today I am...

1. Sitting in a cafe in Budapest, which is the city I flew to late last night to spend a few months and hang out/do freelance work/write a masterpiece. Well, to write something, at any rate...

2. Feeling delighted to find a site-specific/immersive theatre festival in the offing, and hoping some of the stuff is in English.

3. Feeling slightly embarrassed to be the kind of person who publicly declares excitement about site-specific/immersive theatre.

4. Relieved that the letting agents have finally got round to sending round a cleaner/plumber, although wondering why they couldn't have done it before we moved in, since they had two months notice.

5. Wondering if I will ever be rich enough to buy a house and not have to deal with letting agents. Although not letting it bother me too much...

6. Wondering how long it will take to learn basic Hungarian. (And deciding, er, quite long, probably. It's flipping hard!)

7. Feeling glad to be here. And reminding myself it's all an adventure...

time management (or lack of)

random clock picture

I bought a time management book a couple of years ago. 

It had been packaged to look all modern, but inside the advice basically consisted of 'get your secretary to do it'. Presumably it was written in ye olden days when you could smoke in offices and people used typewriters and all managers had secretaries to brighten up the place and do a bit of light shorthand.

In the brave new world of doing everything for yourself, it was entirely flipping useless.

I'm not sure whether time management techniques really work for creative writing. I can go for ages without writing (see: the last few months), and then be inspired be a random conversation and plunge straight back into it (see: last night).

I should add that it's different, I think, with a commission and a deadline. But for me, ongoing creative writing happens when it happens.

Having said all this, I do find the following things help:

1. Don't be afraid of writing rubbish: the longer I leave it, the harder it can seem to get back into it. It becomes more of a big deal. So I think there's definitely an argument for writing a scene or two even if you're pretty sure it's crap because it's still writing and it counts for something and it can be edited.

2. Using scraps of time: I've never sat down and devoted a day to writing. Not even an afternoon. It doesn't work for me. I feel under pressure. I procrastinate. Instead I write in the gaps between all my other work. Half an hour seems like an optimum time for the creative stuff. I can do longer in an editing phase, because it doesn't require the same amount of raw energy. Editing is more of a reflective, biscuits and cups of tea phase.

3. Um, that's it. Those are the things I do.

I'm not exactly filled with hints and tips today. But always interested in hearing other people's techniques...

me vs not knowing what I'm doing

There's a myth, I think, that emotional turmoil is good for creativity. As if creativity only comes from heartbreak and absinthe and living in garrets with questionable bathroom facilities.

Maybe it's true, to an extent? Big emotional experiences can certainly feed your work. There's a reason why every second rate indie band and their cousin has a break-up album, all snivelling ballads and 'eff-you' declarations of moving on to better things.

Of course, it doesn't always make it good.

Right now, I'm finding emotional turmoil is getting in the way of getting on with stuff. Because all the time I spend angsting about and staring moodily into the middle distance is time I'm not spending getting on with actual writing. All the mental energy I'm expending on little questions - like what am I going to do with the rest of my life - leaves me much much less to spare for being creative in any way. Thinking of a mildly intelligent facebook status update is a challenge right now.

Hoping for a bit of stability soon. Not so much as to make life boring, but enough that I can happily sit typing up the latest script (there is one, I have ideas, hell, I have notes) for a few hours without stressing wildly over job applications, preparing to move country, wondering what I'm doing with my life/career/everything else...

let the bloggers in

The Wheel (image by Gottfried Helnwein)

Oh, I like this. The National Theatre of Scotland have issued a social media call. for their latest production: The Wheel, by Zinnie Harris. This, presumably, in addition to the more standard press call.

They've set the barriers for involvement pretty low - anyone with a blog, facebook account or twitter feed can go along and take some pictures and find out more. So a self-selecting group of interested parties can go along and promote the play.

I don't know if many theatres have already gone down this route. But I'd like to see it happening more. Not just because I have a blog and like the theatre (send me free tickets, people, obviously). But because it reflects the way that most people hear about new stuff and get interested in it.

I often look at reviews in the press, but I'm just as likely to be swayed by a trusted friend talking about a play on their blog, or mentioning it on Facebook.Perhaps even more so. And of course, it all helps to generate a buzz, which takes interested theatre-goers from 'maybe I'll get round to seeing this' to 'must book now'.

Oh, and here's a video about the play: 

getting ATTENTION as a writer

Harry Potter and the tenous connection picture opportunity

I had a short play on in Camden recently. Afterwards, one of the actors told me that his next job was to wander around in a cloak pretending to be a deatheater, at the red carpet premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2.

Which is a pretty cool gig!  And of course, it left me wondering if I can inject some kind of Harry Potter angle into my writing CV. I can't. Obviously I can't.

Writing is the main thing. OF COURSE. But a neat marketing angle doesn't do any harm either. My first ever script that got produced was part of the Sitcom Trials - a comedy competition. One of the other writers sent out a press release, based on the fact that one of the actors was the niece of the bloke who used to play Mike in Coronation Street. Clutching at straws? Hell, if it gets bums on seats, it has to be worth a try...

Failing spurious celebrity connections, I also like this approach - the website for Redundancy: the musical.  Writer Naomi Lowde has created the site for her musical before it's even been staged.

She's also set up a Facebook page to start gathering followers. I think this is a great idea. You have to market your work to a theatre, company, or producer to get it on. And if you can prove that you already have a fanbase in place, well, all to the good. And especially with a strong concept like this.

My next play isn't quite at this stage sadly. I don't thing the world is ready for www.playaboutsomestuffnotsurequitewhatyetbutabitpoliticalyeah?andreallyfunny.com

It is the world's loss, obviously.

the ideas phase

And so it transpires I am now in the ideas phase. I've finished a short piece, there are some rewrites to be getting on with, but there's a gap in my writing schedule for the main event. The thing I have to write. The one that gets under my skin right the way until completion.

The ideas phase is a dangerous place to be.

The best plays you (n)ever write are those ghostly, fantasy plays that get written entirely in your head, and never make it to the page. You can spend hours on them - imagining dialogue that is heartbreaking in its poignancy, side-splitting in its comedy. They will bring a profundity to the British stage never seen before or since. You are dazzled with the brillance of your ideas.

Almost without exception, these plays don't work. I don't know quite what happens, but when it comes to putting them down on paper, everything is lost. The dialogue, that was so brilliant in your head comes out stilted and unconvincing. The plot doesn't make sense. That character, that amazing character that was going to have Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart fighting to play the part? Yeah, turns out he's a total wally, and dull to boot.

The solution - the only solution I've come up with to all this - is to write it down first. When the first inklings of a work of genius arise, I get me straight to my notebook. And I know, pretty quickly, whether it will work or not. But honestly, some of these plays I've written in my head.... It is no exaggeration to say they could have been literally better than Shakespeare.

today I was distracted by shopping

Short floral culottes. Why?

...I say shopping, I mean wandering round the summer sales in a daze and being too overwhelmed to actually buy anything.

I am rubbish at shopping in lots of ways.

I pick stuff up and then I make the mistake of asking myself whether I need it, and whether it goes with anything, and is there honestly a gap in my wardrobe for short floral culottes or whatever the item in consideration. And the answers are usually no and no and no.

(There are a lot of short floral culottes around at the moment. I would like to embrace fashion, but fashion is not making it easy for me. Dammit. )

When I go out on a mission for something I really need: summer dresses, say, or work trousers - I invariably can't find anything, and come back with a black top that cost in the region of £12 to £18 instead.

I have this sense that by now I'm supposed to have a capsule wardrobe, which is to say a set of clothes which can be combined endless clever ways and made into new outfits with the addition of a belt, or a scarf.

Instead, I have lots of tops that go with one or less pairs of trousers that I own. There is no coherence in my personal style. I don't have a look. I just have a load of clothes stuffed in a wardrobe and if I get out of the house wearing stuff that is clean, and kind of matches, that counts as a successful day.

So this is why I wander in a trance-like state around high street shops, and don't quite manage to buy anything.

And this is why the Next Big Project didn't get started this afternoon. The only advantage of being in the, ahem, ideas phase, is that everything is research. OK? All this pottering about is research. Shush over there.