Welcome to the first episode of the Follow Your Curiosity podcast! I’m thrilled to be starting off with two fabulous—and very different—interviews.
First up is Robert Shearman, author of numerous books and dramatic pieces for stage, TV, and radio. I met Rob at Regeneration Who in March and we talked about everything from how he started writing to the process of turning a Doctor Who audio play written very much for adults into a television episode half the original length that an 8-year-old could follow, and more. (Warning: spoilers within for “Dalek” and “The Chimes of Midnight”!)
Rob also has some great insights into how writing works for him, and some others you’ll have heard of, like Neil Gaiman and the late, great Douglas Adams.
The best thing ever to ask yourself as a writer: You keep on hitting this voice saying to you, “Well, you can’t do that,” and say, “Why not?”
Robert Shearman
Show Links:
More about Robert Shearman:
Follow Rob on Twitter: @shearmanrobert or on Facebook
Subscribe
You can subscribe to Follow Your Curiosity on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to listen to others here—and don’t forget to tell your friends!
Join the conversation!
Be sure to join me on Instagram to discuss this episode, find prompts and challenges, and get your creative life back on track!
Transcript
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Hello, and welcome to Follow Your Curiosity, where we explore the ups and downs of the creative process and how to keep it moving. I’m your host, Nancy Norbeck. I am a writer, singer, improv comedy newbie, science fiction geek, and creativity coach who loves helping right brained folks get unstuck. I am so excited to be coming to you with interviews and coaching calls to show you the depth and breadth both of creative pursuits and creative people to give you some insight into their experiences, and to inspire you. My guest today is a writer whose work is well known to science fiction and horror fans. Robert Shearman is prolific, having written fiction as well as drama for stage, radio, and television. His work has won awards including the World Fantasy Award and the World Drama Trust Award. His contribution to the revived Doctor Who series, the episode Dalek, which is how I first encountered his work, was nominated for a Hugo Award.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:00]:
I met Rob at Regeneration Who, and he graciously agreed to talk to me for this podcast. Fair warning. While Dalek and The Chimes of Midnight, two of Rob’s best loved pieces for Doctor Who, are over a decade old, I want to be sure you know that this interview does include spoilers. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Rob Shearman.
Robert Shearman [00:01:19]:
Hello, Nancy. Hello, Rob. Hello.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:23]:
So how did you start writing?
Robert Shearman [00:01:26]:
I always I think I always wanted to write. I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t an ambition, but the reality of it, I think, was that I was a very, very nervous kid and I had a terrible stammer. And the only way that I could cope at school, I found eventually, was by the written word, where I felt intelligent. Because speaking out loud, I felt stupid Mhmm. Because I couldn’t get words out. And I also, at the same time, began public speaking as a means of trying to force myself to speak. And so it’s a mixture of starting to write short stories and reading an awful lot and trying to be influenced by those things I was reading, and at the same time, trying to act. But I was such a terrible actor, and I began auditioning for things and I would I did quite good auditions and then I’d realized in rehearsal how bad I really was.
Robert Shearman [00:02:25]:
And at university, after the 1st year, I I ran student theater, which was great, but I couldn’t be in anything because I knew how bad I was. And I began writing plays because it seemed to me that any way I could still be involved was by doing scripts. And I kept on thinking at the beginning, well, you know, maybe I could even write myself a small part. And I very quickly realized that I wouldn’t want someone as bad as me ruining what I’d written because the writing meant so much more to me than standing on stage and showing off. And and it was it was a funny thing. I I still think of it this way. I think that it feels like safe showing off. Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:03:07]:
When when when when I see actors and they’re having a great time and they’re on stage and they got all the attention, I envy that a bit sometimes. And I feel I can do it without feeling so embarrassed. If I go and see a stage show of mine, I can feel all that pride at the good bits, but also the bits where things aren’t working. No one needs to know I was involved. And I’ve been at shows I’ve written which have been terrible. And in the interval I come out tonight, you know, it’s like Peter denying Jesus. You know, I I I stand around and I just say, yeah, it’s a terrible show. I’m not gonna suddenly say, well, actually, I think you’ll find that I wrote it because that would be awful.
Robert Shearman [00:03:45]:
And so the actors are up on stage suffering with all my bad lines. And I’m in the bar with an ice cream saying, oh, it’s awful. It’s awful. So, it it felt safer. You know, it was way out of my shyness that felt also
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:01]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:04:01]:
Safe. And I love words. I love mucking about with words, and I think because I couldn’t express them. Because even now when I’m talking, I’m going through a thesaurus in my head because if I know what I’m gonna say too much, I stammer it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:18]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:04:19]:
So, I often don’t use the right word I want to use because I suddenly know that that would cause me to have a stutter. When I go through immigration at, you know, customs, which I get very nervous about because they ask you, you know, are you here for business or for vacation? And I can’t suddenly say the word vacation. Oh. So what I have to do is talk around it. There’s my any way out of the stammer is you talk around. And they don’t wanna hear your life story. In fact, actually, it makes them suspicious. So I’ve had situations at immigration because of my trying to avoid my stammer, because I can’t answer a simple question directly.
Robert Shearman [00:04:58]:
When it’s a yes or no answer, the problem I have is I can’t say my name very often. I’ve done radio interviews quite often, radio 4 interviews, and I and I can chat as you’ll become aware, because I can I I can be quite garribus, but I can’t answer simple questions? So Mhmm. I can’t So they say things like, well, introduce yourself, and I think, I can’t. When we were doing Doctor Who, you’d go around the the table before a read through. We had to say our names, and you got 50 people and it would get to you and I couldn’t say my name. I’d go, I’m I’m I’m one one one of the and everyone there knew who I was, and they just look at me and it would be embarrassing. It’s writing for me was always about finding the alternatives to what I could otherwise be saying. Conversation, that doesn’t happen so often, so I I I would hide more and more in writing.
Robert Shearman [00:05:51]:
And the fact and the possibilities that that writing will change every single time you do it, if that makes any sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:58]:
That makes absolute sense.
Robert Shearman [00:05:59]:
I mean, the thing which I still find the most wonderful part about writing, and also the scariest part about writing, is the thing which people very, very rarely say, but it’s true for all writers, is that no matter how much you prepare, you know, if I go out to write one day and I say, I’ve got to write today, 4,000 words on my new story, and I think I’m gonna reach that that middle section now, and I know what’s gonna happen. And I’m aware that if I sit down at the table which I write at and I say, yeah, let’s go to have a diet Coke first, the words I would write when I come back from my diet Coke will just be different to the words I’ve written before. The same intention will be there, but every great thing that you ever read by any writer is spontaneous. No matter how much Shakespeare prepared the to be or not to be speech, that just happened to be what he wrote at that moment. And 10 minutes later, they’d have written different lines. And it’s knowing that. It’s knowing that everything is still random, even though it could be prepared for for weeks weeks, makes it scary but also thrilling. It’s it’s knowing that there’s that there are infinite number of ways of writing the same sentence, pretty much, or the same passage that of that day’s writing.
Robert Shearman [00:07:08]:
And you can come back sometimes from writing a a day’s a day’s work and be really annoyed because you knew that it just wasn’t the best case scenario for that day’s writing. Sometimes you go you come home and you’re so relieved it was actually good. And you know the next day, you’d you’d you’d come back and write them the same thing, and it would be half as good. You just happen to catch the right moment. And it’s about catching the lightning in the bottle, I think, writing. It’s scary for that. You know, you Mhmm. I mean, do you find that as well? I mean
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:38]:
Yeah. And I mean, I haven’t thought about it in that way that, you know, what you write right this second is different than what you write tomorrow morning about the same thing. But, you know, I’ve definitely had the times where there there was one one morning when I was working on the book that you have.
Robert Shearman [00:07:59]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:01]:
I think I wrote 10 pages in an hour, and I finished it. And I felt like I had run a marathon because
Robert Shearman [00:08:07]:
I was
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:07]:
just kinda sitting there going, I have absolutely no idea where this came from.
Robert Shearman [00:08:10]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:11]:
And then, you know, the next day
Robert Shearman [00:08:12]:
I’m thrilling.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:13]:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was just like, woah. But then the next day, you know, you sit down and you’re like Yeah. Where where’s that thing that happened yesterday? And why do I get it?
Robert Shearman [00:08:26]:
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s when I it’s what I refer to to myself to make myself laugh when I’m going through it. It’s like suddenly, your brain’s translating everything from Serbo-Croat. It’s like you don’t understand how English works anymore. All the ideas are still fine, but it’s like you don’t know how to make sentences work. It’s like everything sort of glomps upon the page. Other times, it can be amazing. It’s a matter I find it’s a matter of trying to not be scared.
Robert Shearman [00:08:53]:
Because writing, I think, is a scary process. I I think particularly people are waiting for it and they And, you know, they often are. You’re dealing with with commissions, people are expecting. I’m always behind on what people are expecting, books and collections and scripts. People always wanted them last week. And you say, okay, on Monday, I’m gonna go out and I will write this. And you go out that Monday and you say, I won’t come home, until I finished. I just go out into London.
Robert Shearman [00:09:20]:
I walk around. I go to art galleries and museums because I want to trick my brain into thinking I’m having fun. Because if I’m having fun, then at least I’d say, well, it doesn’t matter. 1st few hours, I’ll do nothing. I’ll just look at some paintings, and eventually, I’ll put some words down. I won’t go home until I finished it, but that’s up to me how long it takes. Mhmm. Whereas if I sit down at an office, so I get up at 9 in the morning, as I know some writers are very good at doing, I just look at it and I panic.
Robert Shearman [00:09:44]:
I just think, I’m not ready for this. Because the Again, it It’s that sort of psychological certainty of knowing. At half an hour later, it could be better. And you get almost wrong footed by your own sense of wanting to be the best you can be. Mhmm. Because you know it could always be better even as you’re writing it. Because even though you can redraft and people always redraft, you should redraft, you’re still redrafting from that base. And it’s often the base that has ruined it.
Robert Shearman [00:10:17]:
You know, if you get the base at the wrong moment, you’re only redrafting what was already terrible. And that’s always what what what frightens me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:24]:
That’s true.
Robert Shearman [00:10:25]:
Whereas if you cut stuff that’s actually pretty good, you can make it better, but at least the you know, it’s all I I always think of it in terms of and it’s often an excuse not to write, which is terrible.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:36]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:10:36]:
But it’s it’s about saying, I want to write at the right moment. And sometimes a story or a script, it just isn’t cooked yet. And it’s not laziness to acknowledge that actually it needs another week before you’re ready to write this. It just needs walking around and thinking, because thinking is most of what you do. I mean, I Mhmm. I just go for long walks all the time, and in my head, I’m I’m sort of indirectly trying to solve stuff until I think, yeah, yeah, it’s ready. It’s ready. And it’s I think most of writing is actually about getting better at telling when the moment to write is.
Robert Shearman [00:11:11]:
When I when when I started out writing in my twenties, that’s what I got wrong all the time. I mean, I wrote some good stuff. I I I got lucky. I wrote some stage plays that that that still get revived now. And I had one in New York a couple of years ago, which I wrote in when I was 22. And I went to see it, and I was flown over, and I was It was off off Broadway. And I I was very proud. And I just thought that was a lucky script.
Robert Shearman [00:11:33]:
I wrote another script, I think, a month later that was terrible. And I’m better now at writing things which I know will at least be okay, because I won’t write when it’s gonna be terrible.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:45]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:11:46]:
But that’s the hard thing to learn. It’s about knowing not Also not when to rush it because because your brain is also making you feel guilty that you’re not working harder. Sometimes you just can’t work any harder that day. You don’t You shouldn’t write any more than you than you have. And yet, it feels that you’re just avoiding it. Yeah. Because avoiding is always a thing which you’re trying to avoid. But, actually, avoiding can be good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:11]:
It can. It can. There are times when you definitely
Robert Shearman [00:12:13]:
need Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:13]:
To take just take a break and let your brain percolate on stuff. And I love that you go out for walks and you go to the museum and everything, because you’re actually, like, giving yourself so much other stuff to
Robert Shearman [00:12:22]:
work with. I mean, I found an amazing place to work. I mean, I mean, I write at the National Theatre, which I actually did once kind of write for back in the nineties. And I’ve got various seats I like to move around because it’s a public area, so I don’t feel like I’m, not engaged with the world, but I wear headphones. Mhmm. And I can walk along the Thames. I can go as far as the Shakespeare’s Globe. I can walk back to Westminster Bridge.
Robert Shearman [00:12:45]:
I can always just go for 10 quarter an hour walks and think, what am I writing in the next paragraph? Let’s just work it out, and then I come back and probably write another 8, 9 paragraphs, because it just spirals off from there. And it’s constantly sort of saying, okay, how do I get to the next bit where I can take a break? And that way, eventually, things just get finished. But at home, I would never get I I’d go on YouTube. I’d start watching YouTube videos. I’d start feeding my cat. I’d start, you know There’s
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:11]:
nothing new to look at at all.
Robert Shearman [00:13:12]:
Yeah. And it’s boring. I mean, who wants to be bored as you’re writing? Right. I mean, what I love is actually sort of distracting my brain. I I I go to book shops and look along the shelves. And what I’m really doing is I’m, yeah, so, oh, they’ve got a new book out. And I’m thinking, but what I could do maybe is that maybe he’s got a wife. Maybe it’s not even a him.
Robert Shearman [00:13:30]:
Maybe it’s actually maybe I’m writing for this from the wrong perspective. Oh, what’s this? That’s not a nice cover. And you because your brain can do more than one thing at once. Mhmm. And making your brain actually do that in a funny way just makes it excited. Yeah. The hard part about writing is being bored writing. And I try very hard not to be bored, because being bored just makes it boring, obviously.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:54]:
Yeah. So you already told me this story. Okay. But because people who are gonna listen to this don’t know this story Sure. Tell me about writing The Chimes of Midnight.
Robert Shearman [00:14:05]:
Well, that was a weird one. I’d this was 2,000. I’d written a my first Doctor Who big finish adventure called The Hoagie Terror. And, Yeah. It was it was odd. I mean, I’d I’d been commissioned to write a story. It ended up being about a shape shifting penguin, and it was not what I’d ever have If someone had said to me, write your one Doctor Who story, you know, which which I Well, I assumed it was gonna be, I wouldn’t have chosen that. I’d have chosen something a bit more spooky, like Chimes of Midnight.
Robert Shearman [00:14:40]:
And so I was given this second chance. I was just asked to do it, but there was no time. They wanted to do a Paul McGahn season. Paul McGahn had just done his 1st season for Big Finish and he’d said yes to more. They had to catch him quick, even though they wouldn’t come out for about 18 months. They wanted 6 stories, and a sort of like an arc. We we met in a pub and they wanted me to go first. And I said, okay.
Robert Shearman [00:15:06]:
So they had to be bouncing off my one. And I went away and I had an idea of a synopsis and I sent it, I had to start writing that in the next 2 days. And they wrote back and said, no, I don’t think we want that. I mean, it began it was light chimes, but you’d go upstairs every episode and it’d be 25 years later. They said, no, we don’t want that, but you just keep it in the house. I thought, I’m not sure how to sustain that, but I have no choice. Mhmm. So I began writing it and I wrote it in about a week.
Robert Shearman [00:15:36]:
But the terror of it was I hadn’t worked out what it was about as I was writing it. So I would have maybe 2 days per episode, and the first day was mostly spent panicking about the fact I had no idea what to write next, having written the the previous episode before. And then I’d write it and I’d do a cliffhanger and I’d laugh, because cliffhangers actually were quite good, but I had no idea how to resolve it or where the story went. And I just found it was as, I remember, I I I can picture it, I can picture where I was for certain moments of thinking, well, maybe I can run the chauffeur over. That would give me 10 minutes. So you It was trying not to make it seem padded, but also try and make it seem I was trying to make it funny because I’m basically a comedy writer when all is said and done. Comedy is Mhmm. Is is what I love going back to.
Robert Shearman [00:16:27]:
Because even though I write quite dark stuff, I think funny is great.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:32]:
I think the mix of of comedy Yeah. And the the totally spooky what the heck is going on here. Yeah. So it’s really part of what makes that one so good.
Robert Shearman [00:16:41]:
Well, when I delivered it, I mean, I was really expecting that because I didn’t think it made much sense. And I remember during episode 3, I suddenly thought, oh, I know who killed these. It’s the house. The house is alive. I didn’t know. When people say to me that they that listened back to it, and they say, well, we could tell what was happening by episode 1. I think it’s more than I did, because I had no I mean, I mean, I did go back and I did kind of The only thing I did when I Once I worked out the 4 episodes and I’d finished them, was I went back and I began cutting out various pointless red herrings, which I thought could be important, but weren’t. Right.
Robert Shearman [00:17:12]:
In fact, they’re not all cut out. I heard it back a while back because I was planning on doing I was asked to adapt it for TV and it didn’t really work out. But I heard it again for the first time in years. There’s stuff in episode 1, like, I think things burn in fires and then don’t. Mhmm. And all of that’s kept in for some reason. But actually, that was me saying, maybe that’s important. I have no idea yet.
Robert Shearman [00:17:35]:
It wasn’t important, but it also seemed atmospheric, so we kept it, which is the wrong reason, although no one’s ever complained about that. The one problem we have is I delivered the script and they were very kind, Big Fish. They said, we really like this. We’d be doing it. It. I said, but it can’t be episode 1. It can’t be the first story because you’ve taken the story arc with Charlie and the r 101 too far. And I said they said, we didn’t want to prevent any of this before about story 4 or 5.
Robert Shearman [00:18:02]:
You’ve done it in story 1. And I said Mhmm. Oh well. And they said, but emotionally we now need it for your story. We’ll swap places with Mark Gatiss’ story and they put mine second. Which is a shame in a way because I was aware it was a January release originally, and I thought that was fine after Christmas. And it suddenly gives us Christmas setting, it was now gonna be mid February it came out. Which is a bit pointless for a Christmas story.
Robert Shearman [00:18:26]:
But hey, no one cares now. I mean, and we recorded it very, very, did a day and a half recording in Bristol with Paul McGann. And it was good, I thought, but it wasn’t finished for another year or so until it came out. So I spent that whole year assuming people were gonna hate it. Because you do. Because it I all I could remember was I didn’t know what I was doing as I wrote it. Mhmm. And I I hate writing totally blind.
Robert Shearman [00:18:56]:
I think it I think it’s an insult to the audience, which I’m Chimes is the only story I did for for Doctor Who, in which I genuinely feel deep down ashamed of the fact that I didn’t do the homework beforehand. Because with other stories they might have problems with them, but I knew what the themes were. I knew kind of why I was writing it. Which I’m, I was just I I kind of did, it was like, it’s What was that? Was that form of sort of writing where you just you just write without thinking about it? With free writing? Writing? Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t trust free writing. I think free writing produces it’s an exercise. It doesn’t produce good stuff.
Robert Shearman [00:19:31]:
Well, no. And chimes is kind of free writing, and therefore I’m a bit scared of chimes because I think it is good. I don’t think it has any right to be good. I’m relieved that it’s not hated. I’m amazed that actually it’s quite liked by a lot of people, including yourself. But a part of me also is slightly annoyed by it, because you think, well, I didn’t really put much work into that. But I’m proud of it. I I think I think it’s a good story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:01]:
It’s a very good story.
Robert Shearman [00:20:02]:
And I’m proud that people like it so much. I’m proud that it’s become the one story that I did for Big Finish or for Doctor Who at all, I suppose. Which because it’s Christmas based, does provide a lot of people with an annual tradition. I know people do listen to it. I I Oh, you do, I think.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:18]:
That’s me.
Robert Shearman [00:20:19]:
But I’ve heard from many people that they will listen to it as they wrap Christmas presents, and I think, what, every year? I mean, aren’t you bored out of your mind stilling?
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:27]:
No, because it’s been another year.
Robert Shearman [00:20:29]:
But you know what’s gonna happen. So?
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:32]:
Because, see, this is the thing. It really does work. I mean, it hangs together. If you if you had not told me that you didn’t know Yeah. What you were doing when you put it together, I never would have guessed. And and I am an unrepentant pantser. I cannot write if I know what’s gonna happen. I I can write if I know.
Robert Shearman [00:20:49]:
Oh, yeah. Well, I have
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:50]:
to get here.
Robert Shearman [00:20:51]:
To agree with you, actually.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:52]:
You know? Yeah. So so yeah.
Robert Shearman [00:20:54]:
Because I write short stories mostly now. Mhmm. I can never write a short story if I know the ending. Or rather, what I have is I have in my head an ending to make myself feel comfortable, but I know I can’t use it because it’s too obvious.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:07]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:21:07]:
So everything I write is about avoiding the ending I knew, because I know that means it’s dull. But I also know if I don’t have something in my head as a because I think of it like a map. And if you’re just driving to the middle of nowhere, that’s a little bit awkward. If you feel, well, I know roughly where I’m going, but along the way I’ll find more interesting places to stop. And actually, I may not end up anywhere near where I think my my bed and breakfast hotel is. I’ll go off another hotel that I’m staying at tonight. That for me is how to write. But if I actually write stories where I find nothing interesting along the way, and I end up exactly where I thought I was going to, I’ve always been it.
Robert Shearman [00:21:46]:
I want to be surprised myself. What actually I normally do now with short stories, and I know that you’ve very kindly just bought some of mine. I often actually What I do now is I find that I’ve got the story, and I get to what the ending I thought was. And I realize, but what happens next?
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:05]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:22:05]:
And most people have been thrown, because people teach my short stories in Britain, which is amazing sometimes. And what they’ve and they refer to it as this weird thing that you reach a natural conclusion and then I still go on for another for twice as long again, because I then want to see what the reality of that is 20 years later. And that’s quite shocking, and it means that I keep myself interested because because the little story that would have been there is just sort of neat and annoying. But if you keep on questioning it and saying, I’ve heard a story about, Luxembourg vanishing in Love, Psalms, For the Shine, cynical, the one that you got. The one
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:43]:
I got?
Robert Shearman [00:22:43]:
And, you know, Luxembourg just one day vanishes. You know, you wake up in the morning, and it’s just gone. There’s just a bit of sea where it was. It’s about a woman whose husband was over in in Luxembourg on a business trip. She’s not sure now whether he’s alive or dead. No one cares. It’s only Luxembourg. And it was about actually And I reached a point where I thought, well, I know where that’s gonna go.
Robert Shearman [00:23:04]:
And because I kept on asking more and more emotional questions about how she dealt with that, it came this terribly dark, quite emotional story which I didn’t think it was when I began a rather stupid what if idea. And what I like doing with my fiction, what I like doing with Times of Midnight as well, actually, in a funny way, is I like saying, hey, it’s a sort of quite light comedy. And then you say, but maybe I’m now gonna go down a a more emotionally honest, and realistic path from a premise that you’ve already bought as being utterly ridiculous. And that’s the way I like writing. It’s good fun, and it keeps you on your toes, actually. It means you come up with stupid ideas, and the idea is stupid. But out of it, you grow something which actually feels Chekhovian sometimes. It’s weird.
Robert Shearman [00:23:54]:
I mean, I I love writing like that. And Yeah. And if it goes well, I’m the proudest writer in the world on the days it works. I just come home thinking, I’m a genius, I think. I’m not, but but I feel amazing when when I know I’ve done a good day’s work from a really stupid premise sometimes. You know, it’s lovely though.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:14]:
Yeah. I mean, my my book, which you probably haven’t had a chance even to look at the first sentence, but
Robert Shearman [00:24:20]:
No. It hasn’t properly damaged my well, I have it on my Kindle, but I haven’t got the the WiFi in this hotel is not
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:27]:
It’s a it’s a little odd.
Robert Shearman [00:24:27]:
It’s a bit sketchy. Yeah. So it keeps on I mean, I’ll get it when I go to a better Wi Fi spot.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:33]:
I started it from an unfinished sentence prompt. Said the baby had been born with blank. Okay. And, you know, what’s the first thing you think of? A silver spoon in its mouth. And Yeah. And, you know, I’m I’m sitting there for, I don’t know, probably a weekend. Because I I’ve written you know, I mean, I had this sentence. I’m going, you you you can’t be born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:00]:
And as I recall, I had been reading more Neil Gaiman right around that time. Okay. And and I I have a feeling that that’s at least part of why at some point in the course of going, but you can’t do that, this little voice came up in my head and said, but what if you were? Yeah. And so The best thing ever
Robert Shearman [00:25:19]:
to ask yourself as a writer
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:20]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:25:21]:
You keep on hitting this voice saying to you, well, you can’t do that. And you say, why not?
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:26]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:25:27]:
And the thing I would say, when I was I was at Edinburgh University, Edinburgh Napier University, I was a resident writer there for a year, a couple of years ago. And and I had, therefore, students that come to my office. And the only question that I would always say to them, you know, I’d say look, whatever you want. But the questions always have to be to yourself, When you’ve hit hit a wall you say, well, why? Why is that a wall? Why why can’t I just do that? Why can’t I take it to a magical realism if I want to? But also the other question is, so what? Which for me is, I need to believe as I’m writing something that it matters to a degree. And the problem is is that so much writing in the world, inevitably, you don’t need, you know. Most of the stuff I’ve written, I don’t pretend matters. But I had to believe it mattered when I wrote it. Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:26:16]:
And if as you’re writing something, you even think to yourself, yeah, it’s not that good. Then make it good or write something better. But actually usually make it good because you usually can. Make it suddenly more eccentric. Make it not that dull, but this but obviously, we can’t break down that wall because that’s the wall of realism. No. Go Craig. Neil does that very well.
Robert Shearman [00:26:42]:
Mhmm. I mean, Neil will just say I mean, American God spirals out of this terribly simple idea, and he just runs with it. You can sense the exuberance of a writer just saying, I can go as far as I want. No one can stop me. If I wanna fly, I’ll fly. Douglas Adams does that as well in a very very different way. He just he keeps on thinking if I hit a narrative kink, I’ll make the narrative kink the solution, and I’ll use that as the as the means of flying higher as, you know, imaginatively. That’s what you need.
Robert Shearman [00:27:15]:
It’s hard if you’re writing, obviously, something which has to be very, very strictly realistic. But there’s still ways of doing that. I mean, it’s just you can’t be quite as nonsensical as as perhaps you’re tempted to be. But it it’s fun just to sort of just ask yourself. The thing I would always tell students is, no one will die if you get it wrong. The thing, I’ve written so much terrible stuff, I’ve written some awful things. Particularly some really dreadful early stage plays, which were staged and audiences were very bored, but no one ever died. Now if I were a really bad airline pilot, people would die.
Robert Shearman [00:27:54]:
If I did really bad heart surgery, the for the first time, there’s you know, sometimes you’ll go to the hospital, there will be someone doing that for the first time. That’s scary. I’ve been on airplanes a lot. Maybe I’ve occasionally phoned with people who’ve never done this before. That’s scary. If I write If so, if you write a a non naturalistic short story for the first time and it’s crap, no one will die. The worst that will happen is it’s rubbish. So so what? You write something else.
Robert Shearman [00:28:22]:
Therefore, because you can’t hurt anybody by writing bad stuff, you might as well write some bad stuff as well. Yeah. I think that’s You know, I think that’s important.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:30]:
Everybody has bad stuff they need to.
Robert Shearman [00:28:32]:
Oh, gotcha. Right. Because you can don’t write.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:34]:
Dance, whatever.
Robert Shearman [00:28:36]:
I think the important thing is that I think the only interesting fiction worth reading is stuff that takes a risk. And if everything you write succeeds, you’re not taking a risk. You just think you’re taking a risk. Because all risks can’t work. Because how can therefore they be risks? You know, on Doctor Who, Stephen, Stephen Moffat, you know, who who I adore. He’s a great friend. And what I think was great about his time on the show was it was genuinely risk taking to the point that things genuinely collapsed sometimes. Because he didn’t know it would work.
Robert Shearman [00:29:09]:
If he always got it right, he wasn’t trying hard enough, he felt. That I think is brave writing. But to get you, when people are genuinely gonna watch it and genuinely blame him for it failing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:19]:
Oh, absolutely.
Robert Shearman [00:29:20]:
But it has Some things have to fail. Shakespeare, I mean, Shakespeare is my is my big passion. I love Shakespeare. There are some terrible Shakespeare plays. I mean, we don’t say that very often, as often as we should, but Timon of Athens, for example, is appalling. But without it, we wouldn’t have King Lear. Now, people were stage Right. German of Athens.
Robert Shearman [00:29:39]:
They wouldn’t if he wasn’t Shakespeare. But Right. Even in his own lifetime, it wasn’t staged because it was abortively poor. It was an aborted play. But without it, you don’t get to something else. Most writing is built, you know, it’s ladders built upon these bits of dung and the dung were your failed stories. That’s how we get to be good. That’s how any art works.
Robert Shearman [00:30:03]:
You know, art has to be a risk taker. Which means how can you therefore be scared of failing? You need the failures in order to do the good stuff.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:11]:
Yeah. And you learn from all of the failures.
Robert Shearman [00:30:13]:
Oh, yeah. Well, as long as long as you allow yourself to. Sure. As long as you don’t take them too personally. Right. You know, the I think the danger is is because writing is so emotionally difficult at times, and you feel very, very vulnerable. When you fail you just think, oh, I’m I’m a terrible writer. I’m a terrible person.
Robert Shearman [00:30:29]:
No. Who cares? It’s just a bit of It’s only bloody words. I mean, you know, it doesn’t matter. I mean, all writing matters, and at the same time, all writing doesn’t matter. It’s that it’s both at once. You know, it’s lovely when you write I mean, Chums of Midnight, as a as an example. You know, there’s a story that has somehow survived 18 years and so I wrote it. People like it.
Robert Shearman [00:30:51]:
If I’d never written it, the world would be exactly the same. It would.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:56]:
Maybe not exactly. Almost.
Robert Shearman [00:30:58]:
And yet I’m proud it exists, but it didn’t have to exist, and that’s also important too. It’s the recognition of both things at once. I love trying to put into the world things which I think, on a very, very humble level, in a terribly minor way, might make the world a slightly better place because I think they’re good. But if I suddenly fell off the roof and I stopped writing, I don’t think the world would actually honestly not recover from the fact I’d stopped writing. And I think that’s important to to acknowledge. You know, we aren’t that important, and the stories aren’t so important, but they also are. You know, it’s Right. Both things at once.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:37]:
That Oscar Wilde quote that life is too important to be taken seriously.
Robert Shearman [00:31:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s writing. It’s a joy. I mean, it’s also it’s horrible to do writing, but how lucky are we that we’re even allowing ourselves the space to do this? There are people we know who are desperate to write and never will.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:55]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:31:56]:
So I regard every day I mean, I’m a full time writer. It’s the only job I’ve got. I don’t write every day. I feel guilty for not, because I’m aware of how precious that time is for other people. But I also know I can’t write every day, because as I said in the, you know, to the oilier question, it’s not always the right time to write something. You’ll you’ll spoil the idea. Right. Therefore, it’s a privilege to be able to write, but also is you have to not take it so seriously that you wreck the privilege.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:27]:
Sorry. That’s light and airy. But, no, it’s it’s
Robert Shearman [00:32:30]:
But that’s I’m very passionate about that. Yeah. I think that’s very important. You know. Alright. So I’m gonna I’ll let you ask another question. Turn us in Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:40]:
Yeah. One direction because I’m I’m really curious. So Dalek
Robert Shearman [00:32:45]:
Okay. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:46]:
Came out of Jubilee. It did. And, of course, I didn’t know that until after I had seen Dalek, and I was just discovering right.
Robert Shearman [00:32:56]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:56]:
And I was just discovering Big Finish and all of that kind of stuff. And so, obviously, when you find out, oh, this came from this other thing, and it was a much longer whatever. You know, if you’re curious at all, you’re gonna go find the first one. And I found it interesting when I was listening to it because, you know, I could see where dialect came from, and yet it’s jubilee is also so different. I mean, just for a start, I didn’t expect the little movie ad at the beginning that had me laughing out loud because Doc is not that kind of No.
Robert Shearman [00:33:31]:
I think he is.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:31]:
Funny. So I’m really curious to know how it was to take something larger and more elaborate, like
Robert Shearman [00:33:37]:
Yeah. Daily and turn it into Dalek. It it it was It’s about audience, actually, with Dalek. Dalek had to be written for an audience of 8 year olds. Mhmm. We were being told to never forget that it could be for adults, it should be for adults, but an 8 year old had to be able to watch this. Jubilee was written for 30 something fanboys. Because Doctor Who was dead.
Robert Shearman [00:34:05]:
Any people who cared about Doctor Who at this point were people like me
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:08]:
And me.
Robert Shearman [00:34:09]:
Who who But at that stage, you know, I mean, you know, that because any people who were still listening to it weren’t any any longer kids, and they wanted something which is a bit more adult and was also a bit more, in my in in that case, it’s quite meta Jubilee. I mean, Jubilee is about also my argument that we’ve kind of ruined the way that I mean, that we’ve become predictable with our storytelling. It’s actually about predictable storytelling, jubilee. Die couldn’t be any of those things. It was Its job was to be halfway through the first series of what could be the only series of the revival. It had to be reintroducing the big monster in Doctor Who in a very, very simple way that wouldn’t put people off, and not make them feel it was trying to be too clever about how we did that. Jubilee was all about being clever. And Jubilee is almost a suffocatingly over clever script.
Robert Shearman [00:35:07]:
It doesn’t quite work for that either. I think it falls apart quite badly. People I mean, Doctor Who fans, as a rule, and it’s very sweet because they think they’re complimenting me. They’ll send me things like, oh, I love Jubilee. It’s a lot better than Dalek. As if I hadn’t really written Dalek. Although I had actually written both. As if they thought I had probably had more interference with Dalek, which is true.
Robert Shearman [00:35:28]:
Mhmm. But it was good interference. And I think that the problem with Jubilee is it has no ending. I hadn’t really worked out what to do. And I ran out of time, and to be honest, I was I was very arrogant. I I I wanted to be I was searching for a sequel. I wanted to leave Jubilee’s ending, but I didn’t fix the time thing. I did that in a second story later where, in second story would go to the 1903 thing, which was set before him.
Robert Shearman [00:35:53]:
And I thought, I’ll fix it in that. And Gary Russell quite rightly said, no, I commissioned one story from you. Just do the one story. And that was fine. With Dalek, it was I knew with Dalek, I had to tell a relatively simple and I think quite emotional story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:09]:
Oh, definitely.
Robert Shearman [00:36:10]:
And Jubilee is not very emotional. It’s a very it’s quite a cold, nasty piece. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s clever. It had It’s it it’s more sophisticated. Mhmm. It’s quite political. It was my attempt to try and do sort of like black comedy, I cordiest type stuff because I love things like that.
Robert Shearman [00:36:28]:
But dyke I think is, although it’s annoyingly simplistic for me at times, looking back at it, because I do find that frustrating. Because I, because I do want to be a clever writer. I think it’s a purer piece of work. Thanks to Russell t Davis constantly making me, reminding me that the audience wasn’t trying I didn’t have to try and show off.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:52]:
Mhmm.
Robert Shearman [00:36:53]:
So with Jubilee, I kind of threw it away very quickly. I I I listened back to it. I said, well, that’s useless. And I and I just took basically the one idea, and I tried not to write anything from it. I think there’s only one scene that’s remotely similar, and it’s the scene where the doctor meets the Dalek in the cell. And they are very, very different scenes. I wrote them very differently, but but the moment is the same. Right.
Robert Shearman [00:37:16]:
And with Colin, it’s a much more arch scene. And with Chris Eccleston, it’s this weird, you know, post traumatic stress disorder, spitting fury
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:27]:
Yes.
Robert Shearman [00:37:28]:
And that was a shock to write. I didn’t know it was gonna end up like that. I didn’t know that Chris would do it like that either. But I’m really proud of that. I’m I I I think I mean, I like both. Mhmm. I find Jubilee feels unfinished. And I’m proud of I think some of it is very funny and very nasty.
Robert Shearman [00:37:45]:
And and I I I do like it. And I’m proud people like it so much, because it has gone down quite well. But I think dialogue is actually the is is the more accomplished piece of work. Even though it’s probably not as Doctor Who fan friendly as those apparently clever audio Mhmm. Versions are, if that makes sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:04]:
It it does make sense. Yeah. And and and, you know, I mean, it’s it’s been a while since I watched Dalek. I think, actually, I may have watched it again after Into the Dalek because there were such
Robert Shearman [00:38:17]:
It’s a similar references. Yeah. But
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:19]:
it’s been at least that long, so it’s not as fresh in my head. And I don’t remember when I last listened to Jubilee. I know I’ve listened to it more than once. Yeah. But, you know, they they both you’re right because they they absolutely hit in completely different ways. And I know when when I first watched Dalek I mean, as an old school Who fan, I was not prepared for the the new series to have the kind of emotional impact that it has in the first place because that’s not what we were used to.
Robert Shearman [00:38:48]:
That’s fine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:48]:
But but I remember that episode just completely blew me away because you you think Daleks. You think shooting, fighting, you know, stuff like that. And and the way that that episode ends was just so wow. Yeah. So so, yeah, they’re they’re definitely completely different. And I do, I mean, I do like them both. I don’t know if I could pick you know, it’s one of those. If I had to pick a favorite, I would have to qualify why I was Well,
Robert Shearman [00:39:13]:
Jubilee, in a funny way, probably is more me. Not because I didn’t like Dalek, but because jubilee is my sense of humor. I mean Mhmm. I mean, I think that it’s probably it’s probably a difficulty I have. I can’t resist my black humor creeping into stuff. I mean, that’s You’ll find when you read my book. And unfettered, that can actually occasionally be inappropriate. And I like writing inappropriate humor.
Robert Shearman [00:39:40]:
I like seeing I like seeing whether you can go too far with certain things. Because I want I want to know why it’s too far. And I want the audience to realize we’re engaged in finding out levels of taste at times. And Jubilee is a really bad taste story. It really upset a few people. And dalek is not bad taste. I mean, Russell, I remember saying to me, there’s a bit in Jubilee where, if you boil the dalek in its shell, the liquid that runs off, they would bottle and drink. Yeah.
Robert Shearman [00:40:10]:
And it was tasteless and horrible. But it was the, and Russell said, oh, can we keep that, you think? And I said, not really. No. And he said, no, I suppose not. But it is funny. And I said, it’s it’s just wrong for you. He said it’s wrong for the episode. Right.
Robert Shearman [00:40:23]:
But but Russell loved some of those ideas. Mhmm. But also understood almost as he said them. But we can’t do it in that simple retelling of a story which has that emotional curve. The hard thing, I suppose, was that and the bit which is frustrating is that in Jubilee, Evelyn and the dark relationship is built upon Yeah. What an hour of conversation. And in dyke, there’s no time. Right.
Robert Shearman [00:40:48]:
It’s based upon Rose touching a dyke and DNA being transferred, which which is nonsense. And that handprint is like a sort of a bit of pseudoscience, replacement for genuine drama. And but there’s no choice. I mean, we had to just that was the first meeting. They were saying, we need to have Rosebond with the Dalek, and the Dalek is changing because of that, but it can’t be an intellectual discussion. Mhmm. It will have to be, maybe, Russell said, she touches it. And I said, okay.
Robert Shearman [00:41:24]:
And I remember when I wrote the script, when I I wanted to pay off, and again, this is where I was going wrong at the time. And when she puts her hand on it and she pulls her hand away, she’s left bits of skin. I mean, she it’s it’s kind of stuck to it and it caused her pain, and Russell said, no, we don’t need to do that. And which is because I wanted to make it if it if, you know, it was gonna be as simple and grip as to touching a Dalek casing, it ought to be a meaningful moment. I think it’s almost a silly moment. I don’t blame the episode for that. Mhmm. We had to get to the point Right.
Robert Shearman [00:41:58]:
Where we see things happen. But it also feels weird, because the DNA of a time traveler, I have no idea what that’s talking about. And of course, it’s silly. And I remember I was at a science museum event some years ago in Manchester in in Britain. And there were small children who were saying to me, can I ask a question of the of mister Shearman? And it was doctor Who writer’s panel. And I said, sure. And they said, do you even know what DNA is? And I said I said, I did Googled it. It had a very long name.
Robert Shearman [00:42:28]:
And I thought, well, I’m sure DNA is what I call it. And the problem is is that the science in Doctor Who can often be as insulting as that. Mhmm. Particularly, I don’t blame Russell for it, but under Russell, because he would use those science terms. Stephen just didn’t even bother with that. So Stephen is so anti science. But Mussel would occasionally say things he’d think, well, if you don’t do it, just don’t quit DNA. I mean, I didn’t wanna quit DNA, particularly.
Robert Shearman [00:42:52]:
We had this discussion on Dalek. And, again, I don’t blame Russell’s Russell’s instincts are far better, obviously, than mine. He’s a much cleverer writer. But he wanted Van Staten, my, villain Mhmm. To have invented the internet. And I said, he didn’t. And also, it’s a set in the future. And you’re casting a relatively young actor.
Robert Shearman [00:43:13]:
He said, oh, no one knows who went to the internet. I said, you don’t know who went to the internet, but people genuinely do. Yeah. It’s it’s not fair to regard as the the limit of of of accepted knowledge as being what you personally know, Russell. That’s the thing. He didn’t really know how DNA worked, so that was fine. And I would say, yeah, but people are going to. And I didn’t argue it very forcefully.
Robert Shearman [00:43:37]:
I did also I did make sure that my villain owned the Internet, not invented it. It it went backwards and forwards in rewrites a lot. And I kept him saying, he couldn’t have invented it. Owning it is also ridiculous, but that’s like a James Bond bit of comic Right. Villainy.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:52]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:43:52]:
But saying he invented it, he didn’t. And he’s not even old enough. It was invented in the 19 sixties. Mhmm. He’d now been, you know, he’d now be an elderly man, and he’s not. And I got my way on that one. I don’t blame Russell. I think that he’s right.
Robert Shearman [00:44:07]:
In a funny way, Doctor Who should be about It shouldn’t be about the intricacies of genuinely what it was like in Pompeii. Mhmm. Because then you’re not writing Doctor Who, but it has to at least seem to pass some basic muster of what people expect to be particularly relatively important science. But I don’t know. I mean, I’m I’m not trying to criticize.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:33]:
No. No. That makes perfect sense.
Robert Shearman [00:44:35]:
Yeah. In case Russell was listening. Because because Russell, I mean, Russell’s instincts of doctor who were entirely right about everything. Everything which I was worried about, you know, the way in which the doctor was gonna say, I’m gonna do this and I wanna go there, which I reacted, you know, because as a Doctor Who fan, I I was sort of the doctor as being this sort of quite stuffy, patrician, well spoken, don’t call me doc type character. And Russell’s instincts were on every single level about how to make that show work, totally correct. And everything I thought wasn’t gonna work, I was totally wrong about, and all of us were. I mean, Mark and Steven and, and Paul and I, we were kind of lacking behind Russell’s vision. We were trying to catch up to it.
Robert Shearman [00:45:21]:
But we had our misgivings about it because we were still laboring under the idea of what we thought Doctor Who was, and muscle just got it right. And without muscle there would be I I can’t imagine anyone better to make that show suddenly work against all the odds, doctor. He was still going on, and that’s because Russell’s Russell’s amazing. Yeah. So if he is this, then he can now he can now feel less angry. But it’s true. It’s it’s it’s it’s really true. I mean, it’s he he’s utterly remarkable.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:54]:
That’s cool. Yeah. I mean, I’m I’m psyched it’s still around. I wouldn’t be
Robert Shearman [00:45:59]:
here talking to you. Absolutely. It’s amazing it’s still I mean, it it shouldn’t be, really, should it? I mean, it it seems incredible that we’re now reaching season 11 and our 5th Doctor Mhmm. Since it came back. And it was it should never have had that success. I mean, I was certain when it came back, we would get I remember thinking, it’s great it’s coming back, but we’ll never reach another regeneration. Because that that’s the first big test. And I thought, in some ways, it’s sad we’re going to be bringing it back when we know it won’t survive more than a couple of 2, 3 years.
Robert Shearman [00:46:32]:
It feels like, well, why are we even bothering? I don’t I mean, deep down, because I was thinking in my head, we had 26 years of the original series. That was amazing. And now we’re gonna get this sort of rather Whatever it will be, it will be a short epilogue, even if it’s 3, 4 seasons. But there’s a reasonable chance now. I mean, I’m not saying it’ll happen. I still doubt it will, because I’m I’m a pessimist. But there’s a chance that we could, with the new series, make it even longer than the classic series now. And we’re we’re gonna be halfway through
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:02]:
It’s true.
Robert Shearman [00:47:02]:
By the time that they they renew Jodie’s contract. That’s true. I find that incredible. Because it Yeah. Should never have happened that way. The show should be now dead again, easily. But it’s not. And It’s it’s always been the little show that could.
Robert Shearman [00:47:19]:
I I can’t. I mean, it makes no sense to me that it ever worked. I mean, that’s what I find great about. But I love Doctor Who so much, but it should never have worked. Back in the sixties it should never have worked. Because no one ever knew what they were doing. I mean, that’s what I find so funny about it, is it’s made up as it went along, and it still is. And that’s You know, nothing else works like that.
Robert Shearman [00:47:44]:
Nothing else can just be as random. It comes it comes up what we’re saying about writing earlier. Mhmm. No one knows where it’s going. Right. And people tell you that you need to know everything. You have to have a series bibles for every TV show you work on now. And if you plot a novel, you should know how chapter 27 ends and No, you shouldn’t.
Robert Shearman [00:48:04]:
In some ways Doctor approves it. It it’s the joy of creation. It’s the joy of discovery as you’re doing it. Mhmm. Doctor 2 is the best example of it I can think of.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. And and that that to me is what all of it is about, is is discovering something as you’re doing it. Not necessarily even the thing that you thought you were gonna discover. You know, it it may be as simple as, is this gonna work?
Robert Shearman [00:48:28]:
Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:28]:
But it could be something completely unexpected and out of the blue. And if you hadn’t tried the crazy thing in the first place, you never would have learned whatever
Robert Shearman [00:48:36]:
you want. Right. Absolutely right. So Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great show. I mean, I’m I I’m still so amazingly proud that I got to be this terribly small part of it. You should be.
Robert Shearman [00:48:48]:
Because because again, I mean, that just seems bonkers to me that I was ever a Doctor Who writer. Because wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:54]:
I can imagine that feeling, because Yeah.
Robert Shearman [00:48:57]:
Because I should be a Doctor Who writer. Because, you know, I mean, Doctor Who is Doctor Who is my childhood. Yeah. And we it’s anyway. But, yeah. Yeah. Weird. I I still pinch myself.
Robert Shearman [00:49:08]:
I I still can’t quite believe it. I used to have these sort of daydreams about imagining myself, always as a writer, never as a character, as a writer on the Davison years. And I’m imagining that title sequence with the stars pulling Mhmm. Words. Then I’d suddenly realize, I did do it. I have a title sequence. It’s not the one in my head because Right. That’s when I was a fan.
Robert Shearman [00:49:27]:
But I did genuinely write an episode, and I have in this time tunnel, it says, by Robert Shearman, which I look at occasionally. I don’t watch the episode, but I might watch the I might watch my name.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:39]:
Can’t blame you for that.
Robert Shearman [00:49:40]:
It’s it’s the weirdest thing. I can’t I can’t quite get over it. Still, always years later, I can’t quite get over that I actually wrote some Doctor Who. Weird.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:53]:
So I’m gonna change directions again.
Robert Shearman [00:49:56]:
Okay.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:57]:
Because, you know, I know you’ve come come to a bunch of events like this. Yeah. So, obviously, you get to go to interesting places and meet interesting people. And I’m just curious to know if you’ve ever noticed any way in which traveling has influenced what you do creatively?
Robert Shearman [00:50:15]:
I hope it does. I think that the danger is anyway, that you get so locked into what how you think the world works, that you start trying sort of reacting against the world, but it doesn’t obviously adhere to those expectations. I I I was directing a show in India, a few years ago, a play of mine I was asked to go and do for the Delhi festival. And I was in a house of a Maharaja, which is great, and But we had servants. And I didn’t want the servants to put out. And I was dishonoring them by saying, no, it’s okay. And and it’s I think even being here in the States, I mean, we in Britain, we we suffer from the assumption we get how America works, but we don’t. Because we watch movies, and we
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:15]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:51:16]:
Watch TV, and we think we get it, and we watch and it’s always city based stuff. So we can be left genuinely perplexed, not only by, for example, the rise of Donald Trump, which I think is genuinely, for everyone in Britain, pretty much really, really baffling to us. But also just things like healthcare and gun ownership. Because we because we have our own historical the way that we’ve dealt with that, we can’t understand why you don’t just think the same way we do. I mean Mhmm. You speak the same language as us, like Oscar Wilde. You know what I mean?
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:54]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:51:54]:
But but that but that’s But it’s a cultural separation. So the more times I come to America, the more I try to understand that we’re not the same people in in in so many different ways, actually. It isn’t just political ways. It’s it it it’s subtle cultural ways. The way in which you don’t read people in the same way. Mhmm. So you try and make that I mean, I’m writing a novel, I think, soon. I mean, I can’t work out whether I can quite solve it.
Robert Shearman [00:52:26]:
But I want to write a novel about Walt Disney. Cool. But about 3 different Walt Disneys. About a Walt Disney who was born if he’d been born in Britain, or one born in Tsarist, Russia, and one born in America, if with even African American. And so you do the the Walt Disney life story through 3 different cultural environments. I mean, you know, my my Russian Walt Disney ends up as a propagandist for Stalin, secretly making animated films for himself, and for Stalin who’s found out he’s doing them, and keeps him alive long as he’s entertaining him. You know, and it’s it’s fun to do that. And it came out of the fact that I wanted to do a thing about it, because I find Disney so fascinating.
Robert Shearman [00:53:07]:
But I realized I couldn’t write Disney American. Mhmm. Because I can’t write American. I’m British. So I thought, well, I’ll just make Disney British. And I thought, well, if I can do that, I can also, I can I can go crazier? And I can say within the text, I’m doing a Russian Disney, even though I can’t do Russian. I can I can stand apart from that a bit? So when I get to my African American Disney, say, I it it becomes clear that these become totems. If I try to do a life story novel of Walt Disney, I all my dialogue would sound appalling because I I sound British.
Robert Shearman [00:53:45]:
Everything I write sounds stuffy and repressed because that’s what I am. So it’s I don’t know. I think it’s it’s it’s honestly about It doesn’t fix it, but you travel around, and you become more and more aware of the fact that we’re not all the same, and that and there are things to be aware of. And if you can do that, then maybe you can at least address the problems. There there was absolutely nothing worse than people just ham fistedly writing other cultures, and other genders, and other sexualities, as if actually it’s themselves, but it’s okay, I’m gonna say it’s this. Because it just it just seems It’s it’s not it’s not just that it’s a It’s not specifically offensive, although it can be. It’s also just crap, And I just don’t wanna be crap. So that’s I think that’s what it does.
Robert Shearman [00:54:39]:
And I mean, I mean, I mean, I just love travelling. I I love the idea that, I don’t travel to get ideas for stories, but
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:45]:
Right.
Robert Shearman [00:54:46]:
But they come. Mhmm. And it’s often about that cultural imbalance. I I find that fascinating. You know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:56]:
Alrighty.
Robert Shearman [00:54:57]:
Yeah. If If that makes any sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:59]:
It makes perfect sense. It’s a really good answer.
Robert Shearman [00:55:01]:
Oh, good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:02]:
And I think that we are out of time.
Robert Shearman [00:55:06]:
Excellent. Well, not that out of time, but I’m glad that that was okay. Yeah. Good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:12]:
Very good. So thank you.
Robert Shearman [00:55:13]:
You’re very welcome. Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:16]:
That’s today’s episode. Thanks so much for joining me, and a very special thank you to Rob Shearman. Please leave a comment on this episode on Instagram. You’ll find me at f y curiosity. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:43]:
See you next time.