Building a Career for 11 Months of the Year

In conversation with writer and director Jack MacGregor, this episode inspects how to build your creative practice and career sustainably as an emerging artist over 11 months of the year. What are key points in the calendar emerging practitioners should bookmark and how is wellbeing prioritised in times of rejection?  

Jack MacGregor is a writer and director based in the Highlands. Longlisted for the JMK Award and Discover Artist with National Theatre of Scotland, Jack’s writing-directing credits include ‘Nightlands’ and ‘Everything Under the Sun’. He is one of ten SSP Fellowship writers and has previously been awarded a Fringe First and Scottish Arts Club Fringe prize for ‘Best Scottish Show’. Jack has previously participated in projects 2020 Stories; The View From Here and COP26 Performance Commissions with Scottish Youth Theatre.  

This episode was recorded in May 2024 as part of our Dialogue programme.  

Chapters

• 2:27 What key events, opportunities or deadlines throughout the year do you bookmark?
• 7:30 Do you prefer the pressures of restriction or the free rein of a blank page?
• 11:19 What is your process while developing a new piece of work?
• 19:34 How do you look after yourself in times of rejection?
• 26:29 What should you consider when trying to balance your creative practice with everyday work, unpaid labour and other commitments?
• 33:08 When did you start to call yourself a writer?
• 37:23 Why is trusting yourself important when making your own work?

Transcript

Jamie: 0:17

Hello and welcome to the podcast series from Scottish Youth Theatre, where we explore the pinnacles, pitfalls and peripheries of establishing your practice as an emerging theater maker. I'm Jamie Steedman, and on today's episode, I'm in conversation with writer and director Jack McGregor, breaking down how you build a career for 11 months of the year, we will be covering things such as key points in the calendar an emerging artist, should look out for how to structure your creative practice alongside a day job, as well as how you prioritize yourself and your well being in times of rejection. Jack is based in the highlands, a long listed director for the JMK award and discover artist with National Theatre of Scotland. Jack is a writer and director of shows, including 'Nightlands' and'Everything Under The Sun'. He is one of 10 SSP fellowship writers and has previously been awarded a fringe first and Scottish Arts Club fringe prize for best Scottish show. His career so far has led to collaborations with organizations across the country, including Scottish Youth Theatre, British Council and Dogstar Theatre Company. Jack tells stories that adapt conflicts landscapes and the people in them, and he writes about the places and figures that seem peripheral, but their fates are central to our world today. Hi, Jack. How are you doing today?

Jack: 1:35

I'm doing great. I'm doing magic, actually, yeah. Thanks so much for having me here. It's so nice to be joined by you. Thanks very much for agreeing to take part in this.

Jamie: 1:44

It'll be really exciting to chat a bit more about your your work and your your process and your practice, especially having come through Scottish Youth Theater in a couple of projects and now doing so many great things across Scotland, I suppose when we first started talking a few weeks ago, it was kind of originally in relation to your successful run of everything under the sun that last year's Edinburgh Fringe, but we quickly realized that obviously it wasn't necessarily indicative of an artist's journey just to focus on that one month or the festival within an entire year, and that there are 11 other months that you need to plan exists and cater for so I suppose. I wanted to open this conversation with the question of, are there any key points in the calendar that you bookmark every year, be it specific funding opportunities or project deadlines or maybe other festival applications to share and or see work by others. Are there any kind of specific points in the year that you look out for?

Jack: 2:45

Well, Scotland is an interesting place to be a writer and to be in theater. We're strange in the fact that we used to have quite a lot of fixed points in a year where work could be presented pretty dependably, but a lot of these opportunities have vanished, especially since the pandemic. And in the last 20 years or so, there's been a decline of festivals that used to exist and and calls that used to exist at certain theaters and but there, you know, it still exists. Look at me. I've gone and I started on such a down note already. And I thought I was, you know, I thought I told myself before I came on, I was like, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna but okay, okay, some things I guess that I do look out for are some of the festivals that are still around, that are still accepting things like framework festival, you know, key spaces that are not only great platforms for getting work seen, but also they are meeting points for your peers, and I'm happy to talk about the sort of abstract science of networking, but I've always found it to be nice to just get a bunch of creative people in a room and try not to overthink it too much. Then there's other opportunities. There's scratch nights, things like patient stage, which I am hopeful will return. I know everyone's been a bit down on the whole page stage situation, and I think it's absolutely terrible. It's not been given more funding. But I think, you know, it's such, it's such a good concept that I think it's gonna, it's gonna come back. And there's other scratch nights going as well. There's, there's actually no shortage of Scratch nights, especially in a place like Glasgow and Edinburgh too, has got quite a few. But I see there's a lot of scratch nights flying around, which might not necessarily be the case in the rest of the country. Residencies are always great points of excitement amongst writers, things like the eye ash with the Travers. They are always a point of, Oh, are you going to do it? Are you going to do it? Oh, well, I might do it. You know, every time I meet a writer. We always have this kind of swap around. And it's funny because there's, there's quite a lot of writers and not that many things in a calendar that we all kind of bounce around going, Oh well, are you going to do something? Oh well, if you're going to do something, then it's over for me. You know, we're very it's, it's very funny. Sometimes when I'll meet other writers and we'll talk about it. And then it turns out, obviously, because it's no great secret, they put it online, yes, so everyone could find it, but, but your first instinct is to be like, Oh, God, that's such a good opportunity. Well, should I share that opportunity? It's like, yes, you should just share it, because chances are someone else is seeing it anyway. And then, of course, there's open calls for things like play pie and a pint, usually towards the end of the year, which I always find is a great kick to actually write a play at a really intensive way. Whenever the deadline for that rolls around, that's that's always good when someone else is there saying, we want this by this date, even though it's all on spec, you know, it's not paid. You're just doing it. There's something about the format that kind of it limits you, but it also within limitations. There's a lot of exciting things you could do, like trying to creatively reimagine the sort of three actors, 60 minutes, kind of thing, you know, trying to just continually reimagine that and imagine the kind of stories that you can tell with with this kind of resource. I think that's interesting. I like it when they put, when they put that kind of limitation on something and force you to get creative. So there are some things. But I mean, the caveat with all of this is that, you know, the people listening to this, the funding landscape is always going to be changing, and the things that I've just listed might not be running in the future, yeah, or if we might have new things running in the future. But the hard part is making your own calendar. You know, there are a few fixed things in the year, like creative Scotland deadlines for the touring fund, but most of the rest of the year is down to you, and it's about kind of identifying your own priorities and following what do I really want? And so you gotta go. You gotta recognize at some point you've got to stop and go right. What are my goals this year? And that could be something kind of meaningful, professional thing, if I want to commission with this theater, or it could be something much more like, I want to finish this story with these characters in this place, about this thing. And I often think that the second kind of goal there about I want to do this story kind of thing is so much more of a realizable goal. Because your goals should really be, try not to make them too much that you're in the power of someone else. You've got to be like, right. Okay, what do I have control of here? And if it is really about the stories you want to tell, then that goal will almost certainly end up being met, and in the process, maybe you'll excite someone and they'll give you some money, which would be lovely.

Jamie: 7:30

There's a really interesting... well, there's a few really interesting points there, especially when you're talking about open calls, how limitations, in some ways, breeds creativity. Do you feel that yourself in those circumstances where you're responding to a tick or brief or a restriction on how something can be written or produced or performed? Do you thrive in that pressure, rather than if you're just given the blank page to write whatever you want?

Jack: 7:57

Yeah. I mean, I mean, absolutely, I think I'm one of those people. If you hand me the blank piece of paper and say you can put literally, put literally anything on it, then I'll fall back on some stuff I've probably already thought of, rather than coming up with something brand new, something that fits already in a world. Like I've got all these projects that simmer away in the background that you know, that have been going on and on trying to find the right place for them. And those are quite inspiring, creative worlds. So they're usually the thing I'll be working on sort of a sort of ambient task that literally sits around in the background. You know, the novel that will take forever to write, or the play that keeps growing arms and legs and moving around. You're not quite sure. But I think when someone says, right, I actually only have this number of actors, it's going to be this kind of land. I love that. I really do. Actually, I think that that that really focuses me, obviously, that these kind of conversations, though, if you're if you're doing a commission with a theater that or with a company, those conversations are full of those limitations, they will always say to you, whereas I think it's a bit more difficult if you're writing for a theater on spec, and that, you know, you don't know what it is. It's a big theater, right? It may say you're writing for a big theater, and it could be anything. It could be as crazy as you like. But within that is the sort of anxiety paralysis of like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What am how big? How big? Is too big? And then the you know, you self impose restrictions yourself, you put them in, you build that world, and then you put your own fences around it, because you think, well, it's Scotland, and anything more than a cast of three is considered an ensemble, and there's not enough money. So I'll do this. I'll do that. Whereas if you go into it from an understanding that it's not really about money, it's not really it's actually about I have these limitations, and they could be to do with money, or they could just be to do with the style of the venue, but if you go into that with that mindset, you'll be more productive, and you'll create something that fits that venue and fits that audience and that space. So I do think that limitations can be very, very helpful, but not in the sense of things like working a minimum wage job, you know, things that are imposed on artists, economic barriers, geographic barriers, these are not helpful. Yes, there are some things that are helpful, which is to do with the work. You know, creatively, I'm saying this, this and this, yeah, I suppose it's like self set restrictions and or collaboratively set restrictions based on what you're working on, rather than systematically set in Absolutely. It's like you're, you're talking about a brief, essentially, yeah, you know when they, when they give you the brief, and you know the brief, and then that, that kind of rules out. Okay? So it can't be a cast of nine, it can't, you know, got a massive revolve in the set? Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'd love to do a play with a massive revolve in it. But, you know, we'll sort of take that out of the, out of the plan for now, you know. And then, yeah, so that that's, that's, I think that's what it is. It's about those agreed on

Jamie: 11:01

Yeah, it's a set of rules. That's a nice way of set of rules? thinking about it. I suppose restrictions has so many connotations, but rules and guidelines as to how you're going to commit to this piece of work, it kind of brings me on to my next question. I think you've kind of already answered it, but it'd be interesting to elaborate further when we're talking about this relation of time throughout the year, and how you know you're responding to residences, you're responding to open calls, you're responding to commissions or other work. Do you have a very kind of set way of working through when you're writing for these things? Do you do in a very rigid sense of research, writing, redrafting, getting feedback, more redrafting, then onto the production. Or does it very much depend on the piece of work or who you're working with, whether that be a theater or a company, another group of artists, and how that project develops quite organically. How do you see it?

Jack: 11:58

You know, I really wish I could say that I've got a patented method, and here it is, and just sign up to my course for £9.99, a month. But I don't. I actually, I have a very much a vibe-based development, which is that, you know, I wish I had more structure, but my brain doesn't seem to work like that. So I'll jump around a lot with my projects. What I do control is say, I've, you know, I've got an afternoon. I'll say, right this afternoon, I will accomplish this thing. I will, I will do this thing. I will work on this particular play, and I'll work accordingly. And as long as I'm a little further along in that project, I consider that a success. If a play is exciting, I will try to finish it as soon as possible. If a play is like, I have to write this down, or I will lose it. Or, you know, it'll lose the fire. It'll become just sort of into the ambient background. It'll fade away, into into the collection of the tasks that are in the drawer. I don't have a drawer. My desk doesn't have a drawer. But you know what they say? They say laser in the drawer. You know, that's a throwback to an earlier time when scripts were written on paper, actually having a drawer. I always thought that would be such a nightmare, going to go back to an office and open up the drawer and then go whole thing. I mean, you know, so I do finish, try to finish things like as quickly as possible. If the fire is there, and that could be like a month, or it could be like six months. Everything under the sun took three months to write, and it could take longer, and it can be shorter. And I switch between projects a lot, as I said, but there's some projects, as I said, the ambient to background radiation of projects, some of them have been there for like, three years, and some of them, like graft, has been there since 2019 which is coming up on five years now. Oh, my God. Oh no. Shouldn't have thought about that. And that's definitely the longest it's taken for a thing that I've written to actually have a life. It's either cannibalized into something else that's useful, like, I'll take bits of that and then turn it into something new, which I do often. I'm not, you know, if a story isn't working, but there's some good bits, I'll chuck them sort of into the the writing machine. And they'll, you know, it'll come out, you know, it'll, I'll get it right, and I'll use bits and ideas and characters and places, and I'll recycle that into a project that has legs. Because, I mean, so many times, like when I was starting out, when I graduated, I graduated in 2019, so many projects I wrote the age I graduated, you know, terrible. It's just terrible. You know, I needed to just realize that, you know, these were not whole plays like I remember during I mean, obviously everyone did weird things during the pandemic. The pandemic was a terrible time for the theater and for people and the world, and it was also just a time for me to make terrible theater. I did some atrocious stuff. I wrote atrocious theater. And I know I'm being quite harsh, but the truth is, you learn. That's how it is.

Jamie: 15:12

You learn is kind of the student condition, the student psychology, though, isn't it? Where, where, when you're in it, or maybe even just immediately afterwards, whether you're a writer, an artist, a designer, a theater maker, performer, whatever you're like, that is the best thing in the world. But then you give yourself a few months or a couple of years, and you've you've done more, you've learned more, you've developed in whatever way, and then you look back and you're like, oh, that that was really shocking, wasn't it? Yeah, but your tastes change. Other people tastes change, relation of that and the context of that worked in the world that changes as well. So everything's constantly in flux, which also makes it difficult to compare, yeah.

Jack: 15:57

I think the thing is about taste is so true, like you're, you know, I know it's pseudoscience. The thing about your brain develops so you're 25 or whatever thing I know it that's not, that's not actually accurate. I was reading something about this the other day, but like, it does feel like that. And I think back to when I graduated and the stuff I was working on. And, yeah, okay, I was harsh about it there. But like the seeds of it were interesting concepts, but I couldn't articulate it enough. I couldn't execute those things to the level they deserved to be. But some of the ideas deserve a second life, and maybe in the future, I'll go back and I'll I'll sort of play around with those concepts again. But I always think that structuring your process if you're relying on external deadlines only, you're going to get let down, and you're going to come to associate finishing a project with a sense of failure and rejection and also a feeling of general pointlessness. But if you set your own goals and you meet them, and you reward yourself, and then you find a better relationship with your work. You go, Well, I've achieved an artistic goal that I have wanted to do, but I think the important thing is your year and your life and your career shouldn't be just based around what other people are saying to you. You know you've got to form that better relationship with you and your work, because you know you're the only one who has to live in your head. You're the only one who has to live with your own work and your own internal process. So why wouldn't you try to cultivate something that's a bit better than just a sense of do it, and I do it, and I do it, and I do it for this particular date that means nothing to me, everything to an organization, and then in six months or whatever, they get back and say, Actually, no thanks, you know? And then you'd have to just take that. So, yeah, it the structure is, it's vibe based. You've got to do what works for you. I don't know if I'm jealous of it, but I do admire the people that are able to, like, go through life with, like, a Gantt chart and just, you know, color code their way through an existence of a creative process. You know, for me, the creative process happens when I'm waiting for the bus, or I'm making lunch, or I'm in the middle of a conversation and I immediately have a thought, and I have to excuse myself from the chat to go and write the thing down and be very rude, but that's it. And you can't plan when that happens. It just arrives. So I can't Gantt chart that in. I can't just say, Oh, this time I'm gonna be this is inspiration time. It doesn't work like that. So, yeah, I that's, sorry, that's such a rambling answer there.

Jamie: 18:27

No No, and I think that that, well, I'm not going to talk for all artists, but it's so difficult to kind of quantify the creative inspiration and the thought development, and how, how do you pinpoint that, especially when you come to funding applications where you're like, Okay, this is a month of thinking time, because it doesn't necessarily work like that. You can't quantify it in that way. So when you're saying you stand at the bus, you're making lunch, whatever, that's when sparks of inspiration and creativity comes. So then how do you align that to a spreadsheet that's and for a lot of people, that that feels like a very unnatural process. So it's, it's really interesting to hear that in those terms, I suppose you were mentioning the undesirable taste of rejection, you know, and how you can't necessarily contextualize your work in relation to just that yes or no whenever you've submitted it somewhere, because there's so many other external factors that you need to associate there. Rather than just being like I wrote this piece of work, it was rejected. So therefore it's bad. It's not necessarily as simple as that. But I wanted to ask, how do you look after yourself in moments like those? Do you find that if you're not successful with an application. Do you use that? As you know you were talking about, if the fire is there, then you continue rating. Does that add more fire? Or is that a point of turn and change?

Jack: 19:50

Well, it depends on the depends on everything, like the opportunity, the the feedback you get. Sometimes it can pour a big bucket of cold water all over the fire. And you need to, kind of just, sort of, you need to, you need time to, you need time to heal from it. You need to, when you hear the note, it can be a bit crushing sometimes, and but you need to ask for feedback first and all, first of all, and you know, there's a terrible thing. Sometimes, for a lot of things, they'll be like, Oh, well, you know, we don't give feedback, in which case, I mean, I think, I think people should be giving feedback for stuff, you know, you're asking people to come, you know, and sort of bear their creative talent to you. Giving feedback is really important. If you do get the feedback, you don't actually have to agree with it, but you have to be you should be nice, and you should thank them for that. In turn. Think about the feedback. Really. Think about it. Take it away. Sit with it. Think about it. Read it. Read it again. Look at your work. Reread what you've written. You can disagree with it legitimately, if it reflects a different set of artistic principles than the stuff like, if you're writing it because of something that's really important to you, and someone turns around and says something that reveals their own biases, their own viewpoint. Well, you can just, you could just take that or leave it. It's their opinion, just as it's your opinion in the work. So just because you get a piece of feedback doesn't mean you need to necessarily agree. To necessarily agree with it, but you do need to consider it and also remember that it's not always. This is going to sound so weird, but it's not always about you. It's often about the organization, because every organization has a sort of set of invisible priorities that they don't write on the job application or the the opportunity, like they have kind of a vague idea a lot of the time, what what they want, roughly, and your idea may or may not align with that. And sometimes they'll surprise you, and they'll surprise themselves, and they'll see something that genuinely is like, well, this wasn't what I was looking for, but it sounds really exciting. Let's do it. But a lot of the time, again, the sort of invisible, sort of set of rules that you know organizations have will mean that, you know your chances are pretty low anyway, and then you throw that in, it was never going to be you, and that's okay. You've just got to know the organization. I think if you do know that organization, you'll have a better chance. Know what their work looks like, know what their audiences are like, turn up and see the work that's always good. You don't just want to be sending things out completely, you know, blindly. You know, I have to say that one of the big regrets in my life so far, of my professional career is not knowing them more. Every week during the pandemic, I would be part of Ollie Emmanuel's Play reading group. Of course, devastating, you know, to lose Ollie last year. But one of the things that he kept saying, and it's something that I always tell other people, and is so important, is about, like, the idea that an opportunity comes up and you just have to say, you have to apply for it. And he was a big believer in like, Yeah, but why? Yeah, but why do you have to apply for it? Yeah, but are you just applying for it just because? Or do you actually have something to say? Do you actually have something? And I always think that that's first of all, that's actually made me a more more successful at writing applications, because now I only write in for the stuff that I actually really care about the stuff that I actually have something for. Because when I graduated, you know, I would just apply for everything. I would just everything, and I would get so many rejections. Every artist has, like, a ratio of yeses to nos and stuff. And this is the thing. I mean, I remember going to this brilliant seminar that Emma ruse hosted once, and she showed this big like chart of like, you know, application sent and rejections listed and successes listed, and there was, like a RS ratio. And she said something about having a ratio. I think it was 10 to one is considered like a sort of a successful ratio, a good ratio. For every 10 no's, you'll get one yes or something like that. Anyway, I haven't actually calculated what my ratio is, but I think it's somewhere in that area. And I always feel that, I think that I've gotten better at getting a better ratio of yeses to nos. When I decided that I was only going to apply for the things that I really felt were right for me. And then, of course, when you have a rejection and in anything, you need to have kindness for yourself. But I'm terrible at that, very critical of myself. I always give this advice to people and never follow it myself. This is just another one of these examples. Yeah, so it's very easy to give out that advice and very hard to follow it. And I think there's all sorts of cultural and, you know, class reasons all this, it gets messy. It's that's where we venture into the area of psychology, which I am, I am not trained in, but my biggest piece of advice is just, if you repeat that enough, eventually you'll do it yourself. So, kindness, kindness, be kind to yourself. Um. Be proportional in your effort. If they're like, Oh, we're gonna give you like 200 quid or something, you know, they're not gonna give you close to, like a Commission's rate or anything. They're not gonna give you anything worth the effort. And yet you pour like, a week's worth of work into that application, no, yeah, be proportional in what you're applying for.

Jamie: 25:18

It's really interesting to hear about Ollie Emmanuel's prompt that you need to ask yourself, Yeah, but why? And making sure that it's something that you are passionate about and care about, if because that is naturally, then whether you can see it or not, that is naturally going to come through in the application that you write as well, absolutely, because you know if it's something that you're doing halfheartedly or you don't really care about you, you drop the money or the opportunity or whatever, see it in the language.

Jack: 25:48

Yeah, exactly. It just jumps out when you're writing something that you don't entirely believe. But I've always found it to be very hard to fake that. So yeah, I always think that's it. That's one of the best pieces of advice I ever got for applications.

Jamie: 26:02

And that neatly brings me on to another question. You know, times are horrible right now. The cost of living crisis is impacting everyone greatly, and we're obviously accelerating through a massive funding crisis in the arts right now, so many organizations are folding left, right and center, and independent artists are finding it tougher and tougher to, like you say, fund their own work and their own time that they're putting into things. So I suppose I wanted to ask you a wee bit about your your relationship as you know an early career artist, and there you were touching a wee bit on that proportion of how much time you're spending on an application, as well as making your own work. How do you kind of balance these things in your life? Yeah, I always try to get the boring stuff out of the way first, the emails, all that, the admin that has to go first, you know, get that, get that done. And then if that pops up during my period when I'm on something creative, it can wait, you know, that can wait. And one thing that I've really accepted in the last sort of few months is that emails don't need to be answered as soon as I get them, and because I used to do this thing where I used to just be incredibly fast on my email replies, and I've decided I can leave a day or so before I get back, like, if I if there's something on and I'm worried, or if I'm working on something, or even If, just like, I am out of my house and I, you know, I don't have time right now to, you know, I still want to sit on my phone and do the reply, but your first part of your question is so much more complicated, because, you know, as individual artists, I always think, oh, gosh, where did I hear this? I saw this on Instagram or something was about, is this real? About artists changing the world? And it's about how, actually, artists are kind of the last people you should ask to be changing the world, because we're kind of the last resort. You know, policy makers can change the world. You know, people in positions and institutions of power, political power, economic power. Those people can change the world like nothing, but artists, actually, all we can do is try to sort of nudge the needle one way or another. So I worked for the first part of my life in shops, you know, just lots and lots of retail work, and that was awful monotonous. And it sucked. It sucked. It just totally sucked. There was nothing about it that kindled some creative fire in me. Nothing about it actually the opposite. But I remember I used to like work on apps and write little bits during my shift. I remember I would go to the stock room and hide and, you know, if I had an idea, I would just write it down there for a minute and pretend I was doing something else. Because this is the thing, when you're in a job that's like a minimum wage job, every minute of your time is policed, and then you go and you go and, you know, because I worked, I worked at a university, and when I was lecturing, you know, I had two hours where I could teach whatever I wanted. No one would come in and go just, just checking to see you're doing your job, right? No, I was trusted and I was getting paid more. So I always think it's funny that you're working for so little, and yet every second of your time in that kind of job is policed. Someone's always looking over your shoulder, someone's always telling you off and getting on your case. And if you're a writer, oh my god, what a position of privilege it is to write and be paid to write. That is for me. I mean, this is for me. I mean, this is the thing that's the thing that motivates me the most, is that I can get away from this thing and actually live my dream. And when I was working in those awful jobs, the idea that I could write and that's all I would have to do, was such a dream compared to the reality I was living. But I remember, I would finish, I finished the shift, and I I would feel relieved, immensely relieved, and I was tired, but I knew I could do something that I really wanted to like, something I was dreaming about and thinking about all the way through the day. I could go and I could give some time to it, but I also knew that I could only do that for a little bit before I had to rest. So, you know. The way it changes you you're living like an NPC, you know, you're living like a like in a video game, you know, you're living like a robot. I thought, actually, that is what helped me get through the shifts. I would like disassociate really hard and pretend I wasn't really in my body, and I would just work and do all the normal, boring tasks. But that's really hard, your mental health gets really hammered. But I knew that when I got to write back then, I knew I was doing something important. You know, makes me sound very grand to say that it wasn't important for the world, but it was important for me that I could do that, and that I could find something even in the even in the hard times, I could find that now I'm in a position where I'm able to do this as my full time thing for now, but the fear motivates me. That's such a bad thing to say, but the fear of going back to it is actually like that's at my door that keeps me going, which isn't a great thing to be motivated by. But, and I would love to not have the fear, but the fear is there, and so I have to live with it in some way. aBut if that fear wasn't there, is there going to be a different fear, or a different form of something that will be motivating you.

Jack: 31:10

Absolutely! And it's not, not necessarily like a positive motivation. I feel like there's always some sort of negative thing that absolutely because, you know, millions of years ago, we all lived in the Savannah, and we were all afraid of, like, things that could happen, oh my gosh, I could be eaten by a lion, you know, and and I could, I could die if the weather gets too cold, or what, if I don't have enough food. And that's just a holdover from there. Like, the reason our brain just keeps inventing all this stuff is because we're always gonna find something. I mean, that's like, people always are so, like, baffled when a person is, like, extremely rich and well off, and, yeah, they're still miserable, and it's like, well, it's not really that inexplicable, because, yeah, the brain always will come up with something. But right now to the fear is like, Oh, what if you have to go back to that thing you did before? What have you got to go back?

Jamie: 32:00

Um, I've heard in both cases where, if someone's working a really kind of medial, yeah, like you say, whether it's retail, hospitality, whatever job, while they're also an artist, it can go, I think, one of two ways. One, what you were explaining, where it almost crushes a kind of sense of creativity, and you don't really know where you're going, or it's quite the opposite, where you're like, okay, I can just completely tune out. And therefore, anytime other than that, you're then able to kind of fuel your creativity in a way I think, I think it kind of comes in, yeah.

Jack: 32:37

The big takeaway of that is it doesn't help in the long run, it actually it hurts more than it helps. There are there are flashes of brilliant inspiration energy, but the nature of capitalism is it robs you of your time, and that's time that you could use to to make things and to do all that. But it's the same everywhere in the world, and it's the same for every profession and industry, and everyone out there who has a dream and can't do it because their time has been taken from them, and that's... yeah.

Jamie: 33:09

With that, what I wanted to ask was, was there a definitive point that you started to call yourself an artist or a writer? You know? Was it one of these days that you were working in the shop behind the till, or was it like when you were in uni and you realized one day, no, I am a writer. I'm not just a student studying this. I am a writer. Or, has it come slightly later, after, you know, you've had your first commission or done something else that's felt kind of notable, and you're it's actually in your journey.

Jack: 33:37

You know, it's actually only happened in the last like year, you know, it's been that late, and that sucks to be honest, because I should have been saying it way earlier, but I struggle with it a lot, because when you're growing up, you know, you don't know anyone who works in the arts industry. You don't know anyone who works in the arts. And you get a lot of the idea of that the arts is just a it's just a lark, it's just a mess about and it's not really a job, but it's like, I don't know, it's something that you get raised with in some cases. And you know, I think it's also because, you know, I'm not down to sight, I'm not I'm not hauling cement, I'm not doing this stuff. I don't have calluses on my hands. And I think to myself, does this mean my labor is worth less? And I know the rational part of my brain goes, well, no, because society needs artists for all these reasons. XYZ, you know, that's me. I circulated forever. And people want stories, you know, all the way through the pandemic, everyone says, you know, all that stuff. And people now, they'll turn on the TV, they'll watch something, you know, but it's just the way it is. And as I said, I put that fear of mine, that that I'm only a guest in this world, and I still want to feel that my artistry and my art is it belongs there as much as anyone else. And I know it's going to come, it's going to come. And it's funny, this is the case. Whenever some people ask me this question, and they were looking for themselves. I say, Well, do you do the thing? Do you? Do you write? Do you write stories? Well, you are a writer. Do you make, like, little films on your phone, on your like, tiktoks, or whatever, you know? Do you do you make? Well, you're a filmmaker. Do you tell stories to your friends in the pub and do the voices when you're doing the story? Well, then you're an actor already. You're already doing the thing. So why? Why wait? The one thing I really don't believe is that you should wait for someone else to say you are now a writer, you are now an actor. You are now, you know, I really disagree with that. You need to be the one to make that decision. And often will, you know, again, it's one of those things. I'm very, very happy to dish out this thing of well, you should just if you're doing the thing, then you are the thing. But inside, it's harder to to believe that. But I have actually now started saying to people and feeling it and believing it more myself. I do believe it more myself in the past year or so. And it happened. It happened when I was doing my research on everything under the sun, and I was going to bases filled with military personnel and interviewing these people. And of course, when you're this is one of the great things about being a writer. And if you call yourself a writer, people open up to you. They want to talk to you. And they they sort of open up their sort of layer of defense a little bit, you know, people want to be asked about their lives. And I always think like whenever I'm working, like when I did the residency with the prison, or when I did, you know, work on everything under the sun with soldiers, they want to be asked things. And also with my fellowship right now, talking to people all over the north of Scotland, with my Scottish society, a playwrights project, people are flattered. And if you're a writer, they want to open up. They want to share. So that's been a big reason why I've started saying I am a writer, actually, is because actually people trust you more they want to share. That that's exactly one of the words I just wrote down. Actually, there's essences of that belief and acceptance in yourself and your own artistry, that to call yourself an artist, but also that sense of trust, and I think that's trust in yourself, that's trust from a sector, but that's also trust from other people and what you're doing. And I think that's a really, a really kind of poignant mark to think about, about how your work is trusted and how you trust your work. You know having that trust with yourself is important. I think you need to find people you can trust in the industry, collaborators that you want to work with. Make sure those are meaningful, and trust yourself when an opportunity isn't necessarily right. If you are going to do a thing like the fringe, don't pour all your money into it. You won't get it back. You know, don't work for free. Don't do this where you allow yourself to be exploited in a system that won't, won't thank you for it. And you know, awards and stuff come along, and there are markers of recognition more than talent, and there are 1000s and 1000s of artists in this country, and there should be jobs and awards, you know, for a lot of them, for, I mean, there should be jobs for all of them, and awards for a lot of them. But you need to, you need to follow your instincts. You need to tell authentic stories that you are interested in. Don't triangulate what someone else is interested in, or sort of, you know, work to the expectation of, well, they'll, they'll like this. So, you know, no, no, no. Trust yourself. Trust your stories stay true to what motivates you and interests you, because there's someone else in the world who is also interested in that, and your work just needs to find that person. So that's, that's all I had to say on the app on topic of trust. I guess that's that's brilliant trust your stories, and that someone else out there also wants to hear that story

Jamie: 38:48

That's, yeah, that's great Jack. Thank you very much him. for joining us today. It's been an absolute joy.

Jack: 38:54

Yeah, it's been a laugh, hasn't it?

Jamie: 38:56

You've shared so many incredible insights into to how you work, and also advice you would give other people as well, I think, is, I think it's brilliant to hear what you're up to right now, and also how, how you structure that, and how, yeah, what you say, it doesn't necessarily always come down to Gantt charts and color coding your way through life.

Jack: 39:16

Yeah, there's more. There's the, you know, this is the type A and type B person. There's, room in the world for both. So just keep that in mind. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I'm really, really grateful that SYT has given me the opportunity once again. SYT has been a big part of my life. Thank you.

Jamie: 39:34

Thanks, Jack. Thanks very much for speaking with us again.

Jack: 39:37

No worries.