Gavin Strawhan: how to write and eat

In 2024, after my first novel was published and I was absorbed in a masters in creative writing, friends and ex-colleagues would ask if I’d left television for good. My standard reply was, I think television has left me. Okay, not a terrifically funny joke, but Freud wrote a whole book about humour without ever raising a giggle, so bear with me. There’s an old comedy writer formula to the effect that ‘truth plus pain equals comedy’.

To unpack my feeble joke, the ‘truth’: shortly after Covid (when I was writing that first novel), I stopped getting offers of work. Any offers. To put that in context, for the previous 35 years I’d worked consistently here and overseas as a screenwriter, showrunner, executive producer and script editor.

It wasn’t all smooth financial sailing. Scriptwriting, at least for me, was strangely seasonal, due in part to the NZ On Air funding model. Every year around October, the work dried up. It became a running joke between me and my accountant. I’d say, that’s it, I’m a fraud, I’ve been found out. But my writing partner and I would toss around ideas, pitch to producers and broadcasters, we’d get a call, and would be busy, busy until the next year, when the anxiety would start all over. The freelancer’s lot, but something always turned up.

Until it didn’t, around the time I got a SuperGold card. But because I’d been reasonably successful – oh, double-edged sword – it meant I didn’t have other strings to my bow. In my twenties, I’d been involved in community circus. Elderly clown, anyone? I’ve never been a teacher or worked in hospo; never had a handy back-up skill for tough times. So, that’s the ‘truth’ part of the equation. My services were no longer required. On to the pain. 

Unlike the lonely pursuit of the novelist, television writing is collaborative. Over the years I’ve worked with many writers and directors, and created projects employing hundreds of actors and crew. I’ve stayed in touch with a precious few, some my closest friends. But the nature of the telly beast is that you work intensely on a project for a few months, share incredible highs and lows, then move on. Your social life is inseparable from the job.

And here’s where the pain kicks in. I ask myself, did the work stop because I’m suddenly irrelevant? Is it simple ageism, or am I not a very nice person? The Buddha said we are each the dwelling place of our own old age, so perhaps this is the house I’ve constructed for myself.

There is also financial pain. I was incredibly fortunate when my first book won the Allen & Unwin fiction prize. I believe I have a good deal with my publisher, but television and books are from different financial planets. In the two-plus years since The Call was published, I’ve earned less from it than I would from a single, one-hour television script. It took me roughly four years to write the two novels I’ve had published; it used to take three weeks to write one hour of television. But if I hadn’t managed to pivot into a late-life career change, if my publisher hadn’t continued to be so supportive, it would be much harder to get up in the mornings.

I was chatting recently to an established, successful (younger) poet and novelist, whose last book was a real success, great reviews, excellent sales. He’s never been more broke in his life. There used to be a living in teaching writing, he said, but that’s dried up too, with the cost of living, latest government cuts, indifference to the arts, etcetera. Life was too short to waste it filling out unsuccessful grant applications to Creative New Zealand. The only glimmer of hope was that his book had been optioned. If it could only be made into a film or TV series.

I hate to finish on a negative note, so here’s a suggestion. Ireland recently introduced a living wage for credited artists. That will probably never happen here, the user-pays neo-con myth is too entrenched. What we do have is New Zealand Superannuation. It’s nowhere near a living wage, but without those fortnightly deposits, I don’t know what I’d eat (and occasionally drink) while I’m spending another two increasingly precious years on my next book.

Perhaps that’s our funding model: sacrifice the first 65 years gathering experiences and stories and topping up KiwiSaver, to spend the final stretch creating to our hearts’ content.

*Footnote: I received a call last week from a German producer. He asked if I’d be interested in a television project. Part of me wanted to say, I’ve left television. The sensible part said yes.