativity bias is real and the world feels pretty scary right now: so mark and celebrate the good things that happen, no matter how small, and keep your eye on your prize. Whatever your prize looks like for you.
5. Dream the whole dream
This idea – or at least this expression of it – comes from David Hemingson’s sublime script for The Holdovers; to be precise, from this exchange between boarding school cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), student Angus (Dominic Sessa) and teacher Paul (Paul Giamatti):
MARY: Let me ask you something. If you could go anywhere on Earth, where would you go?
PAUL: Oh… Greece, Italy, Egypt, Peru. Carthage – Tunisia now, of course. In college I started a monograph on Carthage. I’d like to finish that someday. A monograph is like a book, only shorter.
MARY: I know what a monograph is.
ANGUS: Why not just write a book?
PAUL: I’m not sure I have an entire book in me.
MARY: You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?
We’re all guilty of dreaming half-dreams, or even not allowing ourselves to dream at all. As I mentioned earlier, I knew the business project I have planned for next year was a good idea instinctively – but no sooner had I thought of it than I started limiting it in some way. I soon realised I was constructing some sort of personal glass ceiling around it (more about those glass ceilings here!) and needed to listen to the voice inside me that was excited and positive, not the fearful one that had taught me to keep myself and my dreams small.
That’s what I hope to keep doing – and hope you do, too. Here’s to 2025 being a happy, fulfilling and creative year for us all. A year when we bring our full selves to what we do, remember to trust our instincts, expect the unexpected, celebrate our wins, dream our whole dreams… and, quite possibly, write an entire book.
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