the ideas phase

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

The ideas phase is a dangerous place to be.

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

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

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

today I was distracted by shopping

Short floral culottes. Why?

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

I am rubbish at shopping in lots of ways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

write what you know

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

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

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

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

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...