easily distracted writer

anniversary-esque

2012-02-08T21:24:00.000Z

This time a year ago, I jacked everything in. I left my job and my (rented, shared) flat and put stuff in storage and set out. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a right lot of money. I just had this kind of hopeful, nervous belief that things would somehow just about work out alright.

I went to India and travelled around being awed by friendly people and stunning temples and the most beautiful mountains in the world and life-threatening driving to get to them.

I came back to London and stayed on sofas and felt some angst to be doing this in my thirties.

I moved to Budapest, and continue to be impressed and delighted by the experience of living abroad. (mental right-wing governments aside).

I fell in love (swiftly, glorously) and out of it again (slowly, painfully).

I did a minimal amount of writing, but a maximum amount of living.

If I was writing this as a real-life story for a women's magazine, there would be a Triumphant Conclusion. The Unforeseen Setbacks would be overcome, it would all crescendo to a Moment of Truth, and I would be sure that Everything Had Worked Out Great In The End.

I'm not sure I ever feel quite like that. Life is complicated. There are ups and downs, wherever in the world you are. Today is not a great day. I don't really know where I'm going or what I'm doing.

But there's never a day when I regret leaving a job where I felt chained to a desk every day, looking out over the grey roofs of south London in a office devoid of life, devoid of laughter. There's never a day when I regret choosing the complicated mess and uncertainty of adventure and risk and taking a change and sometimes feeling down but sometimes feeling up in the clouds. Always, whatever my mood, feeling alive.

today I am...

2011-09-06T17:03:00.000+01:00

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)

2011-08-25T14:56:00.000+01:00

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

2011-08-12T17:19:00.000+01:00

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

2011-07-28T13:29:00.002+01:00

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

2011-07-22T15:49:00.000+01:00

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

2011-07-19T23:06:00.001+01:00

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

2011-07-15T19:03:00.001+01:00

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.

write what you know

2011-07-13T17:43:00.003+01:00

I started writing plays because I did an Arvon course - something I would highly recommend. Douglas Maxwell was one of the tutors and he had lots of very wise things to say about bring a playwright. This included being an expert on what you were writing on. Not just on the facts though, on the emotions.

It was a real breakthrough for me, this idea that you had to have an emotional connection to your work. That it's the only thing that gets you writing, and keeps you writing, and makes you write well, or at least as well as you're able to.

Lots of my writing is about hurt, disappointment and anger. The thing is, I'm not relentlessly miserable. (Except when I listen to the Today programme and shout at the Tories.) But these emotions are all in there, and they're really good places to write from. Even comedy. Especially comedy.

I thought of all this because I was browsing the t'internet in my perpetual quest to waste time and I came across some more of Douglas's advice, and it's all pretty brilliant, and worth a read. So do.

Presentation

2011-07-08T21:17:00.005+01:00

When I was a teenager I had a brief foray into amateur dramatics. In the heady days of fearless youth, I got up on a stage, and acted. (Badly, but enthusiastically.)

I even sang a bit. (In musicals. Because I was supposed to. Not just randomly, in the middle of Pinter of something.)

My trick, as I recall, was to leave my glasses off, so I couldn't see the audience. And yes, yes, I occasionally bumped into a table, or went off the wrong way, but that was basically the only way I could do it.

I'm giving a presentation tomorrow, as part of a postgraduate course. I'm incredibly nervous. It's not as bad as acting. I don't have to ask what my motivation is, or remember any lines. But it's still a but scary.

Unfortunately tomorrow I do have to wear my glasses or I won't be able to see the Powerpoint slides. So cross fingers for a sympathetic audience...

Chicken Soup with Barley

2011-06-29T19:06:00.006+01:00

Samantha Spiro and Danny Webb in the Royal Court production.

Does plot or character drive theatre?

In Arnold Wesker's Chicken Soup with Barley, the answer, regrettably, is neither.

The play presents the disintegration of a family - the Kahns - in line with the disintegration of an ideology - communism. It's neatly structured in three acts, set in 1936, 1946 and 1956. The last year coincides with the violent repression of the Hungary by the Soviet Union, and the certainty that even post-Stalin, communism is a nasty, repressive regime.

But still, Sarah Kahn, matriarch as misguided hero, or something, stubbornly clings to the ideology of her youth, as all others abandon it.

It all has the potential to be fascinating. The mix of the personal and political. The strong female character at the heart of the action. But it just doesn't work.

The lack of action is a real problem. This is a political play that seemingly aspires to be a kitchen sink drama. Most of the first act consists of people sitting around a table talking about all the exciting things that are happening offstage (the battle of Cable St, an event which should be ripe for drama if ever there was one...)

Heck, I don't know if I've just been spoilt by the likes of Rupert Goold, who throw everything at the audience to create a frenzy of sound and action and entertainment. But honestly, in the protracted silence where the main character clears the table for 5 minutes for NO DRAMATIC REASON whatsover, I just felt aggrieved. That's my precious bloody time the director is wasting with this attempt to, um, um no - I can't even speculate what the director is attempting.

The characters are under-developed and unbelievable. It's almost impossible to like or care about them. Not through any fault of the actors I should add. Samatha Spiro does a great job in the central role of Sarah Kahn, but she's good despite the production, not because of it.

I get the sense that this is what (bad) theatre was like in the olden days. Solid, indigestible, with a vague promise of being good for you in some way that it doesn't really deliver on.

I should point out that my two theatre going companions were almost entirely in agreement. But none of us are remotely in tune with the critical consensus is that it's brilliant. I don't know why the critics think this. But they're wrong.

hello again

2011-06-25T21:15:00.006+01:00

This is what I did: I resigned from my job and went to India. And I sort of thought about writing a big serious play about Important Things while I was there. But instead what I mainly did was to see lots of places and do lots of interesting things. And every day I woke up and gave thanks that I had escaped sitting in an office all day, burning through my confidence reserves at a dangerous rate and quietly going mad.

India was often challenging but endlessly fascinating. And out of it I wrote something new. I wonder if you can guess whether it was

a) a hard-hitting piece about poverty and globalisation
b) an experimental piece based around slums
c) a ludicrous comedy based around a Mills and Boon romantic novel.

Yeah. It was the Mills and Boon one. No discernable India references whatsoever. No political agenda. Just some funny stuff about romantic heroes wearing ruffles. Inspiration at its randomest...

This month I am mainly being distracted by

2010-11-30T23:15:00.004Z

Matters of the heart: turns out I do have a heart! I wasn't sure for a while. Complicated, as always. These things always are. Especially as it turns out I'm attracted to the kind of lovely arty men who are SO MUCH fun to be with and SO UNLIKELY to be remotely sane and grounded.

All of which is pretty entertaining in any case. But not leaving me a lot of spare energy for writing. All my creative skill is being used up in emailing long and heartfelt and funny missives (this is a long distance relationship, soon to be internationally long distance because obviously I don't do things in any kind of simple way, not me...)

So the writing projects are buggered. Although you could argue that there is no finer writing project to be involved with than this. Playwriting will have to wait, then, for now...

hello lamppost

2010-10-28T21:43:00.009+01:00

I met someone interesting a few weeks ago. I don't really know how I feel about this person except it's not like on rubbish dates where I find myself telling my face to look interested in whatever they're saying, cos I'm busy trying to be someone else. It's not like that at all. Beyond that I don't know.

I am being a complete woman about the whole thing by which I mean telling 50 people a day about the latest unexciting updates on the whole scenario. (I am in quite a tedious phase, I can't deny it. Like when someone says 'I'm thinking of moving house' or some such and I say 'oh that's interesting, this bloke I like lives in a house.')

I am also frantically scanning every text and email for every piece of evidence to show that this is great and totally going to work out or this is all rubbish and a total disaster, delete as applicable according to mood.

Do men do all this? I doubt it.

Sigh. We shall see...

Rehearsal

2010-09-20T23:15:00.004+01:00

I sat in on my first ever proper rehearsal for something I've written tonight. It was very exciting. There were proper actorly things going on about motivation, and backstories and all sorts. I felt a bit unsure of my role, to be honest. I mainly sat there, nodding wisely whenever the actors said anything about their characters, which was mostly what I had in mind, with occasional flights of fancy on their part. This is fine, to be fair. The important stuff is in the script. I'm quite happy for others to fill in the gaps. That kind of feels like the point.

Sometimes they asked me things about the setting, and I had to admit that I hadn't fully defined it. Afterwards I thought I should have said something clever about it being deliberately vague in order to represent the essential homogenity of modern workplace. I didn't think of it in the moment though, I just gibbered a bit and looked embarrassed. This is why I'm a writer, not an actor.

Actors intimidate me slightly, if truth be told. They're often very funny and entertaining and have big expressive personalities which I sort of envy and admire. I'd like to think that I retain an air of mystique or some such. In fact I often just feel awkward and uninteresting in comparison. The funny stuff goes in the scripts. (I hope).

This time next week it will all be over. I'm cautiously optimistic. I've had a few things put on now, so I'm less willing to judge from the first readthrough. It will depend on how things develop at rehearsals (I won't be going to them all). And it will depend on the venue and the audience on the night. This is what makes it scary. This is what makes it so flipping EXCITING...

Hurrah!

2010-09-16T22:59:00.002+01:00

Not one, not two but three productions in the offing! By which I mean one fully staged, and two rehearsed readings of short scripts I have written...

'Tis amazing, and very gratifying, and exactly like that bus metaphor (simile?) which it would be embarrassingly cliched to use, thinking of myself as a writer as I do...

(I didn't experience the truth of the bus metaphor till I moved to London. In other parts of Britain, the scenario would be, 'you wait ages for a bus to come along, but it doesn't ever arrive, because of cuts to the service due to deregulation, privatisation etc)

Not sure how I've made this mainly about buses, but anyway, the Thailand opus and the scary attempt at writing something not a comedy are both getting outings and for this I am glad.

More soon, sleep beckons...

Arts funding cuts: almost certainly a genuine document about them

2010-08-23T21:17:00.007+01:00

Memo - Strictly confidential

From: Conservative Press and PR office To: Jeremy Hunt, Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Hi Jeremy,

As you may be aware, we recently had our blue-sky-thinking-outside-the-box away day. Cuts in arts funding haven’t gone down very well and the deptartment isn't very popular at the moment. So we put our best brains onto it (Tabitha and George the intern), and here’s our thoughts on how to sell the cuts as a positive force for good.

The key is to focus on innovation. Whenever people talk about cuts, gently remind them that artists thrive in difficult economic times. Where they say ‘disastrous loss of funding’, we say ‘opportunity to rebrand and repurpose.’ Here’s some stuff we brainstormed – think you’ll agree it's dynamite.

Theatre companies
Lots of opportunities here.

Verbatim: don’t bother with a writer.
Site specific: hold your show outside to cut down on rent, bills etc.
Community-based: get local people to act for free.

Fiction
People have very short attention spans these days, so instead of novels, why not just write a blog? Or set up a twitter account? If you must write something longer, why not just print out and hand round photocopies at local library.

Poetry
Haikus in, epic poetry out. Will save significantly on print and publishing costs.

Film
Filmmakers: just source your stuff off Youtube. Honestly, there is nothing on there that doesn’t already exist. Or else film it on your iPhone. They’re very advanced these days.

Blue sky thinking action point: can we get BBC to take lead and film next series of Sherlock entirely on iPhone?

Music
Apparently, ‘playing the spoons’ was big in the 50s. Can we encourage a revival? Spoons significantly cheaper than guitar/synthesiser-based music. Have sounded out Scouting for Girls people as possible early adopters. Cautiously optimistic.

Also, remind people of the Smiths

We did a kind of step-by-step chart for this, which might be helpful

People still seem to like the Smiths.
The Smiths made their music in the 80s.
The Conservatives were in power in the 80s.
(this is the clever bit!)
We can take full credit for providing the vibrant cultural environment that allowed this kind of music to thrive. We did it in then, and we’ll do it again!

Blue sky thinking action point: could we get ‘mass unemployment = great music’ to work as a slogan?

Multimedia
Gently remind artists that twitter and facebook are free. No reason why all marketing activities can’t be done on there.

You might want to run with one of these the next time they use your name as rhyming slang again. LOL!

Best,
Your PR gurus

P.s. When some addled hippy demands to know why we’re no longer funding their innovative parsnip sculptures, simply say: ‘Well at least we’re not taking the country to illegal war!’ (Checked this with the Foreign Office, no imminent plans to invade Iran, so you’re good to go for next few months at least.)

Park

2010-08-15T22:40:00.004+01:00

There's a really nice park near where I used to live. It's a massive expanse of space, with a canal at the bottom, and an excellent cafe. I used to go jogging there. When I started out, I did 2 mins at a time, with about 5 mins walking inbetween. Eventually - very, very slowly - I got up to being able to run for 40 mins, or 5km. (The same thing, in case you're wondering. AKA incredibly slow. But still.)

I used to go to this park all the time. I walked round it with friends and put the world to rights. I pottered on my own and dreamed impossible dreams. I took a notebook and wrote.

I left my old house in a manner not of my choosing. And I've missed it for a really long time. So much so that I couldn't bring myself to go back to the area, even though it's really not that far from where I live now. I couldn't bring myself to go back to the park either. Because it reminded me of a time when I felt like anything was possible. And I haven't exactly felt that way for a little while.

I went back today. An impromptu visit on my bike. It was everything I remembered and more. I really enjoyed it. And it occured to me that it was in that very park that I wrote a little sketch that turned into my first ever script. The script got staged, remarkably enough. And I went on a writing course, and I kept writing and it felt really good.

I haven't wanted to write for the last few months. Not this blog, not anything. But I think maybe I can again.

This is a long way of saying that after the last few months hiatus I am, officially (ish) back.

And I will be writing things that are considerably less self-indulgent than this. I promise.

cold hard cash

2010-06-09T22:59:00.004+01:00

I have very few rules about writing, but one of them has always been that I won't pay anyone to look at my script. Whether it's entries fees or script consultancies or whatever...

Until now.

I ummed and ahhed. But in the end I decided I would, with a heavy heart, pay a £10 fee to enter a competition.

The reasons are twofold, and I will elaborate.

1. Good, old-fashioned enthusiasm to get this script on somewhere. It's proper and it makes sense and I like it. (Which is why I've sent it to about 7 different things and am waiting to hear back on all of them.)

2. I know some people who run open submission showcases, and to be honest, they get sent a right load of old shit. Obviously, some good stuff in there. But there are a lot of people who dust off their script from the bottom drawer and send it in without bothering to look at the guidelines.

'You wanted romantic comedy? Well, this is more of an Estonian hitman revenge thriller, but I think with the right director, you could really find the laughs...'

Of course, I've never been guilty of this...

Oh no, wait. hang on. I actually have. Sort of.

Here's the thing: last year when this same showcase opened entries (for free) I got well carried away, and sent in two things, neither of which were in any way finished/ready. But they had, y'know, some good lines, and so I was hopeful. (I can do 'some good lines'. Storytelling remains a work in progress.)

So when this year's competition rolled around, I felt more kindly inclined. Since I'd sent my dear, misshapen misfits in last year, I thought I would pay the £10 in some kind of recompense.

(This is the kind of guilt-ridden thinking you get from being steeped in the dramatic narrative of sin and penance from birth to rational thinking age. Thanks Catholicism!)

Anyway, I've paid, and it's in, so the fuckers better pick it or I'm going round to kick some doors in.

a small selection of the stupid questions I'm pondering right now

2010-05-18T23:16:00.010+01:00

Why am I so motivated by jealousy?
Like, when I see that a writer who took part in a showcase thing I did is having a short piece put on, I immediately do a trawl of everywhere I can think of to start getting some scripts sent out. I mean, it's great that it gives me a kick up the arse, but is that really what it takes? Am I really so uncharitable? (Yes, yes I am. It doesn't help, of course, that she wrote a very beautiful piece that was quite frankly better than mine.)

What on earth is going on in my head?
The last script I've written is weird and a bit dark. I re-read it last night and there was a point I just had to stop. It was TOO STRANGE. All this stuff comes straight out of my head, scarily enough.

It's a bit terrifying when I write things I had no idea I thought. I discovered a deep-seated aversion to homeopaths in one of the first things I ever wrote. I never even thought I had an opinion on the matter. I'm going to hope it's a good thing that this stuff comes out.

Why do I need constant praise and validation?
And this being the case, why do I persist in writing scripts, which have approximately a 97 per cent rejection rate?

How do I tell some bloke off the internet I don't want to see him again?
I find it deeply unnerving when people go all keen on me. And I have no idea how to tell them that I find them completely, irredemably unattractive. Not because they're horrible. Just because. God I'm rubbish at this.

Feel free to provide answers to any of the above.

anyone but Cameron

2010-05-09T19:17:00.009+01:00

I really, really need to meet some Tories. People like my friend's flatmate, who has a signed photograph af Margaret Thatcher displayed pride of place, his best ever birthday present.

This is not because I have gone mental. It is because right now I only have political debate with people who agree with me.

It's good, I think, that I mix with like-minded people. That I live and work with people who are broadly similar in political terms. That the 57 people I follow on Twitter are all clearly on the left-wing side of the spectrum.

And yet... lots and lots of people in the country voted Tory on Thursday, and I want to meet them and have a conversation with them/shake them firmly and ask why oh why in a disappointed tone.

Hating the Tories is more than a default position. I grew up experiencing the worst of Thatcher. My home town was all but destroyed by their policies. I still feel slightly sick when I think of the wealth accrued by over-privileged, over-entitled grandees who thought it would be quite a laugh to dismantle industry, sell it off, bit by bit, to provide a massive profit for them and their mates.

And at this stage you might be thinking, well what about Labour? Their record hasn't exactly been great. They're very relaxed about people being filthy rich and avoiding their taxes.

Labour have been a disappointment. I don't doubt that there are people growing up who feel exactly as I feel about the Tories. On the Iraq War and the surveillence state and lots of other ways they got it wrong.

But I don't hate Labour in the way that I hate the Tories. I may be the only person in the country who doesn't hate Gordon Brown. I feel exasperated. I wanted more from them. But they don't make me feel sick to the stomach like David Cameron, who as far as I can tell has no discernible belief in anything except his entitlement to rule, and the god-given right for rich people to stay being rich.

I don't hate rich people, or people who went to public school. I just find it difficult when they don't realise that not everyone had the same opportunities that they did, that it's not a level playing field, that the place where you're born still determines far too much about your destiny in life.

I don't want people who've lived in a bubble of Eton and Oxbridge to be making the decisions that affect single mums and people on benefits and people who don't have aspirations because they don't realise they can.

In short, if and when the Lib Dems do their deal with these knob-ends, I will feel sad.

And I will need to find a way to hang out with some Tristans and Quentins and Camillas and Tabithas to indulge my need to argue.

Watch this space.

the latest work of genius. also, crap telly.

2010-04-13T22:39:00.007+01:00

This is the typical cycle of my feelings towards any given script I write:

Stage 1: in which I am wildly enthused about my most recent scribblings. And decide that it is by far the best thing I've ever written.

Stage 2: doubt creeps in. It's good but...
Editing ensues. It's brilliant again! Stage 1 and 2 can take a little while.

Stage 3: It's bloody awful. Irredemable. Why did I ever think I could write. I'm an idiot.

(At this stage I pause and go away and do something else to forget about it all. I'd like to pretend that 'something else' is generally a highbrow cultural event, but more often than not its those Friends repeats on E4. Still! What's wrong with me? I have no idea.)

Stage 4: Revelation: the final piece slots into place, and I have a script that is - in my head at least - somewhere on the scale of not bad to quite good.

In case you're wondering, I'm somewhere between stages 3 and 4, so metaphorically speaking on the Friends repeats.

Something is definitely missing from my latest script. I just can't work out what.

One problem is that I feel like I'm beating people around the head to make my point. So it needs some nuance. And after months and months of writing short, sharp scenes, I've gone a bit mentile and decided to write a sustained piece over 15 minutes real time, which requires quite a lot of skill with pacing that I'm not sure I have yet. But for it to work at all, it has to work in this format.

Sigh.

Wonder what Ross and Rachel are up to.

My greatest work of fiction yet

2010-04-01T22:20:00.010+01:00

I hate internet dating. It's soulless and heartless and effectively reduces romance to the status of shopping from Tesco.

Which is why I never have and I never will...

Oh no, hang on, I am. I am internet dating.

Why oh why oh why would I do that? Because I've yet to find an alternative. Let me rephrase that: I've yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve being horrifically drunk, and I gave up on that caper a little while ago.

Oh, but it'll just happen. This is what people say. Pah.

If you live in London, take a look next time you walk down the South Bank in nice weather, at the cafes and the benches. Tens of single women sitting winsomely on their own in cafes reading an interesting intelligent book and just waiting for an interesting intelligent other to engage them in conversation. To start off on a path that will end in something deeply romantic.

It doesn't happen, I bloody assure you. The South Bank isn't so much a side of the river as a graveyard for crushed dreams of romance, built on the lonely tears and misplaced optimism of women. The men, sensibly, are mainly down the pub.

So that's why I'm doing internet dating, and that's why I've written a stupid profile to try and show how, ahem, cool and amazing I am. Or, er, something. It's true, mainly, what I've written about myself. It's just selective. So watch this space.

Material, that's what I remind myself. As well as being my life, this is all material.

Pah, and thrice pah.

feedback

2010-04-01T22:04:00.005+01:00

This is probably the nicest rejection email I've had to date:

Many thanks for your entry. We had over 200 entries and sorry to say your script wasn't selected for the final six. It did make it to a final shortlist of fifteen, however, and we thought it was an excellent piece of work...

Excellent work, eh? My best review ever, and it hasn't even been staged.

Producers of open script things take note: Be nice! Even if it's not true. Just pretend. Nothing wrong with some politeness to spare sensitive writerly feelings. OK?

I'm being a bit flippant. But a personalised email saying something nice genuinely does feel better than the usual half-hearted round robin seven months after the closing date/no response at all.

I did a playwriting course a couple of years and one of the tutors brought along some of his rejection letters. He had a lot of rejection letters, but is now wildly successful. So it just goes to show... something or other.

15 minutes

2010-03-22T22:58:00.003Z

I don't know why I feel compelled to give advice - I haven't achieved any great measure of success - and yet there's something I find I want to share. If any aspiring writer has somehow stumbled on to my nonsense, there is just one bit of advice I feel I have to give. (Drum roll please).

Write a 15 minute script.

Actually, the main bit of advice I would give is to start writing. Don't waste time thinking how much you'd like to be a writer without actually commiting to put pen to paper in case what you write isn't a masterpiece.

(A cautionary tale: that's mainly how I spent my 20s, and now I'm considered pretty ancient and decrepit at the grand old age of 31, too old for most of the new writing development work that happens in London, cos apparently you stop being interesting at the age of 26. I was fucking tedious at the age of 26. I'm much more interesting now. I digress.)

Anyway, once you've become one of the small minority of would-be writers who actually write, and you've started something - anything - aiming for a 15 minute script is helpful. It's a manageable length. It's good practise for story-telling. And much, much more importantly than either of these things is the fact that once you start looking, there are loads of wee showcases going on looking for short scripts. Which means you might have a chance of getting something put on.

Ok, that was my brief foray into advice. I'm going to stop now.

The reason I'm sharing this, and that I'm slightly excited about it all, is that a script I wrote on my hols (with love and care and attention obviously) is having not one, but two outings.

Performance number one happened last week. A rehearsed reading. It was... ok. Heck. It was quite good. The flaws I mainly knew about already, I think.

But in subsequent revising I have done a couple of things: I've gotten rid of some swearing. It looks fine on the page, but it's hard on the ear if you overuse it. And it loses impact. I've also clarified some of the lines that made perfect sense to me, but got lost in the melee.

The rehearsed reading was interesting in lots of ways. There were five other writers there, most of them more experienced than me. Some of them intimidatingly successful. And yet there we all were, in some tiny fringe venue, just glad to have an audience. Just glad that someone was bringing to life some words we wrote down, some words that mean something.

Hopefully - TBC - which is why I'm being a tad cagey, there is a performance number two happening next week. Once the deal is done, I will be more celebratory.

Deal I mean in a metaphorical sense. No actual money is changing hands. it's just for the, er, glory, or something like that (see above).

Last but not least, a comedy script I wrote last year is having an outing on the actual radio. Ok, community radio, but radio nonetheless.

Now, I realise that all of the above isn't exactly an Oscar nomination, but little bits and bobs like these keep me going, and help me believe I might actually be a writer. So this is good news.

sick as a parrot

2010-02-23T21:44:00.008Z

Gutted. The footballers' adjective of choice, and the one I have used most liberally in the last few weeks to describe the feeling of not quite getting through to the finals of a live comedy competition.

That is to say, getting very close, final 32 close, but falling at the final hurdle, to use another overused sporting metaphor.

That is to say, writing a lot. And for nothing, because none of it will be staged (not for this, anyhow.)

Damn this genre and its need to be produced to mean anything. At this rate, I'm going to start writing bloody poetry and publishing it on here and then you will all be very sorry indeed. (You really will. I'm terrible at poetry.)

Do I deal with losing out well? No. In this instance I bloody do not. For a number of reasons:

I worked my arse off. I had a really good script. And there was some shenanigans relating to the way it all happened that I am too disheartened to go into, but let's just say it didn't work out as I would have hoped.

So this has been disappointing.

There's something very personal about writing, and when it gets rejected, it's hard not to feel it personally. And when you're emotionally involved with your writing, this is especially the case.

And you have to be emotionally involved with writing if it's going to be any good, don't you? At least a bit. Otherwise why are you writing at all? Why bother if it doesn't have some connection, however small, however tenuous, to some important feeling or thought or moment you have or have had in your life that means something.

That's what I think anyway.

But maybe it's just about writing more funny lines, and that's where I went wrong.

And of course, if you get too emotionally involved, when stuff doeesn't work out, it feels like you've been kicked repeatedly in the kidneys, and that's not great.

And that's the good news.

Not really! There is actually some proper good news. I will write about it imminently...

not a sob story

2010-02-07T20:18:00.014Z

I can remember exactly what I was doing this time two years ago, this equivalent Sunday just after my birthday.

It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright. I went to Hampstead Heath. It must have been raining the week before, because it was incredibly muddy - I trashed a pair of boots by bravely tramping through the mud to try and impress... someone. Let's call him Mike.

Mike and me had been seeing each other for a few weeks. It was our fifth date, or thereabouts. He'd never been to Hampstead Heath. We watched the people flying kites - it was windy - and we sat looking out over London. And we kissed. And I thought, this is what other people do. They get together and go for walks on Hampstead Heath and kiss. And now I'm doing it. This is me.

This is what I thought.

And after the heath, we went to a beautiful pub and had a couple of pints of very nice ale. And then, we giggled our way to the bus stop in that happy way you do, when you're with someone you like. And we made our way back to Angel.

It was a perfect day. The kind of day that if you saw in some terrible rom-com you would dismiss as embarrassingly twee and naff and some kind of Richard Curtis view of London and how great it is. (London is great, obviously, but not generally in the way that Richard Curtis makes it look.)

And so there it was, this moment of happiness.

And not just the romance. Work was going well. I'd just had an interview with a big publishing company, and it made me realise that I didn't want to work there. I really loved the job I was in. I worked with people I liked and respected. I felt useful and good.

And when, inevitably, it all came crashing down, when, three weeks later, I found out I was being made redundant, and a week after that Mike said 'meh, not for me thanks' or words to that effect, it was ok.

This isn't a sob story. My woes are pretty paltry compared to most. Who didn't have a shitty 2008 as the ecomomy crashed and burned? I was one of the lucky ones. I found another job. The Mike thing wasn't heartbreak, it was pure bruised ego and bad timing.

But what makes me sad now, as I think about that day on Hampstead Heath, is how difficult it is to feel ok about feeling ok. Because as soon as I feel like stuff might be going well, it scares the shit out of me that some vengeful god will hear and pull the rug from under my feet once again, and find new ways to make me wish I'd never even thought that things were ok. Because it's terrifying to feel ok, because the only way is down. And at least, through the self-pitying, self-indulgent misery, there is the sense that things will be better. They can only be better - they can't possibly get worse.

And so now, as I write this, I think well fuck it, I'm tempting fate but there we are:

Things are ok.

My writing is going well - there's a possibility that something I've written might be staged. I feel less of an idiot than I have for a long time. And that maybe it really is possible that things can change - not be perfect, but be ok.

We shall see.

If you hear, by the way, of unexpected job cuts and freak thunder and plagues of moths in the north London area over the next month, that will probably be my fault. Sorry about that.

story (again) - some good news

2010-01-23T15:56:00.008Z

I did a playwriting course in 2008 where I was lucky enough to meet Sir Lord Roy Williams, playwright extraordinaire, and very nice chap.

One of the many interesting things he said was that before he writes a script, he writes the whole story out as if it were a novel first. (This from memory, so I may not be remembering it exactly right, but this was the gist.)

At the time, I remember thinking this seemed a very labour-intensive way of writing a play - to start off in prose before you get to the script. And I thought no more of it.

Until I gave it a try, whilst lounging louchely* on a foreign beach mere weeks ago.

And do you know what? It works. It really works.

This has been my problem: I start writing in order to find out who my characters are, and where they, and what the story is. And this works, to a point. It makes dialogue the starting point, and I feel like the characters come to life from the off. And it works much, much better than when I try some 'A loves B, C is having a sex change, D is taking up darts' kind of plotting.

Because in that 'A does x, meanwhile B does y' scenario of outlining, I get bored. And it feels like I'm trying to get some people to do some stuff for no good reason. And my dialogue goes to shit.

But my approach naturally has some drawbacks: namely, I get half-way in with no idea of where I'm going. (And, as other more sensible writers have pointed out, this is not a good place to be in.)

So I found that by writing something, properly writing it, a story emerges through the prose much more strongly, but in a natural way. That keeps me interested enough to want to write the script for it.

And the proof that this works? Well, I managed to write a wee 15-minute script over a couple of days. When you consider the last 15-minute script I did took about 18 months (in a very torturous route, but still, I'm not even kidding), this is a RESULT of the highest order.

So I'm a convert. That is to say, I'm going to be giving it a go from now on...

And refreshed from foreign climes, I actually have some ideas again, so this is all to the good...

In fact, I think my darts/sex change epic farce melodrama is on course to be better than Pinter. Much better.

(Joke. I can joke again! Thank god for holidays, eh...)

*By lounging louchely I mean, of course, sitting with half the sand on the beach stuck to me because of tons of factor 50 sunblock and gallons of DEET which does absolutely nothing to stop the little bastard mosquitos biting me on the ankle. And looking awkward about the whole thing. But still, you get the point.

of little consequence

2009-12-28T21:08:00.008Z

Ah, the blogs I was going to write...

On Pitmen Painters (brilliant) and War Horse (more brilliant in some ways - puppetry, camp nazis - and less in others).

On discovering a proper, actual story in my script a mere 18 months after I started scrawling (yes, I learn quickly).

On finally writing something new.

On exciting theatre plans for 2010. (Very excited about Midsummer coming to Soho. Very.)

On the importance of theatre-going buddies and fellow writers.

On the difficulty of finding any spare energy to tip stuff out of my brain and onto paper and thence to screen.

But instead... Well, work got in the way. Not just in the usual way of keeping me busy. But in a new way of infecting my every waking minute and hour and not, generally speaking, in a good way. Even now, in the midst of Xmas hols.

And there, in a nutshell, is also the reason I haven't been doing this blog as regularly as I could have. Because it would be one long, tedious moan. And I don't really want to inflict that on the world, any more than I am, um, doing now.

Some good news? I'm off on my holidays in a couple of days. A proper holiday. To a far-flung destination. Where my poor tired brain will hopefully recover and regain some cheer. Some much-needed cheer.

In the meantime, can I just wish anyone who has taken the time to read these meagre ramblings a very happy new year. And although I don't do new year resolutions as such, I will strongly attempt to be less moany in 2010. And, who knows, I might even write a review of a play in the opening week, as opposed to the closing week like what I have been mainly doing this year... But I'm not making any promises...

btw

2009-11-24T22:30:00.002Z

Further to my last post, when I was having a little moan about various confusing bits of advice I received, I wanted to clarify that I'm immensely grateful to people who can be arsed to read my random nonsense. I'm just a bit not sure what to do with it all sometimes.

But hell, I need to get a grip. My job is all about frickin' editing. No reason I can't edit my own stuff. Just need a bit of clarity...

Next up, when I have some spare brain, an exclusive review of the latest show in town!

(Not really, it's this, which has been on for a million years, but I'm not going to let that stop me chipping in my two-pennorth. Whatever a pennorth is.)

confused

2009-11-17T21:05:00.004Z

What not to do when you return to writing a script after several months of not writing:

Don't under any circumstances get over-excited by your own brilliance and show your script to other people. And definitely not to more than one person.

And if you are foolish enough to do these things, don't encourage people to give you advice or comments on what you've written, because they will inevitably provide contradictory and downright confusing advice along the lines of:

'I love your main character don't you think you should change the entire narrative arc because the ending doesn't work...'

AND/OR
'I love the narrative arc but why doesn't your character have a more distinctive voice?'

AND/OR
'Your main character has an amazingly distinctive voice but why don't you set it in Grantham?'

(I don't why I said the last one. Clearly it's not real. Who would give you this kind of advice? Unless, perhaps you were writing a script about the early life of Margeret Thatcher and thought it would be thrilling to set it on Mars in a brave stab at a kind of counter-historical/fantasy genre. In which case it might be sensible advice.)

So when you sensibly haven't shown your script to anyone, and haven't had the remains of your brain power utterly scrambled by bucket loads of advice, you presumably won't feel confused and unsure and generally a bit stuck about where to go next.

I imagine.

Comedians by Trevor Griffiths

2009-11-08T16:10:00.008Z

Comedians was written in 1975, but it's a very timely revival, what with the recent Jimmy Carr/Frankie Boyle nonsense.

It's a play that looks at the purpose of comedy and what the things we laugh at say about us. For a comedian, what is the real cost of going for a cheap laugh?

It's brilliantly structured over the course of an evening: firstly, the nightclass where a number of aspriring comedians prepare for their big break - a showcase at a local club attended by a talent scout/agent. Then, the routines themselves, then the post-mortem of how it all went.

There's one pretty compelling reason to see this production, namely the cast, which includes Matthew Kelly, Mark Benton and Reece Shearsmith (ex League of Gentleman, total genius, and disturbingly attractive in full 70s get-up, including greasy moustache. I digress.)

I don't know if Keith Allen is a deeply unpleasant individual or an exceptional actor, but he's certainly very convincing as the arsehole agent.

I was going to have a whinge about how David Dawson hadn't had enough recognition for his frankly amazing performance as Gethin, but then I read the reviews properly and it turns out everyone thought he was great, not just me. So that's alright then.

This is an intelligent, thoughtful production that generates some decent laughs along side some genuinely uncomfortable moments as racist jokes of (hopefully) yesteryear make the audience wince.

After the mystifyingly well-received Punk Rock at the same theatre, this is a play that has something to say, and says it well.

This is the latest in my continuing series of reviews that go up just as shows are about to finish, but if you can get tickets for the last week of the production, it's well worth seeing.

shuffle

2009-10-25T11:58:00.008Z

Sometimes I like to do a spot of fortune-telling via my ipod nano. It's pretty simple: as I sit barely awake on the bus on the way to work, I hit the shuffle option, and decide what the day will be like depending on the title of the song that comes up.

It's a fairly inexact approach to predicting the way the day's going to go, but it amuses me.

One memborable morning, the signs weren't looking good. This is what came up:

Welcome home, Loser (Broken Family Band).

Not great. Sod it, I thought, I'll skip, and see if it gets better.

Snakes in the Grass (Essex Green).

Still not great. Skip!

I see a Darkness (Bonnie Prince Billie)

Oh, for fuck's sake...

I decided to give it one more shot. Yes, my music taste tends to the downbeat, but surely, I'd exhausted all the titles on my ipod that portended doom and gloom. Surely.

The fourth song that came up was a very nice tune by Roddy Woomble, off of Idlewild. The title came up:

As still as I watch...

Oh well, I thought, that's alright. Pretty harmless. Then the title continued scrolling across the screen.

...your grave.

As still as I watch your grave.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Of course, when the day turned out to be only averagely bad, it felt like a real result. Yay (ish).

commitment, lack of

2009-10-10T10:18:00.004+01:00

There are people, apparently, who sit down to do a task and do it. They plan it, and then they start at the start, and they keep going until they finish.

I think this is true. It sounds a bit like an urban myth to me. But apparently it happens.

I sit down to write something. And if I'm lucky, and I have a lot of ideas they all spill out in a big mess on the page and I get really excited.

This can continue for several weeks.

And then I look at it all, gathered up, and become overwhelmed at the thought of sorting it all out, and not really having any big purpose or reason to keep going.

And so I start something else.

And I end up with 5 beginnings of potentially interesting stuff that I'm not really sure of what I'm going to do with.

Which is more or less where I'm at right now.

Punk rock

2009-09-20T19:31:00.002+01:00

I think Simon Stephens may be stalking me. Every flipping time I go out, there he is.

Ok, to be fair, it is just the times I go to the theatre.

...and see plays that are written by him.

Is it just coincidence or do playwrights all go to every performance of their stuff?

Whatever the answer, it does make it sodding hard to fully critique the play in the bar afterwards with when the tall, affable writer is lolloping around and hugging the cast and generally popping up just at the point you start to loudly discuss all the bits you didn't like.

Now, at Pornography, this wasn't so much of an issue. Had Mr Stephens troubled himself to listen in, he would have heard (almost) nothing but glowing praise and positive comments and gone away quite contented, in the unlikely event he cares what random, picky punters think.

At Punk Rock, however... not so much.

Now, I went on the Lyric website, and apparently the play 'expose[s] the violence simmering under the surface of success'. This is news to me. It's also pretty telling that I had to go and check what the play is saying its supposed to be about because it's not exactly clear from watching it.

Here's what I can tell you: Punk Rock is set in the library of a fee-paying school in the north-west. New girl Lily arrives from Cambridge. Kids hang out. Drama doesn't really ensue. Not for the first hour at least.

A cursory glance at the publicity reveals that this is a play about teenage violence, so I don't think I'm giving too much away by saying it all ends in a hail of bullets. So the first 20 minutes is spent as a kind of exercise in who will do it:

The nervy eloquent one?
The bullied maths geek?
The outwardly confident new girl with self-harm tendencies?

Or one of the other ones.

Frankly, it's hard to care.

It all builds towards the violence with a minimal amount of drama, or tension, or action of any sort. Nervy boy asks new girl out. She's already shagging the sporty one. Twatty bloke is twatty. Maths geek has slightly pointless speech about, well, the pointlessness of it all. Someone spits in someone's face.

I don't know if I caught an off night, but the whole thing felt flat.

There are some decent things about it. The dialogue is sharp, if oddly timeless. Apart from the odd chav'n'climate change references, this could be set at any point in the last 40 years.

Some of the performances are great. Tom Sturridge seems to be getting a lot of love in the reviews, but I found his wandering accent far too distracting to fully appreciate his work. But I did like Katie West and Harry McEntire who gave unshowy performances in difficult roles.

And, er, the set was very atmospheric.

(I think the point at which you start praising the set is probably a barrel-scraping moment for positive things to say).

But the fundamental problem with the whole thing was the complete lack of a point. There was no believable build-up to the act of violence. And in an odd coda, the reasons variously tossed at the audience without any discernible commitment ranged from mental illness to celebrity culture to just because.

It wouldn't be so bad, except one of the characters speechified in a very mouthpiece way about how 99 per cent of the yoof are absolutely fine, it just never gets noticed.

If this is what the playwright really thinks, then I wonder why he decided to write a play where one of the other one per cent shoots a load of people at the end.

But maybe that's just me.

please please please let me get what I want

2009-09-03T21:54:00.006+01:00

Something else to add to the list of things I'm learning about myself through the medium of trying to be a writer: if I can leverage in a gratituous Smiths reference in, I will.

(If I can leverage in a Belle and Sebastian reference, I'm flipping ecstatic. But it's a bit more challenging).

And so, with crushing predictability, I'm giving in to the inevitable and rewriting some serious heartfelt words and reworking it all as a laugh every few minutes (I hope) comedy. Honestly, this is an absolutely last ditch attempt to make use of all these sodding scenes I wrote and liked, and tried to make into a play and failed entirely.

So we'll see if it works, or if this writing quite simply belongs down the dumper (copyright Smash Hits circa 1992).

And with a startling lack of imagination, I've been listening to the Smiths as I edit, and so I'm calling it after one of my favourite songs they do.

The fact that I'm sitting in on a Friday evening writing and listening to the Smiths probably tells you everything you need to know about the chances of me ever please please please getting what I want.

But that's another story.

shakespeare round-up

2009-08-16T22:29:00.001+01:00

Why do I always end up going to see Shakespeare? Because the productions are so plentiful, and the tickets are cheap, and the theatre-going friends are eminently more persuadable along to these than the experimental site-specific verbatim installations. Ah well.

I went to see half of Romeo and Juliet last Friday at the Globe. It wasn't supposed to be only half, but those standing tickets for a fiver that seemed like such a good idea... well, let's just say after a first half that lasted an hour and three quarters, and a bastard week all round, we hot-tailed it to the pub. As my wise friend said, it's not as if we don't know how it ends...

I should say the first half we saw was on the whole very good. I liked the leads, although I was in a minority of one about Ellie Kendrick as Juliet - the other three-quarters of the group were less impressed, proclaiming her too goofy and annoying. I thought she was charming, and had a real freshness. And hey, I'm a tough crowd. But we all agreed that there wasn't brilliant chemistry between the leads, however, which undermined it rather.

In fact, if I was going to criticise the production, I would say it didn't hang together brilliantly. There were lots of individually good performances - Rawiri Paratene as Friar Laurence and Penny Layden as the nurse particularly charmed - but somehow it didn't gel. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable enough first act, and I'm sure the second act was equally good, and honestly, if I'd had a less crap week at work and/or a proper seat, I definitely would have stayed. Honestly.

I also went to see All's Well that Ends Well at the National Theatre recently. Now, the sad truth is that I am horribly jaded by 15 years of going to see Twelfth Night and As You Like It and Midsummer Night's Dream (because these are the perennials that always get staged, and because I studied English Literature and so I've been to see them all about a million times and am very over finding the business with the yellow garters very funny).

So I like going to see comedies I don't know very well, and deliberately don't read summaries of the plot to make sure I can still speak Shakespeare without the York Notes. Yes, I am a bit tragic. I know.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the production, with it's fairytale setting and stylised, er, style. I liked the story too. Helena earns Bertram's hand in marriage by curing the king. Bertram buggers off to war, which in ye olden days was quite the lark, apparently. Pretty much an 18-30 holiday. Anyway, Helena pursues her errant hubby, tricks him into having sex with her, and er, all's well that ends well. Sort of. (Yes, I should be doing programme notes. I'm just waiting for the email from the National...)

So anyway: it's good. Sweet and funny, and a little bit saucy. Michelle Terry seems to be the go-to girl for the feisty Shakespearean heroine, and very good she is. George Rainsford is suitably floppy-haired and twittish as Bertram. And the set is fantastic, veering between Edward Scissorhands gothic and sunny Italian orchard.

So there we are. Almost relentless positivity about these productions I'm afraid. The thing is, I know it's much more interesting to write (and read) bad reviews, but what can I say? I keep seeing good stuff. I will aim to see a stinker soon... Well, I won't aim to, that would be foolish, but the law of averages suggests it could happen.... We shall see...

some more random thoughts

2009-08-06T23:05:00.004+01:00

I am writing again. Here are some things I am learning about myself through the medium of writing:

a) I don't like men. That is, I don't think I must do, because all my male characters seem to turn out as bumbling idiot-holes or raving tossers or both. Yikes.

b) I'm not very good at writing in southern. All my people seem to turn out a bit northern by default. Not in a 'Ey-up our kid, Ah'm off down t'ferret factory to buy a t'pasty kind of way.' Just generally.

c) Everything is about class. Everything, everything, everything.

That is all. (For now).

Pornography by Simon Stephens

2009-08-04T23:29:00.004+01:00

Pornography by Simon Stephens has just come to London for the first time, and I highly recommend you get your ticket now, because I predict (deservedly) good reviews on the strength of tonight’s (first) performance.

This is a difficult play to sum up or reduce to a simple plotline. Suffice to say, the action is set in London in July 2005, and weaves in and around three major events: the 7/7 bombings, the Olympic 2012 annoucement and the Live 8 concert.

It’s not really about any of these things, as such. And it’s not about pornography in the traditional sense of the word, you’ll be disappointed, I mean, ahem, relieved to learn.

(The last time I had such an accidentally exciting time on Google was researching Shopping and F**king by Mark Ravenhill back in uni days. Talk about pop-ups...)

All smut aside, this is a very moving play, with great performances all round. I’d heard good things about this play from a friend who saw it in Edinburgh last year, and despite going in with very high expectations – usually the kiss of death - I wasn’t disappointed. This is a very gripping 90 minutes of theatre.

Oh, and it even has some nudity. (Again, all credit to Anthony Welsh that I was so busy listening to him that I didn’t even notice Sam Spruell stripping off in the background. Well, not at first. There was a point when it became impossible not to notice. In a good way. I think I better stop this tangent now before I get into trouble…)

In short: go see.

Oh, and here are some links about it, although I don't recommend you look at them before you see the play.

(This is just a suggestion - I hate reading too much about stuff before I see it. Also,most of the coverage focuses on one aspect of the play, but I think it's a broader piece than you'd realise if you just looked at advance press. But do look if you want to. I'm not your mum.)

So, here's a typically hysterical headline from the Telegraph in an otherwise quite sensible piece on last year's production. And an interview with the author from the grauniad.

I'm going to tell you some stuff about my writing that may or may not be of interest

2009-07-22T22:40:00.004+01:00

So I'm writing some stuff again, which is Good News.

To get started again, I had to give up on some stuff. Namely, this sort-of play I wrote that was aimless and directionless and storyless. Trouble was, I fell in love with some of my clever lines, and forgot to get on with the business of story and dramatic tension and all that stuff. Ahem.

(Yes, rubbish I know, but it was my first attempt at this sort-a thing).

So, there we are.

I do have some other things on the go:

I have a couple of episodes of a sitcom - which, as I've blogged about before, made it through to the finals of the Sitcom Trials no less. Not that I'm boasting. Oh no, hang on, I am boasting. Sorry about that. Anyway, that's kind of in limbo, so I should do something with it but not entirely sure what.

(I normally Know What To Do with these things, and am quite driven and ambitious and get-ahead, but I'm not with this, and I think it's because I loved writing it so much I can't quite bring myself to ruin it with misplaced attempts at Trying To Make It. It's complicated.)

I have a new project, which is something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a play, it's set in an office, it's based on a true event, and it's just starting to emerge. (It's a good sign when the characters turn up, properly turn up that is, and start being arsey and not quite how you first thought. Mind you, I'm all of 5 pages in, so there is some considerable distance left to run.)

And I have an idea for another comedy, if I feel like venturing into the competitive world of the Sitcom Trials again next year. All my comedy ideas are a bit high concept. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. I should probably try and write about two people on a sofa and keep it simple, but no, that's not where it all leads me.

Oh, and I have the not inconsiderable demands of a day job too, so this is all going on in my so-called spare time.

So now you know.

oh well never mind bye

2009-07-09T22:22:00.003+01:00

I'm an idiot hole. I went to see a great new play recently, and I forgot to blog about it until after the run had finished, which is to say now.

Oh well never mind bye by Steven Lally takes the Stockwell shootings as a starting point, but is really about the state of modern journalism (not great, being the verdict) and the vested interests that shape news coverage and its supposed impartiality.

It manages to be an intelligent, thought-provoking piece that tackles the big topics, without ever feeling worthy. The conclusion is quietly devastating. And I loved the Union theatre, where it was well staged in the round.

So anyway, you can't go and see it because it's finished, but - y'know, for info - it was excellent.

everything's going jackanory

2009-06-28T22:33:00.004+01:00

So I'm watching Blur at Glasto on the telly, and they are very ace. And in addition to being ace, the whole thing is kind of transporting me back to the mid-90s and it's all a bit weird.

I had a look through some old diaries the other day. I tend to remember the good bits of being a teenager. It was quite instructive to remind myself how gruesome and painful it all was. For every 'This is a Low' there was a 'Country House', if you will.

But when I remember the olden days of the 90s, I remember it in vivid colours. I remember feeling very, very alive.

And there was this point, later on, when everything went crappy for a while. There were some very dark days in Peterborough, when everything was grey and monochrome and dead.

(I fucking hate Peterborough. If I ever write a play and I want a metaphor for something very shit and depressing and deathly I will call it Peterborough. I could say 'no offence, Peterborough!' here, but I think I do mean some offence.)

And thankfully, living in London has kind of helped to regain the colour. Some of the colour. And yes, I have less energy than I did when I was a youngster, but I am also now much less reliant on snakebite during my leisure time.

I don't know what my point is here. I'm not sure I have one.

I'm writing again, a couple of pages at a time. Trying to remind myself that it doesn't matter about being good - not in the first draft - it just matters to do something. Not very profound I know. Still true.

Good God, are they really playing Country House? Yes. They are. Yikes.

alco-booze

2009-06-11T16:41:00.010+01:00

Earlier this year, I decided to give up the booze for a while. This was for various reasons, but in short the hangovers were getting worse and worse, and the alcofrolics were getting less and less entertaining.

I imagined leaping out of bed with boundless energy, enjoying instantly fabulous health, and eliminating all those idiotic things I say and do whilst under the affluence of incohol. Not to mention getting up to do charity work with orphans before breakfast, running the odd half-marathon of a weekend, that kind-a thing.

Obviously, this has not happened.

Unfortunately, it turns out that alcohol is not the primary cause of saying idiotic things in social situations. The primary cause of that is me, plus nervousness, plus people. Which covers most going out scenarios.

Alcohol is also not the reason I'm shit at getting up on time. Or the cause of staying in bed till midday of a weekend. I can do that just fine on my own, thanks I think, to the excellent sleeping genes I've inherited from the Irish side of my family. (Who are champion sleepers. Honestly, Olympians.)

Alcohol is not the thing that stops me getting up and doing all those London things I mean to do, but instead get as far as the local coffee shop for papers perusal. That's just laziness.

So, what is different?

Um.

Well. It's nice not to have hangovers. (I found myself getting nostalgic for hangovers the other day. Weird weird weird ness.)

And it's nice to know, I suppose, that if something fuckwit comes out of my mouth it's entirely on my account, and not the fault of the Malbec I've been inhaling for the evening. Just for information.

And, ok, I don't have boundless energy - who does? But more than before.

I realise I'm not selling the whole giving up alcohol thing. But four months in, I'm aiming to do it a while longer, and hoping that at some point I will feel unbearably, smugly healthy. (A friend who gave up the booze for two years has assured me the benefits are cumulative, rather than instant.)

Till then, on with the substition of alcohol with other vices!

(Mainly coffee, sadly. Dammit, why aren't I better at vices?)

(Note to self: work on more interesting vices. Maybe develop a crack habit. That's well renowned for renewing artistic vigour. I think. )

Open mic

2009-06-07T21:14:00.000+01:00

I wandered past Tate Modern recently, and there was an open mic thing going as part of some kind of art installation/performance type thing. It was very nice:

A group of Egyptian tourists got up and did some dancing.
A cool New York hipster did some very nice singing (to some awful sub-Alanis Morrisette song, but you know, excellent voice).

I stood by the side for half an hour - genuinely, half an hour - listening to songs on my ipod and trying to work out if I dared to get up and sing.

I really, really wanted to.

There was a moment when there was hardly anyone around, and the compere was entreating people to come up and bring their ipods and perform in some way. And there was this golden opportunity to get up and sing some obscure Broken Family Band song and it would be this really brave, interesting thing to do.

I paced. I listened, again, to various songs to see how caterwaulingly bad it could be if I tried to sing. I paced a bit more. I got within about 10 metres of the stage.

And... I didn't do it. I walked away. So the tourists stolling by the Tate Modern were spared from my delusions of musical ability. Which is probably for the best.

Now I'm going to do an awful tenuous link to writing (bear with me):

I keep thinking about writing and not. I keep thinking what's the point of writing something if it's not going to be good? And so, I don't write. I sit around, not writing. And it's all a bit depressing.

Never mind, eh.

staycation

2009-05-26T22:32:00.004+01:00

I am super double skint.

So in the spirit of credit crunch chic (ha!), I am enjoying a holiday at home in good old London town. Here is a list of some things I thought I could do:

Visit art galleries/museums and be very inspired, and probably finish up trying to look intellectual over coffee and cake
Go to yoga every day (I haven't been to yoga for about 6 months, so I don't know who I was kidding by putting this down.)
Catch up on all the films/boxsets I own and never watch because I'm too busy watching Friends for the 6th time (seriously, I don't know what is wrong with me. I'm not proud.)
Do an ambitiously long river walk
Read an improving book or three in the sun.
Bake a cake and related domestic goddess nonsense.

All sounds lovely, doesn't it? This is how day one shaped up:

Get up really late.
Think about going to the gym. Decide against it.
Lounge about for a bit. Head out of the house.
Decide I need a Project for the day. Buy dye for my curtains.
Come home.
Put curtains and dye in machine. Realise machine has stopped working mid-cycle. Spend several hours alternately panicking that my landlady is going to go apeshit about this and trying different programs to get it to work.
Google the fault and decide to try to fix myself.
Attempt the unblock filter, whilst holding up washing machine tilted at an angle as gallons of lilac water swooshes out onto the kitchen floor - my baking tray wedged ineffectually below to try and catch some of it. It doesn't.
Clear up related mess, and run the washing machine again (which I have to do so it cleans the dye out of the machine and can be used again.)
Accidentally put on the two-and-a-half-hour programme, which means the spin cycle is still going at 1.30am as I try and fail to get to sleep.

The good news is the curtains are now a lovely shade of lilac, as intended.
The bad news is my week has signally failed to get any more exciting than this.

Next time, I'm putting some big fuck-off holiday to the Maldives on the credit card and being done with it.

Displacement activity

2009-05-14T17:41:00.001+01:00

Here are a selection of things I've been doing lately instead of writing:

Watching episodes of Friends I've seen at least 4 times before. (Honestly. This is tragic behaviour. I just don't have the energy to watch good stuff sometimes.)
Drinking coffee. (I drink a ludicrous amount of coffee, in the frankly delusional hope it will give me the energy and momentum to write loads of Exciting and Amazing stuff. It doesn't).
Looking with mild despair at the last few boxes of god-knows-what that I didn't feel able to throw out before I moved but have no actual idea what to do with.
Reading really rubbish magazines that make me feel a bit dirty for caring about the weight fluctuations/relationship ups and downs of very minor celebrities. And yet... really quite enjoying them. (Sorry.)
Looking at holidays and wondering how/if/when I'll ever be able to afford them. And wondering if my camping tolerance threshold will ever lower enough to consider it as a credit crunch alternative to a proper holiday. And mainly concluding, no, not in this lifetime.

As you can tell, these are all immensely useful and rewarding activities to enjoy during the bits of my life I'm not doing my real, proper job. But, y'know, it would be really nice to get writing again.

Soon.

An embarrassing incident (or two)

2009-04-23T00:16:00.000+01:00

Something a bit embarrassing occurred last night. And I've spent my entire day trying not to think about it. And as generally happens when you try not to think about something, it kept popping into my head.

As a special bonus, I also had some flashbacks to Very Embarrassing Moments from the past. As if my inner psyche decided that this would be a good time to remind myself of all the shit, stupid things I've ever done. Thanks psyche!

So, here they are, some of those embarrassing things...

1. What I did in my friend Natalie's garage at that student party.

I didn't even know myself what had happened for a year. I was too embarrassed to ask. I was rightly too embarrassed to ask. It was far worse than I imagined.

2. What I said to Neil Hannon, lead singer of the Divine Comedy, when I hung around after a gig at Leeds Met.

In my defence, he was only 5 ft 4 or something.

3. The awful, wine-fuelled weirdness that happened in that bar in that town in the East Midlands. Note to self: don't get involved with middle-aged am dram chaps in small towns. Awfulness on lots of levels.

4. The white wine incident at the Soho private club I accidentally got into.

5. ...and what I said to one of the founders of Comic Relief on the same night.

6. Oh, and actually, the taxi thing on the way home from that. That was a bad night.

7. What I said to the very senior manager at the bona fide glitzy awards do. While his girlfriend was standing next to him.

8. And what I told my flatmate at the same do, and forgot I'd said it, and said it again the next day. Twice the embarrassment! Brilliant.

Man, I'm crap at stuff.

bricks

2009-04-14T22:52:00.000+01:00

I moved house last week. When you live in shared houses, moving house is more than just going to a new place, it's about creating an entirely new domestic set-up, generally with someone you found on gumtree and met for 10-15 minutes, and hopefully got a strong enough non-serial-killer vibe. Hopefully. And hopefully those instincts were correct, because now you're living with this stranger.

I don't really feel like I know about my new housemate yet, but so far the prognosis is as follows.

Reasons to be cheerful:

The house is very clean.

Reasons to be concerned:

The house is very clean. I think she cleans the entire bathroom with bleach twice a day. She used a knife of mine the other day and then washed my entire cutlery set, just because.

So who knows. And as I gradually try to unpack my millions of boxes of not quite sure what, I just hope that I'm not having to pack to leave any time soon. Sigh.

hey jealousy (see footnote)

2009-04-02T22:07:00.000+01:00

So, am packing my room up and it's a bit weird and a bit sad because I've been here for three years (not the whole time in this room, obviously) and it's quite strange having to leave.

Most of my brain has been taken up with finding a new place to live lately, and one thing of the various things about this that is mildly rubbish is my utter lack of writing. All I've been doing is reading about other, very successful writers and getting quite jealous. And much as I'd like to say I've taken my jealousy and directed it towards writing something really amazing... I haven't. I've just festered a bit and muttered about 'ckin 19-year-olds with Royal Court commissions and the like.

I was working in Virgin Megastores in the home town when I was 19, and it was not a happy time, let me tell you. The most exciting aspect of the job was occasionally being able to choose some music to play as were clearing away after the shop had shut. I put on some Belle and Sebastian. Obviously. And I had a mild crush on a boy with long hair for the first and last time in my life. (The long hair bit I mean.)

Oh yes, those were the days.

Which is just about enough packing avoidance for now, so I better get back to it... Such a glamorous life I lead.

*I was going to try and make the title to the Gin Blossoms doing Hey Jealousy from the 90s, in an attempt at an indie-pop one hit wonder reference, for no good reason at all. But YouTube has taken its ball home and won't play no music no more. The thought was there.

Enjoy

2009-03-10T23:12:00.000Z

Some years ago, I had a flatmate who had decided she was a bit bohemian. A bit arty. A Free Spirit.

The form these aspirations took were mainly the gathering of pine cones and leaves and other delightful detritus, which she then proceeded to scatter merrily across the coffee table, leaving to become dried out and dessicated; adding to the collection without ever getting rid of any of it.

Reader, it was a right old pile of dirty-looking crap.

Some friends came to visit, and seeing the table, offered to clean it up for me. I glumly explained that it was there intentionally, albeit not on my part.

Ah, they said, sympathetically. 'Forest Murmurs'.

This (and I am getting to the point any second now), was an Alan Bennett reference, from a Talking Heads monologue. It's a small detail, about a church flower arrangement that consists of pine cones and ferns scattered 'artistically' on the altar. And somehow this detail was just this perfect reference that exactly summed up the situation.

I mention this not to be wilfully obscure, but to point out my deep admiration and envy for Alan Bennett and his turn of phrase, his ability to capture so much in a small word or phrase. It helps, I suppose, that I'm from a similar neck of the woods, and on many occasions wonder how he manages to write things that are exactly how my family talk.

Which brings me to Enjoy, which I saw t'other night.

I really liked it.

It's set around an ageing married couple in 1980s Leeds and it's about the dangers of nostalgia and the horrors of family. And it's funny, and rude, and Orton-esque.

Towards the end, there was one of those moments you get, when theatre works, where everyone is still and hushed and you can hear a pin drop because there's just this sense of uncertainty, of what will happen next.

It was memorable and moving and all the acting was excellent, even the poor bit part people who really had very little to do. (I don't think you could get away with writing so many bit parts these days, btw. Far too expensive.)

As you can probably tell, I thought it was excellent, and much better than a very lacklustre History Boys I saw towards the end of its run last year (maybe the year before, memory not what it was.)

Shall I finish on some kind of pun around the title of the play and it's appropriate nature for my experience of the production?

No. I won't.

Not a review

2009-03-05T22:24:00.000Z

Something quite disturbing happened the other night. I went to see a play and came out with no real opinion about it.

This is Not Like Me at all. I never have a shortage of opinions. On anything. And certainly not plays and films and bands.

It was Twelfth Night, produced by the Donmar, and it starred Derek Jacobi and some other people whose faces you would probably know but not their names, not without a bit of an explanation about what they'd been in.

And it was... You know, sort of... Well. If you pinned me down the most I could really say is that it was alright slash quite good.

I think maybe if you've never seen Twelfth Night, it would be quite good slash great. But I've seen it loads. Well. At least twice before. Maybe more. It's one of those plays that's always on.

I've even seen it done by the same director (Michael Grandage) when I was studying in Sheffield. And I remember that production really vividly. It was in the round, and energetic and fun. Whereas t'other week it was all just very pleasant and competent, but you know... meh.

Although here is a much less cynical view of the production.

rage

2009-02-22T17:39:00.000Z

So this week has been crap. Really crap. Starting with a Monday morning phone call from the letting agents to inform us that the mentalist landlady wants me and my housemates out, so she can try to make even more money from her crumbling, decaying property that she refuses to keep in good condition. She is greedy and grasping and deeply unpleasant, and the only good thing about being evicted from the house I've lived in the last 3 years, and come to think of as home, is that no longer will I be putting any money into her pocket.

(Anger issues? Me? Maybe a little...)

Bright side? Um. Not sure there is one. Except - and this is tenuous - all my writing last year happened cos I was so fucked off with the world, so you know, anger is good for creativity, if not for stress levels, heart rate, general health etc. Maybe now is the time to write the high-concept vampire landlady script where the eponymous villain is killed in a variety of outlandish and quite satisfying methods. It's a thought at any rate...

Some words about some stuff

2009-02-12T22:57:00.000Z

So, you know, winning isn't everything.

By which I mean: I didn't win. But that's ok.

This is what I learned from the whole experience of having my comedy selected, performed and judged in a competition:

Writing is fun. I forgot that for a while. (By a while, I mean about a decade.)
Every line counts. And the bits you think are clever rarely are.
People laugh at the reaction, not the 'funny' line.
It's not just about the words. And less is probably more.
Rewriting is essential. But also one of the most interesting parts of the process.
Success is subjective. (Short homily follows.) I reckon that if you don't love what you're writing, you could win an Oscar and still not be happy. Conversely, if you enjoy what you're writing, you can get knocked out of the first round of a competition and still feel pretty darned okay about the whole thing.
And - did I mention? - writing is fun. Not always, not every second. But it is.

(Herein ends this short attempt at wisdom.)

The big night...

2009-02-10T22:38:00.001Z

...is tomorrow! Am so excited. And greatly cheered by rehearsal tonight. Props and costumes and all that do make a difference. And while I fear my carefully crafted gags may get upstaged by a comedy prop, I don't flipping care, so long as people laugh.

Anyway: mood is one of cautious optimism. Which is a definite upgrade on the weekend. So that's good.

melancholy

2009-02-08T20:07:00.000Z

Ugh. Is this the worst time of the year? I think it might be. Miserable weather, no light, and spring still seems like such a long way off.

I'm always a bit grumpy in February. The long winter has taken its toll, and a birthday at the beginning of the month makes it worse, not better. This year, a milestone birthday. Which I spent, snowed in, on my own. I hope this is not an omen for the decade to come. Who knows?

I feel there should be a comic endnote to this, but I'm struggling for one, if I'm honest. Suffice to say the comedy thing is happening soon, and even though I stopped finding my script funny a long time ago, through sheer familiarity, it seems to be working ok now that the actors are involved and doing their cool funny stuff. So that's good.

the sitcom that dare not speak its name (aka pride/fall)

2009-02-05T22:42:00.000Z

Here's the thing: I was starting to think my comedy script was quite good. I'd had some pretty nice compliments: good characters, nice dialogue, 'fawlty towers'.

Oh yes. I was riding high.

And then. In one simple moment. It all came crashing down. One of my actors said, innocently enough, I suppose, "it's a bit like xxx".

By xxx, I don't mean that weird American ratings thing they do for sex films. I mean, 'insert the name of a really terrible sitcom' here. No, I'm not saying which one. It's too awful.

Hints : it's not a famously awful one. It's one you thought you'd forgotten about, or blocked out for post-traumatic reasons, or - if you're lucky - never seen. If you do remember it, it's for that guy that was previously in that cult one with the weird fans that was actually quite funny for a while.

It's not 'Two Pints...' either. I'm probably the only person in the UK who is prepared to admit to quite liking 'Two Pints...' offa BBC3. Decent characters, funny and filthy dialogue - c'mon! What's not to like.

It' s not that.

Anyway. Suffice to say. Ego duly in check. Pride duly bruised. Back to concentrating on just trying to be funny.

Woo-hoo!

hedgehogs

2009-01-31T15:46:00.000Z

Re-writing is fun, I think. But it's bloody tiring. I keep going to bed with stretches of dialogue in my head and waking up with them in the morning without seemingly having resolved anything at all. In 10 days time some actual real live actors are getting up on stage and saying some stuff I've written and I just have to sit there and hope to god people laugh, because of course I've invited everyone I know, of course, and so no bloody pressure.

Right, I have to go and sort that scene with Luke and Lady Violet and the hedgehogs. It will be funny, trust me. It will be funny if it kills me. Or at least makes me an insomniac...

moi

2009-01-14T21:13:00.000Z

After a brief foray into the wider world with the last post, it's back to some writerly navel gazing. Oh yes.

The comedy competition I entered is about to kick off... It's on over a series of nights - mine still hasn't been scheduled. But just reading the synopses of the first four is getting me fired up in a mix of apprehension and, well, more apprehension. Frankly, it's terrifying that some people are going to get up on stage and say something I've written and god only knows if anyone will laugh. It could be absolutely awful on every level.

Good job I'm also trying to redraft my play like a mad person. That's keeping my mind off things.

Done something slightly radical and changed the name of my main character. She started off as 'woman' (I know, I know, but it makes it easier to write if you don't have a name when you're starting). But I needed people to call her by her name, and so I had to find one. And so I settled upon Jane, as a name that's relatively free of baggage. I wanted a nothing-y name, that didn't instantly and obviously betray age or class or any of that business. (No, I don't think class is dead, btw, but that's a topic for another day).

But something strange happened once I started writing for Jane. She become a bit limp and passive. Not all kick-arse and angry how she started off.

So I've called her Claire. And Claire is quite different. Pricklier. I have released my inner prickliness to write this, which is not very difficult at all as it turns out.

So it's all going on.

Protest

2009-01-11T05:41:00.000Z

I went on the Gaza protest march in London today. It was very cheering in all kinds of ways. There were thousands of people, and I've never been around such a polite bunch in all my time in London. The slightest jostle brought apologies and smiles. You don't get that on the average commute.

At the end of the route, there was a rally, where various speakers, well, rallied the protesters. It was a timely reminder about this power you achieve when people come together. I nearly didn't go today, it was freezing, and I was worried about getting caught up in violence. (I didn't see any at all - only people being very peaceful and reasonable, albeit angry, and rightly so. I know there was some throwing of stuff etc towards the end).

It's all too easy to think what does one person matter, to feel like one presence among thousands isn't going to be the deciding factor. But then if everyone thought like that...

Perhaps you can tell I've been working for a trade union lately. That's all about collective action, standing together, solidarity. And even though I know, in reality, that things are never perfect, that governments don't listen, that it's really hard to achieve positive change... Despite all that, it's really important to try.

Of course, coming back on the tube I got my purse nicked, so that brought me quite back down to earth. Fuckers. But the essential message of hope and positivity is not lost. Honest.

stuff

2009-01-05T16:34:00.000Z

Aargh! So I just looked at my play for the first time in a couple of months. It was quite scary: last time I looked at it I was still a bit in love with it all. And I hoped that a few months away from it would bring out all the flaws, like when you bump into the badboy ex and wonder what you ever saw in them in the first place.

Reading it again sort of did that. There are lots of bits in there that I still like, but it's hanging them all together which is the problem (and quite a serious one at that). I mean it's all very well being innovative with your structure, but I don't seem to have a structure at all. I'm all for blagging it, but even I don't think I'll get away with proclaiming grandly 'oh, it's Beckettian' and hope to get away with it.

Also my main character is more annoying than I remembered. This is ok. I don't think characters have to be likeable, but... But I'm not sure what. It just changes the whole thing is all.

So anyway, I have these 54 pages and I know they're not quite right, but I'm not sure I'm any further along on how to make them better. I'd sort of hoped a break would just present the answers to me, which I now realise was hopelessly, stupidly optimistic.

OK. I'm going to read it again and see what happens.

Gromit

2009-01-01T20:41:00.000Z

I've lost my voice. Not in an arty, literary, don't know what to write kind of way. I've literally lost my voice. And I'm a bit fed up. I feel like Gromit, forced to communicate through a series of shrugs and eyebrow raises and the odd bit of mime. I can just about whisper, but that doesn't help. I can't go out to meet friends and I can't even ring people without them thinking I'm an inept stalker and/or ghost.

I had to venture out to Morrisons yesterday for supplies, and entirely failed to communicate to the checkout person that I didn't want the satsumas because I'd just noticed they were mouldy. She didn't understand, and looked at me quite pityingly, which made the whole supermarket experience even more depressing. It was already pretty depressing, since everyone else was buying champagne and party snacks for new year, and I was buying orange juice and broccoli and planning a not-very-wild-night in. Sigh.

Och. This time last year was considerably better than this but had gone significantly to shit within 5 weeks. So let's hope that the opposite will happen in 2009 and it will be absolutely splendid. There's nothing like a bit of optimism to start the year with, non?

pale and peaky

2008-12-20T10:28:00.000Z

TFI Christmas. In full grip of the flu, and I'm getting high on the mild amphetamines in Day Nurse. All good. I even turned down the free bar at the work Xmas do last night, so I know I'm poorly. (Went for an hour or so and drank green tea - you've never seen someone so shocked as the barperson at a free bar being asked for green tea).

So, this is the to-do list for the next two weeks I've got off work:

1. The usual Christmas feasting, flu permitting. Because it's just not the festive season without gout-enducing amounts of port and stilton.

2. Family stuff: wherein the deeply-troubled emotional dynamics of family relationships are played out in an argument over who cooks the sprouts and how. Etc.

3. Filing all the things I haven't filed for the last 6 months and which are in a big pile in my room. God, I'm depressed just thinking about it. Maybe I'll save this job for the summer holiday...

4. Rewriting the comedy script. I had a go the other day, and it went ok. All the ideas that have been percolating for a while came out, and I think it's better than the orginal. Although I will be asking for feedback...

5. Steeling myself to look at the playscript, and no doubt notice all the things that don't work, and stupid typos, and generally feeling a bit embarrassed about having submitted it for something at first draft stage.

6. Being really bloody glad I'm not at work.

So that lot should keep my busy... Happy Christmas!

musings (not very profound)

2008-12-11T22:59:00.001Z

Hurrah! I thought I might have forgotten how to write, having had a few weeks off, but I don't think I have. I've decided to embark on a complete rewrite of my comedy script. It's not too bad, as is, but it starts in totally the wrong place, namely at the beginning with everyone saying hello and introducing themselves*. Awful.

*(Not literally, by the way. I'm not that bad a writer.)

Some of this was motivated by finally managing to watch Gavin and Stacey. Despite all the hype, which usually ruins these things, I loved it. Warm and witty and nice. And it starts somewhere you don't expect, and keeps going to places that are familiar but not obvious. So I'm trying to learn from that. Also, the fine art of putting character above the odd cheap laugh.

The play, incidentally, is still in deep storage, and awaiting its own special rewrite. But I can't even contemplate that right now, especially with two magazines to go to press in the day job. Aargh!

skint

2008-12-01T22:21:00.000Z

I am overwhelmed by the amount of theatre in London.

It's brilliant, don't get me wrong. But I feel like I don't get to see even a tiny amount of what I'd like to. Time and money are the main obstacles. Money mainly. Also dithering. I dithered over the David Hare play at the National until it was sold out and the decision was made for me.

The other problem is that there's lots of interesting mainstream stuff on, but I'm trying to make an effort to see things that are a bit more off the beaten track. I recently went to see a new Czech play at the Tristan Bates theatre. The play, Theremin, was fascinating. It was about the inventor of the Theremin (yes, the clue was in the title) and it sent me straight to Wikipedia to see if any of it could possibly be true. It was, of course. It's hard to make up anything half as interesting as real life - no question. At £3 a ticket it was also excellent value. Credit-crunch-culture-tastic.

I think I'll have to set myself some kind of cheapskate challenge for January, and see what theatre I can find for a tenner or less. Experimental Polish mime here I come.

meh

2008-12-01T18:05:00.000Z

I met up with some lovely writing pals yesterday. I met them through a writing course I did earlier this year. I've always been a bit unsure about creative writing courses, a bit uncomfortable about the idea that this stuff can be taught. But what can I say? I was wrong. I went to Arvon and started writing the play that I have a kind-of-first-draft of.

It was nice to catch up with other writing types. And it turns out everyone has similar issues. Mainly time. I can write in quite short moments, which is helpful. But having the mental space to do stuff is harder. You need to have a bit of energy. When I'm knackered and I try to write stuff, it comes out all limp and lacklustre and generally meh.

Good job I still have some stuff in the notebook from my mad creative period which I can type up and try not to fuck up in the edit. Writing is re-writing, apparently. It must be true. I read it on writersroom.

Right, back to the hedgehog-based comedy script. (Really.)

tick tock

2008-11-25T18:05:00.000Z

I always thought I needed time to be a writer. You now, endless afternoons, with endless cups of coffee to gently coax my writing out of hiding.

I really don't.

I'm rubbish when I have a lot of time. Endless time means endless ways to put things off. Far better is to snatch 10 minutes here or there and start writing before I have time to worry about it. Often the first page is not good, but I kind of warm up into it. I don't let myself faff on with it all.

The only drawback with this is that I'm doing it all longhand, and I do actually need some time to type it up/edit. This is where more hours in the day would definitely come in handy. Especially because I seem to have lots of new ideas percolating away, but until I actually make a start on one of them, they're a bit pointless. One of my many bad writing habits is to plan an entire play/novel/film trilogy in my head, decide it's brilliant and not actually write a single word of it down on paper.

So I'm trying to avoid that.

still tired

2008-11-17T22:15:00.000Z

I watched 15 minutes of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here tonight, and it felt like many, many brain cells died in the process.

Day at a conference today. Climate change. Fascinating stuff, and I feel fully up to speed on the relative merits of carbon trading etc, but by the time it got to the bit about the new eco-process for cleaning jet engines (or something) creativity seemed a long way off.

More of the same tomorrow. It's going to be a long week. And probably without much writing.

Some things I keep meaning to blog about and not getting round to:

The Czech play I went to see.

Prices.

Titles.

Acting.

Why exactly I can't explain what my play is about to anyone I know.

Tch. Next time.

knackered

2008-11-13T23:11:00.001Z

The effort of getting my play finished, or at least in a fit state to be read, has almost done me in. In an ideal world, I'd take a few weeks to relax, spend some time hanging out in coffee bars reading papers and generally replenish my writing mojo.

In reality, my day job just got ludicrously busy and I have another imminent deadline which requires me to both write and attempt to be funny. I submitted a comedy script for a competition thing and it's getting put on next year (along with lots of others.) Which is totally brilliant except I now have to write more of it. Aaargh.

I don't know if being busy helps or hinders creativity. I think it's worked both ways round. Sometimes being busy gets my brain going and sparking off ideas like neurons or one of those things I'd know about if I understood science. Other times, like now, I have the intellectual sharpness of a cabbage and following a Hollyoaks plotline is a challenge, let alone writing finely-crafted dialogue that will induce gales of laughter.

Anyway, the above is the last few drops of writing energy for the day trickling out. So I'd best stop.

My play, by the way, is called bedhead. Maybe I'll write more about titles when I have a brain again.

yogalates

2008-11-10T22:20:00.000Z

I accidentally went to a yoga class tonight. I say accidentally. I was in the gym. I did intend to go to a class. But I thought I was going to a pilates class. I was standing there, in tree pose (honestly), and I was feeling quite disgruntled. This isn't pilates, I thought. Maybe the instructor hoodwinked the gym by saying she was a pilates instructor, when all along she was a yoga instructor and couldn't be arsed to even make it look a bit different. I'm going to have words, I thought. This is not the advertised class. I'm going to - get this - tell on her.

And it wasn't, of course, because I'd gone into the wrong room, being new to this gym as I am. Two thoughts struck me at this point.

1. Oh bugger. I really wanted to try the pilates.

2. Oh bugger, I'm turning into some kind of north London liberal chattering classes type, who not only goes to pilates, but also has strong opinions on the relative merits of aforementioned exercise system versus yoga, and is prepared to report the instructor for deviance from said system. Not only am I now officially middle-class, which is bad enough, I'm middle-class and unpleasantly officious to boot.

I should have known. It's not without precendent. I had a minor strop a few months back because I tried to buy quinoa and they only had cous cous. I've been in denial ever since. This is AWFUL.

Anyway, I finished my play today. Well. Not exactly finished, but got it to a stage somewhere between first draft and finished. To a point where I could submit it for a competition, which I did, cabbing it across London in my lunch break because as per flipping usual I left it till the last last last last minute.

Having spent the last week or so re-reading and re-drafting, I'm now at a point where I'm thoroughly sick of my bloody play and don't intend to even look at it for several weeks. (I know I'll only spot all the disastrous typos too late). Still no further on the pithy explanation of what it's all about, but I do at least have a title, which is...

No. That can wait till next time.

(Suspense, you see. Told you I was a writer...)

On my travels...

2008-11-03T22:39:00.001Z

So, I was on my hols last week. I took my notebook in case of any writing opportunities, a tad optimistically as it turned out. I didn't scribe a single bon mot all week. Not even a mal mot.

To be fair, it was a city break to New York, so not the most conducive for reflection and writing. I thought I might be inspired by the place and the pace and the excitement of it all, but it didn't happen.

Take last Thursday. Sipping on a glass of wine, looking out over the people rushing past through Grand Central Station. With the beautiful ceiling, and the US flag hanging obtrusively, as if you could forget where you were. This is the kind of scene you should feel inspired by, isn't it? No. Not me anyhow. These were my musings - not written down, and you'll see why in a moment.

Wow.

Central Station.

Wow.

Look at all those people.

They must have, like, so many stories.

(pause)

This is like... a metaphor for something.

The American Dream?

Is everything in America a metaphor for the American dream?

Probably.

(pause)

I wonder how much I should tip the waitress.

So it turns out I'm probably not writing some amazing scene set in Grand Central Station. Ah well.

music matters

2008-10-24T06:52:00.000+01:00

There are the bands that I love with all my heart. (In no particular order.)

Belle and Sebastian

Broken Family Band

Low

Arctic Monkeys

I can't really listen to any of them when I'm writing. No sirree. I start singing along and getting far too distracted.

My best ever, number one spot for band I can listen when writing is (drumroll please)...

The Lemonheads.

Random, I know. I think they have just the right blend of tunefulness and familiarity and background warmth. I don't know why they never got more famous. I think they're great. Shame About Ray is the obvious place to start, but Come on Feel is very underrated I feel. And very good to write along to. Trust me.

(And when you've stopped writing, definitely listen to the Broken Family Band - Welcome Home Loser is a good album to start with).

jumpers can be very inspiring. really.

2008-10-19T11:51:00.000+01:00

So, I'm tidying my room, and I'm putting some jumpers away, and the drawer gets stuck. Really, really stuck, and I'm tugging away and all the stuff on top of the chest of drawers is starting to fall off. And I just lose it. I get really angry at this stupid bloody chest of drawers and really angry that I just don't have enough storage space and really angry that I had a really rubbish week at work, and this is somehow all converging on a stuck drawer.

So I throw out all my clothes onto the floor, including lots of cedarwood balls which are there to deter moths, and which are more than likely to cause a comedy wobble/painful fall/broken arm at a later moment. And I do a big old scream of rage. Then I worry that my neighbours might think I'm being murdered, as opposed to having a childish strop while tidying woollen garments.

So I sit on the bed in a mix of anger and anxiety for a few moments. And a little scene for my play emerges more or less fully formed. It's sort of based on a scene I've been trying to write for years, in different pieces of writing, and this is the first time it's actually worked, even a little. So I write it. And this is kind of a happy ending to the tale of stuck drawers/inadequate storage space/unsatisfying jobs.

Except that, if I'm ever in the very fortunate position of having someone ask me what my inspiration is, I'm going to have make up something a great deal more interesting than the above. Some transcendent moment, or traumatic childhood event or the like. So I'll get thinking on that.

a play wot I liked

2008-10-18T18:11:00.001+01:00

I've been to the theatre quite a bit lately. The last thing I saw was Now or Later, at the Royal Court. I wasn't sure about it at first. It's a very talky play. It's set before a fictional US election but explores issues of race, religion and identity I hadn't realised it would cover.

The things that were good:

Acting: Exceptional. Especially Eddie Redmayne, recently in Tess of the D'Urbevilles, and sporting an impressively whiny American accent.

Themes: More complex than I anticipated. And handled well. I didn't know what I thought by the end, and this was a good thing.

Overall niceness: I don't know how to describe this, but there was a real warmth to the play, and some good humour.

The bits that weren't so good? Well, it was a tad didactic at times, feeling the need to explain US political history in a rather clunky way. And there were a few moments when it went a bit Dawson's Creek Election Special. You know, everyone expressing themselves very eloquently, and showing off their full range of vocabulary and tortured vowels, and doing those unnaturally long monologues while other actors ostentatiously nod at appropriate moments.

But these are small things. Still an excellent play. And now I know how hard it is to even try to write a play, I'm all the more impressed by people who actually get things written, and written well.

what's going on? I dunno.

2008-10-13T22:13:00.000+01:00

Here's the thing: just how much do you explain? I mean, obviously your (entirely hypothetical) audience aren't imbeciles, obviously. And the half the fun of theatre is trying to work out what's going on, and filling in the gaps for yourself. But, with all this in mind, I think I might have to explain a little bit more, even if only to myself. I think I should understand how it all works, or I'm in trouble. In case someone asks. I just have this sense that it's something you're supposed to know. Sigh.

Anyway, talking of how much to explain, let me recommend Six Characters in Search of an Author, a new adaptation at the Gielgud theatre. It's brilliant and emotional and creepy and lots of WEIRD SHIT happens and it's sort of explained but sort of not. I'm still spooked by the characters, but then I've gotten quite worried watching Columbo in the daytime before now, so it's fair to say I'm a total scaredy-cat.

Go and see it, anyhow.

the fine art of putting stuff off. and not getting started. even though you know you should. oh look - that skirting board definitely needs dusting...

2008-10-12T18:46:00.000+01:00

I've been writing for a little while now, and my main enemy is procrastination. You know, the kind of procrastination that sees you sit down at the 'puter, all set to write your masterpiece, only to decide to clean the kitchen instead. My house is never tidier than when I'm writing, or at least attempting to write.

I fear this is a common problem.

Some strategies I have adopted to overcome this include:

Writing in the park (or the cafe in the park): so long as I don't take a newspaper, this one works pretty well.
Writing the word 'notes' at the top of any document I'm writing on (whether on the computer or longhand). Ridiculous, I know, but somehow this soothes the demons inside - the ones that whisper at every line 'well that's not very orginal/insightful/interesting'. It doesn't matter, it's just 'notes'!
Not giving my characters names. What? I hear you cry. And rightly so. I find that writing scenes with 'man' and 'woman' as characters is really helpful. Otherwise I sit there for hours going 'but is he a Tarquin or a Tito' and working out cultural baggage therein. So I'm a convert to this now. (And I read somewhere that Pinter writes using A and B when he starts, so I'm in good company on this, even if this is where the similarity ends.)

Er. That's it.