The Writer's Room - The 3 Simons

 

17th July 2021 (roughly)

Simon looked over at Simon who looked at Simon who looked back at Simon.

“What, so that’s it?” He said.

“Not completely,” said Simon.

“But it’s over right?”

“No, no, we’ll do something on Monday.”

“And then it’s over, right?”

“Only if you want it to be.”

“I’ve got other things to do man. Places to write, friends to be, ideas to meet. Can’t just work on this thing for the rest of my life. I mean come on, we’re meant to live with it, right? Just live with Covid. It becomes something that’s just there rather than anything remarkable.”

“It’s not gone away. It’s not going away either. We’re all just going to ignore it. That’s how we end up living with it, apparently. By closing our eyes and sticking our fingers in our ears and going la la la.”

“I just can’t keep writing this stuff. I mean I can, obviously I can, but I’d like to write something else.”

“So what have you got planned?”

There was a pause. 

“Not sure I want to tell you.”

“Share it with the group.”

“You might nick my ideas. Like you’ve been doing for the past year.”

“Oh come on, no one nicks any ideas round here, it’s all a hundred per cent original.”

Simon guffawed and coffee shot out his nose.

“Behave!” said Simon.

“To be fair you are just stealing ideas off other versions of yourself so I think we should let myself off.”

Simon blew his nose and regarded the coffee stains in the tissue.

“Honestly, I’d carry on if we’d been reviewed.”

“Watch it…” warned Simon.

“Just a mention…”

“Don’t…” warned the other Simon.

“By the BBC.”

The other two crowed their frustration. 

“Just a mention on the website. Or the Guardian or anywhere. That would have made a difference. Instead it’s just like nothing happened.”

“Loads happened,” said Simon. “Or have you not been reading this?”

“I have been reading this. I’ve even been writing it. It’s just no one else has been reading it. Much.”

“Forty eight thousand views,” said Simon. “That’s not nothing.”

“Monetised it with ads. You know how much money we’ve made so far? $1.91! I ask you.”

“Up by 1000 per cent on last month.”

“We weren’t advertising last month.”

“GoogleAds are never going to be as effective as….”

“As being mentioned by the BBC and riding the crest of the wave home. Honestly does that mean nothing to you?”

“Just writing it is reward enough.”

The other two Simons looked doubtful.

“So did he die?” asked Simon. “In the end?”

“Tell you later,” said Simon.

“Did any of them do anything of merit?” asked the other Simon.

“We’ll be back in the autumn,” said Simon. “You wait and see. Back because we’ll be back in lockdown and restrictions will apply and it’ll kick off again. Back because of a national crisis.”

“Yeah,” said Simon. “Cos I doubt it’ll be cos of public demand.”

25th June 2021 (roughly)

“So, is he dead?” asked Simon, coming back in with coffee.

“There he goes again,” said Simon.

“There I go what again?”

“Starting a whole piece with the word ‘so’, it’s sooooo irritating.”

“You’ve never had a problem with it before,” said Simon. “It signifies pre-existing knowledge whilst suggesting a questioning of and perhaps motion towards a different conclusion.”

“Oo ‘ark at ‘ee,” said Simon.

“Don’t do the funny voices,” said the third Simon. “Please. They don’t suit you.”

“Is he dead?” asked Simon again. “Yes or no?”

“You’ve only got two coffees?” queried Simon. “There are three of us.”

“Yes I’m sorry but only two people have bought us coffee so far. Make of that what you will, but there’s clearly a bunch of readers in America and Germany who want to read everything and give nothing back.”

“It’s all something for nothing online now, isn’t it?” said Simon. “Unless you’re an influencer and we’re not influencers.”

“We could try product placement,” suggested Simon. “Nice bit of story and name drop a brand in there. Could have done it with that motor mower - or the Krispies - everyone knows a good brand of Krispies, aren’t we missing something here?”

“Yeah,” said Simon, “We’re missing a marketing officer. We’re just creators and we just about have time to create, right? Anyway, no brand will want us, we can’t even get on the BBC.”

The other two Simons groaned - “Not again…” they chorused.

“Honestly, it’s the perfect story and what do they cover instead? Trees being cut in half to stop pigeon poo. If I wrote that no one would believe it.”

“If you wrote it it would be fiction,” pointed out Simon. “Ergo…”

“Simon over there tried killing off Fred Thimble with parrot poo,” noted Simon. “No one covered that.”

“He didn’t die though, did he?” said /that/ Simon.

“Which brings me back to my original question,” said coffee Simon. “Is he dead?”

“Well,” said Simon. “I did win the arm wrestle…”

“Only because you’ve got a bionic arm.”

“It’s not bionic, it’s focal dystonia.”

“So?”

“Not that word again…”

“It gives you an advantage.”

“It’s a repetitive strain injury. And you call it an advantage. I tell you sunshine, in ten years time my arm will be in such a permeant spasm it’ll look like I’m possessed by half a T-rex. Come back and tell me it’s an advantage then.”

“Will someone tell me if he’s dead or not?”

“Does it essentially matter? I mean, I think we’ve opened a few nice new avenues. Stuff that wouldn’t have happened before.”

“One of those statements is true,” said Simon, dryly.

“We do have the challenge of tying everything up again,” said Simon. “I mean, that was the point of Berkhamsted, right? Tie it all together and now…. well, Bentley’s not going to want to go back there is he? If you’re going to let him leave of course?”

“He can leave,” said Simon. “Just whether he walks or gets driven away in a box…”

“Point is we can still get everyone together,” said Simon brightly. “Just a question of how and when.”

“It’s going to end up looking trite,” said Simon. “Just an exercise in bringing it together rather than a nice flowing piece of literature.”

The other Simons looked at each other, eyebrows all raised. 

“‘Literature’,” said Simon, “Now, there’s something to aim for.”

“We can’t get everyone back together again,” said Simon. “It's not like it was going to be before.”

“What is?” threw in Simon.

There was a silence, as there always was. And the three Simons shared two coffees between themselves.

------------

16 June 2021 (roughly)

Simon Kent sat down with Simon Kent and Simon Kent. They all looked a bit tired, worn and frankly hot in the heat of near-mid-summer.

“So…” one of them said.

“So,” said another.

“Yes…” said the other Simon. 

“All that intricate plotting,” said Simon. “All those indications and hints and…”

“Ways to get Berkhamsted into the stories…” said another.

“And it comes to this.”

The fact of the matter was that after over three hundred episodes, way over a year and five episodes a week, Simon, Simon and Simon had pretty much got the final episodes taped and planned resulting in everything coming together rather satisfyingly in Berkhamsted. For one reason or another the characters would end up in this small town in England, at the railway station where the final twists and turns of their lives under lockdown would play out, before they could be released back into the wild and Simon (at least one of them) could go back to writing the novel he really felt he needed to do.

Unfortunately all of that was now in jeopardy (which would have been OK if that was the county next to Hertforshire but, you know…)

Interestingly enough the whole Berkhamsted thing had been brewing for a while. A year ago all the Simons were expecting Berkhamsted to happen in September. But that was then.

“Berkhamsted is cancelled,” said Simon.

“Cancelled or postponed?” challenged Simon.

“That’s a good question,” said Simon.

“We can either just find something that they can do for four weeks or smash our way through the whole Berkhamsted plot and straight out the other side. You know, like this was going to happen anyway so what the hell? We just do Berkhamsted and then do whatever happens after Berkhamsted, after it.”

“That’s all very well,” said Simon, “But there are restrictions. There are still going to be restrictions which means what we wanted to happen can’t physically happen anymore.”

“So write those things as well,” said Simon.

“Yeah, nice idea and everything but then we need an entire new bit of plot - I mean where are they all going to go?”

“Wherever they take themselves?” suggested Simon.

“But what’s that going to be?”

“So we have to figure it out, right?”

There was a sense in the writer’s room, an occasional sense that there were actually just a limited number of things characters could do in this ongoing soap world. Things could go well or badly. Their work could be triumphal or go to pot. They could get on well with their relationships or have a frustrating time. 

“But that’s just life, right?” pointed out Simon. “I mean, what else do people do?”

“Die,” said Simon, darkly from the other side of the room. The other Simons looked across at him slowly. 

“No one’s died,” said Simon. “I think that might be a mistake.”

“You’re always saying we should kill someone off,” said Simon, “But what then? We have a corpse, one less person to write about and we potentially annoy the readers because they might really really like that person.”

“And all we get to write about then is a funeral in lockdown,” said Simon. “Really depressing.”

“Yeah,” said the other Simon. “Get laughs out of a Covid funeral, see how that goes down”

“But this whole thing has been depressing,” protested Simon. “And you are trying to be funny - I assume? - and everything, and you’ve forgotten the fundamental thing about this whole pandemic. It’s a bloody tragedy. No wonder this blog hasn’t been picked up by The Guardian. Or the BBC. It’s not real enough. Not personal enough. You need more tragedy. More real life, hopelessness in the face of optimism. Everyone loves a tragedy. Especially when it’s true.”

“Told you we shouldn’t have invited him to write with us,” muttered one of the other Simons under his breath.

“We had to have him,” Simon reminded Simon, “ He’s the only one who can type fast enough.”

The Simons lapsed into silence for a moment.

“Is it just me or are those silences and pauses just for when we’re trying to think up the next thing? I’m just asking for a friend.”

“It’s to do with the rhythms of the prose,” said a Simon. “Have you learned nothing?”

“I was talking to Sandra the other day,” said Simon. “She says she wants to settle down and have kids.”

“Seriously?” said Simon. “Bit unlikely. Thought she was more keen on getting her career back. Or building it.”

“Can’t see the settling down thing myself,” said Simon. “But anyway we way have to make some kind of decision before Monday. So how are we going to settle it?”

“I’ll arm wrestle for the main plot,” said Simon.

“Ok,” said Simon. “One of you wins they get to create the main plot. Other one wins…”

“Everybody dies,” said Simon.

“May the best Simon win,” said Simon. “You really do look the same to me though, so this could get tricky.”