Unproduced Script

I've Wasted My Life

This month’s unproduced script is actually the first 6000 words of a first draft of a novel that I never got round to finishing - ironically given the subject matter. I put this much together in 2008 and fans of my stand up at that time will recognise quite a few of the ideas in this. I am not entirely sure where I was going to go with this, although I am think I was expanding on another stand up idea of an after life possibility. Basically when you die, you get to meet all the people who would have existed if their sperm had made it to the egg instead of yours in the ejaculation that created you. Then you have to rewatch your entire life with each of them individually and they tell you what they would have done with this time had they lived. If you’ve lived an amazing life then they can’t complain, but if you’ve frittered your time away then it’d be an embarrassing eternity of reliving your life millions of times over (in real time) and having to account for yourself.

I am not sure exactly how that would have worked in the novel (which might be the reason that it peters out), but it’s a shame I didn’t give it more of a try. I am not sure if this idea would also have included the Native American spirit guide that I was once informed I had, or if that was another after-life adventure, but I do like the idea that there is an afterlife, but that it holds absolutely no answers and no one there knows if there’s a god or not or why they are where they are. Some might argue there must be a God because otherwise who created this after life and all the stuff in it, but that’s surely the same question you could ask about life. Seems like someone might have put it all together, but equally in all probability it’s just some random shit.

It’s sort of like Groundhog Day, except the thing being relived is a complete lifetime and you can’t change anything. Is it a punishment? Is it an education? Or is it just a random thing that happens for no reason, like being alive probably is in the first place? And what happens after you’ve relived the life 600 million times?

I don’t think I’ll ever go on to finish this idea, but you never know, there’s some funny ideas in it. It’s 17 years old so maybe includes a couple of ideas that might make a few of you bristle, but the character who says them is meant to be an idiot (at least a little bit) and there are certainly still people like this around now, however much you’d like them not to be.

Anyway, this is just one of the limited extras for people who are backing the substack for 14p a day. As always I am going to keep most of this free, but if you have 14p a day spare then you can insert coins to encourage me to write more. It’d be great to have the freedom to try and work more on ideas like this one (though maybe not this one) And if you set 14p a day aside, because it actually only costs 13.6p a day, you’ll have £1.10 left over at the end of the year to spend on anything you want. So we all win.