Episode 82: Class of 2024 - Toby, MA English Literature

Matt speaks to Toby Appleyard (MA English Literature, 2024), an aspiring screenwriter who is determined to persevere in an industry that has no playbook. They cover the strangeness of graduating and the conflicting desires for stability and pursuing one’s dream. Toby looks forwards to a screenwriting masters at Screen Academy Scotland.

Multi Story Edinburgh is a student-produced podcast that features snapshots of life as a new graduate. Each episode features a different path and a different story. In this season Matt speaks to five recent graduates from the Class of 2024 about the ins and outs of post-graduation life.

Multi Story Edinburgh has been created and produced by the Alumni Relations team at the University of Edinburgh. If you are interested in telling your story, please get in touch and let’s talk!

All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.

Music
Detective Begining Adventures by KonovalovMusic. Sourced from Tribe of Noise.

Transcript

[Theme music]

Toby  00:05

And I think it's breaking away from that convention, which is particularly daunting for me, because it is, it would be easier for me to say I want to do the screenwriting thing. I'll give it 18 months, and then at the end of those eighteen months, we don't do that, I'll go do a graduate LLB, and then I'll be a lawyer, and that's, I think, particularly, what I'm trying to combat psychologically with myself

[Theme music]

Matt  00:31

I'm Matt O'Malley, your host for season six of Multi Story Edinburgh, the podcast which tells the stories of our recent graduates as they begin to navigate life post-graduation. These are really unique and insightful conversations for those who are going through or anticipating the plunge that is graduating. So whatever your path may be, however sure or unsure you are about your next steps, this is the place for you, and today, we speak to Toby. 

Toby  00:57

I am Toby Appleyard. I am a after I've just graduated from English lit the University of Edinburgh, like a lot of graduates in sort of, in this sort of mysterious, like no man's land, where the future is terrifying and exciting at the same time. But yeah, that's, that's me. Yeah.

Matt  01:21

You mentioned you just graduated. How many weeks out are we from that?

Toby  01:27

How many weeks out? I graduated on Saturday, the 13th of July. 

Matt  01:31

Does that feel like ages away or yesterday, or?

Toby  01:35

It feels, it feels a while ago? Definitely, it's, it's this weird sort of period in between finishing your degree, and then you graduate. And then, at the moment, I'm working. So it feels detached from everything else. It's easy to forget that's kind of happened.

Matt  01:53

You mentioned you're working right now. What job are you doing? 

Toby  01:57

Yes, so it's a little bit there's a couple of things I've gotten the go at the go at the moment, for sort of six weeks, because I needed a stopgap. I was a bit unsure. I'd applied for a lot of jobs. I had approximately zero success, zero interviews, even for the ones where I thought I'm a top candidate here, I’m sorted. Nothing, usually just ignored. So I took a job working for a company called The Wild Outdoors. They run summer camps for kids, and I've just been teaching like five to 12 year olds, archery, axethrowing, putting them in Zorbs, letting them run at each other, adhering to health and safety. 

Matt  02:32

Yeah, I was gonna say, are they willingly going into these Zorbs? 

Toby  02:34

Yeah, they're willingly going into these Zorbs. They're not throwing the axes at one another. They're throwing them at targets. I am trained. To do so, but, yeah, that's at the moment I'm working with kids.

Matt  02:45

That's great. That's great. You're doing that. That's your six-week step. Yes, a plan, yes, definitely cool. Tell us. Okay, yeah.

Toby  02:55

The plan is, well, the plan was, actually, I should maybe start with this. The plan was to try and work, at least for a couple of years, get a job, maybe in publishing. I worked in a bookshop for three years, and I also I ran the publishing society at the university. So I kind of felt, with those two experiences on my CV, and I kind of had a knowledge of the industry, how it worked, that that would be the route I would go. And I guess the limitation I found was that I wanted to stay in Edinburgh, and publishing as an industry, which I think a lot of English literature graduates might struggle with, is very London centric. So if you're not prepared to make that move, it becomes a lot harder to find work, which is kind of the lesson that I learned in that sort of period between March and, well, I guess end of June, when I was really sort of applying for these jobs non-stop. So I decided I was getting a wee bit panicky, a wee bit antsy. There's only so many months out of university where you're technically unemployed that you can really muster. I'd worked, I worked throughout my OE degree, and I stopped working just in the month prior to my dissertation to focus on that, and then being idle for that long didn't quite sit right. So when I got a bit nervous, I took the job of outdoors. And I also, I mean, people use the phrase panic masters. I resent that phrase slightly. I think you can do a master's when you're a bit unsure of what to do. But I think, generally speaking, it's a big commitment people are making, and they tend to have thought it through. I don't think that many people are doing a master's that they that they have no interest in, or they will not serve them at all. So I have applied to do a screenwriting Master's, which is done through Screen Academy Scotland, which is sort of a gateway. They do a lot of directing, producing, screenwriting programs. It can be a good gateway into the industry and that just they operate through Napier as their campus, but it's sort of a collaboration, I'd say, between the University and the company. 

Matt  04:57

Okay, so would you say? You've just, you've almost just orientated from publishing and kind of now writing's the next thing for you. Or?

Toby  05:08

I mean, writing was always the what I wanted to do long term. It's been what I wanted to do long term since I was 12. It's just that the form it's taken has changed. Initially, I wanted to write stories when I was little, and then poetry. And then I tried, tried poetry, I discovered I was really bad at poetry. So went back to stories, and I tried that, and I discovered it I was slightly better than I was a poetry was still not very good. Then I switched to screenwriting, and I had a wee bit more success. 

Matt  05:34

What makes you say you're not you're not good? 

Toby  05:36

Well... I think having, who am I to say that? That's a good question. I think, having worked at a bookshop for a number of years, I met a lot of really, really brilliant poets and a lot of really, really brilliant authors. And I think I recognised that I'm younger than they are, and some of them might have started at 30 or 35 or 40 or 45 and maybe, who knows, maybe one day I'll be like a T.S. Elliot prize winning through those conversations, I think I realized that my interests, at least at the moment, didn't align. I didn't see it in the same way they saw it. And that's not to say that that is something that I could rule out, that the fact that the idea that I could ever do that, but I just felt that the stuff I was good at in terms of writing. I mean, I always thought when I wrote short stories, dialog was the thing I was best at, and then screenwriting was a dialog heavy format, and then my interest, I watched a lot of films, and I just sort of everything started to intersect. And I thought screenwriting might be something to try, and then it's led into this Masters and this Masters, and that I'd looked at for the last two years, which is why, particularly, I am refuting the fact that there's a panic Master's. But I decided I think within 10 days of the deadline that I would apply for it got in and then. 

Matt  05:37

Okay, yeah, no, I buy that. I don't think that's panic. So if that's two years down. Who are you to say that? 

Toby  06:57

Thank you. 

Matt  06:58

Down the pipeline, and then 10 days before the deadline, it's up to debate. But...

Toby  07:05

Look, some people just need to do things like you need that push. You know that little the deadlines approaching that that which forces you to do the work

Matt  07:12

I'm going to go back to publishing because that sounded like something that just felt like a big wall for you, just not receiving anything back. Was that just a bit demotivating? 

Toby  07:27

Oh, it was, it was, it was completely demoralising. There was a period where it sort of it became, it was briefly all consuming, and then it became something I started procrastinating, because I just was getting some negative emotional reaction to the to the numerous failed applications. And I think it's one of those industries, I suppose, like with film, and I don't really know anybody in either industry, which might be an issue where, if you know somebody to act, that's a really, it's really important. And that's not to say it's essential, but it's they still operate in that sort of cronyism, nepo, nepotism, way that other industries, thankfully have been able to move on from. 

Matt  08:14

Yeah.

Toby  08:15

But there is definitely a case of, I think, particularly in London. It's so London centric that there's certain circles that if you operate within, it's so much easier to find a door that opens a little bit easier for you than for somebody else. That's not to say that you don't have to work for it still, or that there aren't people who have a parent in publishing who are absolutely brilliant at what they do. It's just that getting that start to that start point to it's just a little bit tougher, in publishing I found.

Matt  08:42

Yeah, yeah. They call that that kind of foot in the door where you can. All the hard work, you can open it in the end. But

Toby  08:49

Either that or that's just my excuse for not getting the jobs. I'm telling myself.  

Matt  08:54

Well, you're telling the world now. You know, I've talked to different people from different academic backgrounds, and some have very prescribed paths. From that academic background. Is it something you're conscious of? Other people having pretty clear paths, and seemingly they're all okay. Is that something you think about? 

Toby  09:17

Yeah, that. I think about that all the time. I think, particularly a lot of people in my inner circle, I suppose, are going on, whether they've done vocational degrees or they're going on to pursue something that is a vocation. My girlfriend, for instance, she, um, she's going to do, she studied English lit at St Andrews, and she's now going to do the LLB grad, the graduate LLB, which is a conversion into law. And that means that she'll do that for two years, she'll have a traineeship, and then she'll work as lawyer. And she would work working as a lawyer, in theory, if she'd like to, until, you know, she retires so 40 years of in that line of work. Hmm, and I feel lucky in the sense that I have a strong idea of what I'd like to do, which is screenwriting, but there just is not the same. I can't do a course and then guarantee that I'll have do two years now traineeship, and then I'll be doing that for 40 years. I could be 35 working at it every single day, and I could not have worked. I could be 50 working at every day, and then all of a sudden it might come together, or, who knows, maybe in six months. Fingers crossed. Uh, Steven Spielberg calls me and is like, I just love your work. Which is, which is probably what that's the realistic approach of the three. I'd say, you know Stevie, as I call him, just, 

Matt  10:38

Oh, okay, the first name shortened.

Toby  10:41

Nickname. 

Matt  10:43

That's the word. 

Toby  10:44

There is definitely a temptation, though, to give in to that sort of desire for stability, and know that there's a certain route that you could take where probably, for me, at least as an individual, the graduate LLB, I have the grades to go and do it. I could probably enjoy it. I'm sure I could live a happy life doing it, equally, teaching. I'm working with kids at the moment. I've always liked the idea of teaching, but it's being able to differentiate between the part of me that I have to ask myself, do I want to do this, or is that a temptation that exists because I'm scared of the thing I actually want to do, or is it, is it that teaching is a calling? And I think having thought about it, and I had plenty of time to think about it when I'm on my fourth film of the day and I'm like, I need to get some sunshine, touch grass and all that stuff. And I sort of realized that the draws that those things presented was large, were largely draws that existed out of my own fear of the challenging, scary thing that I actually wanted to do. And I think people always say, you're young, do it while you're young, which I think isn't necessarily a fair way to look at it, because it puts all this pressure on you to do this really bold, courageous thing. People say, move to London while you're young. It's the only chance. And then there's this expectation that emerges that, oh my gosh, I'm graduated, but I'm still, you know, I'm 21 at the moment, and then I'm 21 the world's ahead of me. What? And it sort of it becomes overwhelming, because you're expected to just go and pursue some dream, until in five years, in six years, whatever age, people decide that it's inappropriate to continue pursuing dreams and then come home and do a normal job. So, I'm trying my best not to look at it as a I need to give everything right now and more of a this could be a prolonged thing, and I think it's breaking away from that convention, which is particularly daunting for me, because it is. It would be easier for me to say I want to do the screenwriting thing. I'll give it 18 months, and then at the end of those 18 months, we don't do that, I'll go do a graduate LLB, and then I'll be a lawyer. And that's, I think, particularly what I'm trying to combat psychologically within myself. 

Matt  12:59

Yeah, I guess the fact is that make it harder is, you know, your friends around you doing what they seem to be content and choosing those kind of paths and those x number of months until they switch to something else. Have you received any advice? Because it sounds like you've been, you know, thinking, which is great, having lots of thinking time. Has anyone fed those thoughts with a piece of advice that's kind of stuck with you during graduation, or even before that graduation? 

Toby  13:29

Gosh, okay, I mean, there's a there's a piece of advice that somebody gave me in relation to writing, and I think I don't remember who the quote is from initially, and I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't know exactly, but I think it applies to but I think it applies to a lot of things. In my view, to take it as a broader statement, it's never been trying to remember, which is that your taste gets better faster than your ability. So I think we're often in this period, we know exactly what we want to do, exactly what we want to be, and the fact that we aren't quite capable of achieving that yet is so frustrating and terrifying and daunting, but we have to recognize that that is just our taste getting better. We're not able to register what we want to be, who we want to be, the type of person we want to be, the type of career we want to have. We just have to wait a little bit sometimes, for that discrepancy between our taste and our ability to level out and at a certain point, I suppose your, the hope is that your ability matches your taste and you it becomes a bit easier to think and act positively, towards whatever your goal is, your life, what you're trying to do, rather than look at it and say, Why am I not something else? Why am I not this level yet? So thinking about that, and then trying to be conscious about the moments where I am being really critical of myself, and recognize that in writing terms, if you're talking about screenwriting, it could be, you know, why am I not Paul Thomas Anderson or why am I not Charlie Kaufman or Greta Gerwig or whoever it may be? Why am I not Spike Lee, but recognizing that Charlie Kaufman didn't wake up one day and was like, Yeah, I'm the best screen writer in the world. It took my time. And I'm sure there was a moment early on where he was thinking, why am I not Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett or whatever it may be.

Matt  15:19

Yeah? Wow, yeah, no, amazing. I hadn't heard of that taste ability. Thought about it like that. That's really, really nice way to put it. Of course, I couldn't just let my graduates go without them telling me their favorite spots and things to do in Edinburgh.

Toby  15:40

So, yeah, my two hidden gems in Edinburgh would probably be Lannan Bakery in Stockbridge. We're just kind of blown up, and there's only three or four days a week you can go, but it's just the best pastries I’ve ever had. So, if you get a chance, you're in Stockbridge, I recommend that. There's also Ante, which is a cafe just on Leith Walk opposite where I used to work when I was studying at uni, and just beautiful coffee, relaxing decor, it just feels like a very peaceful place to be. So yeah, Lannan Bakery and Ante

[Theme music]

Matt  16:19

So we've reached the end of this story, but fear not we have more to tell. To hear our other graduates from the class of 24 head to our website www.ed.ac.uk/alumni/new-graduates. Or just search Multi Story Edinburgh, wherever you get your podcasts. But for now, that's goodbye from me, and I'll catch you in our next story.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai