Are you watching this? You should be watching this. Seriously, watch this.

UNREAL

Everything about this show is wonderful. It’s a dramedy set behind-the-scenes of a The Bachelor-type show.

I love the world, I love the writing, I really, really love the characters and most especially I love Rachel, the protagonist. When was the last time you truly loved a female comedy protagonist? Or watched one who felt like a real, living breathing person, not a comedy caricature designed to deliver non-sequitur one-liners written by manboys? It’s been a while, right? Exactly. Even with the TV sitcoms that I love, I’ve grown to accept that the women mostly won’t feel like someone I’ve ever actually met (and dude, I have met a LOT of people).

Okay, don’t listen to me sitting here trashing female television characters, go watch UNREAL.

Just watched this again. Still amazing.

Someone just emailed asking what I meant when, over on Cup Of Jo, I said I needed to find ‘my voice’ in my 20s.

Okay. I didn’t mean finding the ability to speak and have an opinion and be me. It’s got nothing to do with confidence or realizing that what I said matters, any of that shit. (Very little of what I say matters. Fact.) When I say ‘voice’, I mean something far more literal. Voice is how you say what you say. It’s your personality – or the personality that you want to project – coming across in the words that you write.

I used to be an advertising copywriter. Writing something ‘from’ British Airways – a letter, an ad, a brochure – ‘sounds’ a particular way; that’s the brand personality. For British Airways: plain-spoken, intelligent, understated. Like an old friend who went on to become headmaster at a very good school. I also wrote things ‘from’ Virgin Atlantic. Virgin is – across all Virgin brands – flirty, tongue-in-cheek, something they call ‘Virginess’, the ‘cheeky chappie’ Branson personality. Virgin only sounds like Virgin, British Airways only sounds like British Airways. That’s called their tone of voice. It’s, arguably, the most important part of advertising, and it’s, unarguably, the part lots of brands get wrong, in their attempt to appeal to everyone.

So, from a writing-books-and-screenplays point of view, I just had to work out how to only sound like me, consistently. My favorite writers all have very distinctive tones of voice – from Helen Fielding to Hemingway, Nora Ephron to Dave Eggers. I didn’t aspire to sound like them – you can’t, really, it’s impossible, and anyway, I wanted to sound like me. But on the few occasions when I tried, early in my 20s, to sit down and write something just ‘from’ me, it always sounded false. So I felt blocked. Totally and utterly blocked. I didn’t spend much time worrying about it, mind you – I just went out and had fun with my friends instead.

But then.

After I had completed, I estimate, about 10,000 hours of copywriting (based on eight years of 250 days a year doing five hours of real writing a day, which is all anyone in advertising really does, if they say otherwise they are either lying or incompetent), something happened… Apparently, it’s called the ’10,000 Hour Rule’. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that ‘the key to achieving world class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours’. So, obviously, ‘world class expertise’ is, frankly, fucking pretentious silliness when it comes to copywriting, which is simply selling people shit they don’t need, but yes, something happened at that point. I just got it. I was able to write exactly what I wanted to say in exactly the way I wanted to say it, with no gap between my brain and the page. I could do it for any company, any brand, and suddenly, I could do it for myself. So for me, that is what writing is. Everything else is just spelling.

Once I could write, all I had to do was figure out a story worth telling. Over and over and over again…

x

PS If you want to read more about tone of voice for business, read this and this and this and most of all, this.

I’ve written about TV shows before, here and here and here and here and oh, loads of places. Just in case you need some new recommendations…

Scrotal Recall

I know! I know. The name made me roll my eyes too. But it’s SO FUNNY. It was on Channel 4 in the UK last year and now it’s on Netflix here in the US, so if you live somewhere else then just… find a HideMyAss-VPN type thing and voila. It’s about a guy who discovers he has chlamydia and has to tell all his ex-girlfriends, one by one, and relive their relationships. It’s fast and funny and British, and kind of the slightly-less-naughty-sister-wife to You’re The Worst, and you KNOW how I feel about that show. (Um, I love it.)

Younger

This is a comedy about a 40-year-old woman who has to pretend to be 26 in order to get a job in publishing, and it’s just lovely. Funny and emotional and gentle and clever. A warm bath of a comedy. It doesn’t ever go for the obvious laughs, and it’s just really, really good. I love Sutton Foster, the lead, she’s always thinking and just seems smart and lovable. And she really does look so damn good. Every time her knees come out, I shout “HOW ARE HER KNEES SO YOUNG? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? SHE IS OLDER THAN ME. MY KNEES LOOK LIKE AN OLD MAN’S CHIN” at the TV. (The TV doesn’t care.) It’s on Hulu. Go. Watch it.

The Comedians

Very, very, very funny. It’s a behind-the-scenes show about a sketch show starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad. It’s on FX.

I am mildly obsessed with the relationship between the insecure head writer Mitch and the terminally self-confident production assistant Esme. I am not sure why. It just really, really pleases me, and I think about it all the time. I can’t find a clip of the scene where Mitch is telling her that the writers are hungry and want pizza, but he’s too nice (or weak, whatever) to tell her directly to do it, and she’s like “pizza sounds ameeeeeehzing, I’m gluten free but like whatever you guys want is fine?”

I would do anything to make a shot-for-shot copy of this music video.

My friend Yoko, the founder of Mitera Collection, just got in touch to tell me that she’s doing a special offer on Mitera dresses for June!

Mitera Collection makes truly beautiful, responsibly-produced, brilliantly designed dresses for pregnant and breastfeeding women. You can read more about them here. If you are looking for something incredibly well-made and stylish that you can wear every day, to work and play and everything else as you grow and then shrink, these are the answer. Just use the code ’25%’.

As you guys may know, my lovely friend and kindred spirit Joanna is the uber-blogger behind CupOfJo. She asked me to write a post for her Beauty Uniform series. I was like FOR SUREBIES JOGO. (Well, no, I wasn’t really, I was like ‘Really? Me? Are you sure? You know it’s going to be REALLY STUPIDLY LONG if I write it, right? Like your readers will probably get bored and thirsty and leave. And all my photos have the babies in, literally all of them, it’s tragic, is that okay?’ and so on.) If you’re in the mood, you can read it here.

PS Edit: Joanna tells me everyone is obsessed with these sunglasses! They’re Sabre Runaways, and I LOVE them. Go forth and purchase, my friends.