From TV to Edinburgh Sets to Ads, The Creative Process is Frustrating and Awkward and Boring

People love to imagine Christopher Nolan waking up one morning with 'Oppenheimer' fully-formed in his head. Or Shonda Rhimes getting struck by divine inspiration and banging out a season that lulls you into a false sense of security before killing off all your favourite characters. Or the creators of 'Bluey' seeing a cute dog at their local park and an episode just ‘writing itself’.

That’s the dream version. The real version goes more like:

Yawn. Are you kidding me. Process process. Weekly ritual. Writers rooms. Should I have a glass of wine? What did Hemingway drink?! Deleted docs. Chewed pens. Random jokes or poems lost forever in iCloud notes with names like “Idea???"

Hard work that, in the moment, feels repetitive and frustrating and a bit boring. You see…the glamour’s in the end product, not the swampy, awkward middle bit.

I know because I work in too many lanes. Ads copywriter. Stand up comedian. Slam poet. Published author. Novelist-in-progress. Aspiring screenplay writer. But I am still ‘a someone’ and I do need it to come from somewhere. And without guard rails, I’m like a stale pale male on a diversity panel, saying nothing and taking up space.

My process is simple. Okay, no it’s not. But it does, at its simplest, involve a pomodoro timer (or whatever food timer you like) and a brief. Like, I really really need a brief though.

Stand up comedy taught me early you don’t just think up a killer joke out of nowhere. Yeah, some of it comes from experience and stray thoughts, but mostly you write, you test, you bomb, you tweak and do it all over again. Often, the funniest stuff comes from being boxed in by a topic or a time limit or the mood of the room (crowdwork only works if the audience will play ball). Same with advertising. Same with poetry. Same with manuscripts.

I can’t pull a comedy set or a screenplay or a poem out of thin air. And for the record, I haven’t pulled a screenplay out of any air yet. I need something to push against. Prompts are my creative oxygen. The good ones don’t hand you the answer and suffocate you with it, they spark 25 wildly different possibilities.

I’ve seen it when I’ve hosted writing, poetry or comedy workshops. Prompts, process, practice, pizza? Even at comedy workshops I’ve been to, like ones run by Sashi Perera or Comedy Republic. Same prompt, same room, same time limit, and every single person still takes it somewhere completely different.

And lately, I’ve been seeing it at my new agency. Sometimes, an internal fun activity turns into accidental masterclasses in constraint-based creativity. Someone says, 'Make up a fake movie based on a real one and set it in 2025'. 15 minutes later, the room’s full of absurd clever ideas. Not finished pieces, but solid starting points. And a strong start is worth a lot more than sitting around waiting for inspiration to wander in.

We live in an ADHD-coded culture that worships 'You can do anything' or a blank canvas, as if that’s inspiring. It’s not. It’s exhausting and overwhelming. Infinite choice is the quickest route to doing nothing at all. Creativity doesn’t thrive in the middle of nowhere. It needs walls to bounce off, a lane to follow, a deadline breathing down your neck.

Even at the new gig, the people I work with know this, whether we say it out loud or not. Those quick internal briefs and impromptu team challenges might look like fillers on the calendar, but they work. They get people making. Same as an open mic night. You get up there because your name’s been called and your scrappy set is on the back of your hand, not because you’re in some fantasy Marvelous Mrs. Maisel land.

Give me a timer, a brief, and something to point at. And boom! I’m off like a CD on proactive briefs right after Cannes Lions.

And here’s the bit people don’t like to talk about. Even with the timer and the brief, the actual doing can be such a snooze fest. Monotonous. Sometimes the idea feels like it’s taking the scenic route through your brain and all you can do is keep driving. Others, you need an assault to the senses of noise (music, reality TV, podcasts, people talking at you, a barking dog) for your brain to go into survival mode, block it out and smash the final bit out.

Boredom’s part of it. Frustration’s part of it. Process (yawn) is part of it. Feeling like you live in Walter White’s Crawl Space is part of it.

The people making the work we love from elite TV episodes to ads to Edinburgh shows to the big weird Oscar bait-y things aren’t magically immune to that grind. They just keep showing up for it.

So, maybe, we stop chasing the lightning bolt and start setting the table for when it strikes. The blank canvas isn’t freedom, it's purgatory. Give me a corner to paint in, a clock ticking down, and maybe a slightly-too-competitive environment with at least three Virgos, and I’ll make something worth looking at.

And if all else fails, I’ll keep making stuff, whether it’s a pitch or a poem or a bit for the stage, until it stops feeling like pulling teeth and starts feeling like ”Maybes whose teeth I finally let grow,” as I wrote a recent poem. Is it weird to quote myself? Who cares.

Point is, your time starts now.