She’s Back back BAck, Back Again - The Return of Ruth

Who says if you quit a job once, they won’t hire you back?

Nine years ago I sheepishly handed in my notice to Thom and Guy, who after a few years together at Nowadays, had become more like friends to me than anything else. They’d hired me to be their first in-house director and I’d since worked with them for more than three years, creating work for charities you would dream about working for when you’re starting out in this industry.

And it was fun. Really fun. We shot films about kickboxing in the Bronx, hung off the side of climbing walls with the Scouts, even decamped to Kenya for a week to shoot a film about keeping girls in education for Build Africa.

Yup, to some degree, it felt like a break-up of sorts, walking away from a job I truly loved, to pursue my dreams of making things for the big screen.

I felt like an idiot for a little while.  

If you’ve never freelanced before, it’s tough out there. I missed getting to work with pals every day, the cool projects that would just land on my desk, the free coffee, the pestering Thom to buy better coffee, and the wonderful, sweet comfort of… everyone’s favourite - a monthly pay check.  

I’d learnt a huge amount from my time at Nowadays, not least how to survive a night in a creepy clown-themed hotel in the wilds of The Netherlands (but that’s a story for another day). So what happened once I’d gone beyond the point that even David Brent would know it would be a bit much to regret everything and beg for their job back?

Well, I floundered for a short while for sure. And that floundering, I think, is a nearly inescapable part of transitioning from the structure of a working week and a team setup. And yes, confidence dipped in moments (sometimes month-long moments), but I made sure that I kept my focus, I kept being open to opportunities to work, and most importantly I kept writing. I really never stopped writing. And for someone whose goal was to write things, you would be surprised how easy it is, to not write things.

Once I had stapled myself to my desk (needs must) I did eventually manage to sink my teeth into a bunch of the scripts I’d been storing in my brain for a rainy day. That felt huge. As time went by I developed new TV and film projects too, and as I continued to push the creative snowball around, the body of work got bigger, more substantial, until eventually I could look back at several thousand words, a folder full of scripts, that I could genuinely point to and say “not too bad” to. Talking to yourself is another common tick of the self-employed.

Eventually I got to work as a Script Editor on Danny Boyle’s FX show, PISTOL KILL and wrote and directed OCEAN STAR, a part-scripted feature documentary exploring the challenges facing young people in Mauritius. All of which led me to the moment last year where I heard back that we’d finally got the green light for production on a feature film THAT I FUCKING WROTE! That’s right kiddos, all of that time spent tapping away at the keyboard, sending off draft after draft into the hopeless abyss that this industry can sometimes feel like, led me to KILLA BEE, a film that I wrote, and that is starring Gemma Arterton, Ewen Bremner and Nicola Adams OBE!

Not to toot my own trumpet too loudly, but if I can’t go all-caps for that, what’s the point of the all-caps button in the first place?

One of the things that I’ve been really grateful over these years out in the wilderness, has been the relationships I’ve maintained with the Nowadays team – not just Thom and Guy, who I would hang out and shoot the shit with whenever we could line up lunchtimes, but the rest of the gang who’d been in-house when I left. Arianna, Sienna, Artur, all legends, all great friends, all to this day some of my closest allies in the industry.

And if there’s a lesson to all of this rambling. It’s maybe to make sure that you do keep those relationships running, that you do keep turning up for birthday pints and hip-hop dance nights, and sharing opportunities and promoting one another. Because you never know when you’re going to need that support network. Or, indeed, that you might work together again.

Which brings us to today. Me sitting within a few metres from Thom and Guy in their fancy new Auspicious Soho HQ, having decided to get back on board the good ship Nowadays.

It’s the perfect next step for me. I’m buzzed to be back. I get to work within a team again, directing the range of brilliant content that Nowadays is known for, while my feature film is shooting and I start to think about exactly what comes next on the feature writing front.

As the great philosopher Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics once mused, sometimes “You gotta go there, to come back”.

To be continued.

Ruth x