Back It Up, You Beautiful Wanka
- Rogues & Scoundrels
- Apr 17
- 5 min read
The first coffee was too weak.
The second, too strong.
The third? It never made it.
It was launched - full speed, full cup - clear off the table in a moment of keyboard rage and blind elbow choreography.
Hit the floor like a war cry.
Ceramic shattered. Ideas followed.
Somewhere beneath the wreckage of spilled caffeine and existential dread is a character monologue I swear was genius ten minutes ago.
Gone.
Probably better that way.
Too honest. Too revealing. Too… me.
Now the cursor blinks in a tone I can only describe as smug.
Mocking.
Empty.
And here we are again - between sleep and storytelling.
Between meltdown and maybe.
Welcome back.
Late Night Musings with Rogues and Scoundrels
I thought they were all dead. Finished.
All their desire, ambition and turmoil - over.
No, worse than that: they never really existed. Only inside me.
They all existed once, but purely as a series of thoughts inside a man who dared to provide them…
No, no, no - writer indulging.
Hand placed delicately over brow, brooding in the corner, oh me oh my - that simply didn’t happen.
Smash. Dead. Gone.
Paralysis. Internal bargaining with God — whoever’s listening to my brain frequency.
Help! Please, I’ll do whatever-
Mind racing to find a solution, inside a mind in denial, sinking deeper into a void that darkens with every second.
Falling, deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Death. Hope lost. Story over.
It feels slightly embarrassing to say it out loud, now that the moment has trickled down the drainpipe.
Soft water, gently rolling away in the grey. Safe and inside — no danger of being splashed now, getting wet, soaked or drenched.
Drenched?
It was a Tsunami.
Staring down a 50-foot wall of water in absolute disbelief.
Heart pounding so hard it popped my eyeballs with every beat - reverberating, pulsating wobble sacks that made my subwoofer jealous.
Disbelief and grief.
Dickhead twins that always arrive late, straight after old mate “Shock” - and they can piss, right all the way off.
My joy. My passion. My story. My people.
Gone.
Didn’t say goodbye.
No foul play.
Just... gone. Deleted.
My script - The Weaver - six episodes, solo written over the course of exactly one year, one-third left before version one completed…Simply no longer existed.
Anywhere.
On my desktop.
In a folder.
On my computer’s drive.
The fucking cloud.
Just vanished.
And I cried.
Not at first.
No - I railed, I bargained, I denied.
Then I wailed.
Keened, in fact.
I allowed my body to collapse in a heap on the floor - something sacred had been stolen.
Grief and loss were feasting - not just on the loss of my friends to the great nothing, but devouring something deeper, something elusive:
My identity.
I realised then - even inside the great, spinning, tumultuous vacuum we call thoughts - that my story, my characters, are a massive part of me.
Not just my created people.
But how I relate to myself.
How I view the world.
How I try to understand all the different versions of me.
I believe most writers hear their voices from deep within.
They will never be denied.
They will ride with you for decades - until you do something about their voice.
And her story had been one of these moments.
She had been with me for so long - until I finally succumbed to her relentless pleas.
She breathed.
And now she was gone.
It’s the reason we read, isn’t it?
Watch films.
To emote.
To build empathy for points of view that may or may not be our own.
To make meaning.
To understand...
Don’t be ridiculous.
You’re being absurd.
Rewrite it.
I can’t.
I would be chasing a memory - not their original feelings.
Their understandings frozen in time.
Their words would weigh less on the scale of authenticity.
Oh shut up. Listen to yourself.
“The scale of authenticity.”
Wanka.
There are more important issues than this.
Than you.
Than this story.
Than these characters…
Ah. And there we have it.
Who is anyone to judge another person’s grief?A beloved pet, a dear friend…
Or characters you’ve adored, laughed with, wept for.
Who, you may wonder?
You do.
I do.
We judge ourselves. Too harshly.
We are all here for but a moment.
Our thoughts and feelings - our grief — need to be experienced. Not judged.
Yet, anyone who has lived with a character for some time,
Written their facial expressions,
Formed backstories,
Wrestled with their intentions,
Watched their thoughts arrive in the middle of the action… knows.
The intimacy is shared. A two-way street.
They implore you.
Seduce you.
Beckon you.
And we - as writers - respond. Romanticise. Dramatise.
We watch their red hair flow in the breeze.
Loose curls fall on a naked shoulder.
His dimple deepens as he smirks - confident, yet his eyes betray his crippled heart.
That quiet need for approval.
His tell - a small crevice by the side of his mouth that spreads when he’s smitten with her.
The slighted man’s ambition that drives him blindly.
The old man’s breath - pungent, soaked in booze.
Her wink.
The way she rides.
The dandelions.
The tall grasses.
The laughter. The horror.
The missing.
The vanished.
The departed.
Grief besieges.
The recovery software?
No!
I cannot let my despair go.
My disbelief and ongoing pessimism will stay vigilant.
Soldiers! Guard the sanctuary!
Hope will not live here!
But… maybe?
Please?
Eight hours and some thick wads of cash later…
The arrival.
Not completely in one piece - but I’ll take it.
They live again.
The soft moments.
The brutal and humorous.
Not re-crafted.
Not re-imagined.
Not re-packaged.
No re’s.
Off with you!
Yet - could I have it all back?
And then, one last idea...
Life.
They live.
The entire world returned.
As harrowing as the experience was, it taught me something:
The life of a project, our creations, is not always about the end game.
Not always about a final product.
Or options to sell, to produce.
Sometimes, it’s just for you.
So you know that these characters will always live.
Their story will always remain.
Their words were formed in a moment of time - for a reason.
I truly believe more of us should write.
Journal. Blog. Author. Screenwrite.
Make sense of your time here.
Leave something for us to think about - another perspective, another way of seeing.
Or leave behind a thread that is absolutely relatable in a way that connects to us all.
I’ve often seen life as a series of collective sparks -
Different colours shooting from a communal wire.
Passing to the one in front.
Burning to continue.
To rumble forward.
Fading and dying…
Before the next one ignites.
Burns.
Leaps to the next.
But only if you back it up.
Back the mutha f$&&^% up -
To somewhere other than where it exists.
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