You’re On Your Own

Field Notes from a Sitcom Writer #2

Ext. Caffe Nero. Day. Monday 23^rd Feb 2026. 8.07am

When I lived in London and my children were much smaller, I used to work in a nearby Starbucks. There was some confusion amongst my children around whether I worked ‘in’, ‘at’ or ‘for’ Starbucks. If I was there all morning and some afternoons, surely I worked there?

Yes. I was working while I was there. But I did not work there. My children, like many, were trying to make sense of what their father did for a living. At the time I wasn’t just writing sitcoms, but also working on some CBeebies shows, such as Mr Bloom’s Nursery and Gigglebiz. This brought me briefly into contact with the mighty Justin Fletcher, worshipped as a god in many households, mainly as his alter-ego, Mr Tumble. I digress.

I work in cafés to avoid digressions. But this journal of the sitcom I am writing is already some kind of digression. I’m tapping out this entry into my field notes to explain why I’m in Caffe Nero.

Here’s what I am not doing: sitting around drinking coffee waiting for inspiration to strike. If I only wrote when I felt like it, I would have starved to death by now. Or gotten an actual job in Starbucks. Actually, that’s not true. My dream ‘fall back’ job is being a delivery driver, where I get to drive and listen to podcasts all day. I like doing both of those things.

The other thing I like doing is drinking coffee. I do have a large americano next to me. I’m hoping for some inspiration, but that’s something I’ve learned not to rely on. Sometimes you are inspired, writing something that you hadn’t expected. But that only tends to happen in the middle of actually working.

Being a professional writer is nothing like the archetypal scene in a movie which is, ironically, written by a professional writer. You know the scene: the frustrated writer who can’t find an ending to his movie or novel is in the middle of some distracting activity when someone says something, and it all becomes clear. He then drops everything, charges off to his typewriter and begins typing until it is done, normally at first light. The deadline has been hit. The manuscript is handed over and everyone is thrilled.

The closest I get to that is being in the middle of washing up, or driving to a meeting or gig, or out on a walk, and I have an idea that I realise I should note down. I tend to make a note in my Apple Notes app, often using Siri. It’s about the only thing Siri can actually do. It is oddly useless at virtually everything else. But let’s not get distracted by Apple, or talk about the number of Apple products I’ve bought in my life.

Oh, okay, let’s talk about Apple products briefly, since we’re talking about the life of a freelance writer. I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro (2020, 2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5). I’m listening to Timecop1983 on Apple Music via my iPhone SE. I’ve not attached my MacBook to the Wi-fi so I’m not tempted to check my email or look at Facebook or LinkedIn. The reason I use Mac products is two-fold. Okay, three-fold.

Daddy Cool

Firstly, Apple is still cool. I think that sheen is starting to fade as a new generation don’t care and associate Apple with Gen X or Millennials. Gen Z have their own brands. For me, as a kid, it was Sony. Not Apple. My prized possession in my late teens was my Sony hi-fi. I loved it. I still fondly remember it, especially when it occurs to me that I no longer own a CD player. I was reminded of this the other day when my youngest daughter who is now ‘into music’ just bought CDs. How will she play them? In the car? The DVD player in the living room?

But, broadly speaking, Apple is cool. And here I am, sitting in Caffe Nero, making a living tapping away on a MacBook, with my iPhone, listening to Apple Music on AirPods. There’s an iPad in my bag.

This fits into the desirable life. It’s probably why you’re reading this book about writing sitcoms. You are fascinated by the life of a writer. Many people want to be writers. A Guardian poll discovered that the job most people wanted was ‘novelist’.

But do those people actually want to go to the bother of writing a novel? Or do they just want to be a novelist? Or be the sort of person that writes novels? It feels like it’s all about aspirational lifestyles. Maybe you dream of having lunch with your literary agent in a cafe in Primrose Hill or Hampstead. (Mine lives in Highgate.) Cool, right?

Here’s the thing: I’m not interested in cool. I’m a fifty-year old man and father of two. And I’m a type 8 Enneagram which means I really don’t want to be controlled by any kind of mainstream narrative. (We will get to Enneagrams in a later chapter). And here’s the clincher: I’m a conservative evangelical Christian. Cool is simply not an option in my world. I do not use Apple products to look cool. That ship sailed years ago.

Running Time

So here’s the second reason I use Apple products: I’m typing this field note on a MacBook that is now six years old. Apart from the odd beachball moment using Logic Pro, it runs about as well as the day I bought it. I’m also still running a MacBook from 2015 that is admittedly slower, but I only use it for one thing: writing stuff about the Bible first thing in the morning (see note above). It still works okay.

The PC equivalents really aren’t much use beyond 2-3 years. I had to buy my kids Surface Tablets for school. I was amazed at how expensive they were, and what utter garbage they are. Plus they are fiddly – and I don’t know how to figure them out when helping my kids do stuff. They have to figure it out for themselves, which is a good life lesson.

Time is Money

This takes me to my third reason for paying a premium for Apple products. Steve Jobs had a mantra for Apple products: “It just works”. Yeah. They do. Out of the box. Turn them on. Follow the instructions. In fact, they’re so simple, they barely need instructions. It works. It costs more, sure. But only a bit. And I don’t have time to wrestle with operating systems and little glitches.

Steve Jobs sounds like a nightmare, by the way. I’m slogging through his official biography by Walter Isaacson. I highly recommend listening to comedian Bill Burr riff on how Jobs got way too much credit for merely telling people what to invent. But Jobs understood one thing: form and function. Okay, two things. But they work as one.

This is important as I don’t have time to waste fixing IT problems. If you have ‘a job’ – you turn up for 40+ hours for a monthly salary and ask permission to go on holiday – you probably have an IT department. If you are an employee and your laptop doesn’t work, that’s your employer’s problem, not yours. Someone needs to fix it.

I don’t have an employer. I have to fix my own IT problems. It’s my own time I’m wasting. Time spent wrangling Windows 11 or Microsoft Teams (which I hate with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns) is time lost. It’s time I could have spent writing, creating and earning money. Time is money. I don’t have money to waste. Or time.

Photo by Revendo on Unsplash

Except, I do have time to waste. No-one is checking up on me. I don’t have an employer to fix my laptop. But I also don’t have an employer who can stop me from bunking off in the afternoon to go for a long walk. Or stop me from launching another ill-advised podcast, or telling me how many episodes I can do.

That’s the problem. I don’t have a job. Writing isn’t a job. Being a novelist isn’t a job. It’s not even a career. It is a series of tasks, each of which you have to decide to do. And other tasks you have to decide not to do. Each task is a decision. No-one is checking up on you.

At 7.25am this morning, I decided I’d go to Caffe Nero after I dropped my kids at school. I informed my wife of this. And here I am, writing a book about writing a sitcom. Can you get any more self-indulgent than that?

But the reality is that I have to earn a living. And I have to do it on my own. I’m writing this sitcom, The Lab, for literally no money. And this book too. No-one has asked me to do either. Publishers don’t pay advances you can live on. The days of generous TV development budgets have gone. (I may rant about this in a future field note). I don’t’ have producers falling over themselves to work with me. Channels and streamers are not queuing up to commission my show. I’ve decided to do this thing: to write a script and stage a table-reading with the best actors I can muster.

What happens if I don’t do that?

Nothing.

And yet the stakes are really high. I love situation comedy. I grew up watching it. I’ve spent 25 years getting good at writing it. This is what I want to do more than anything else. It means the world to me. And yet every single step I take along this road is a decision to continue and head towards this goal that may no longer be a real place. Or it might be like a place I’ve been before, but a mirage.

I guess we’ll find out. But I have at least written about 1500 words in an hour. It’s now 9.14am on Monday morning, so I should probably stop writing about the thing I’m going to write and get to work on the thing itself.

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