Sometimes I don’t half wonder if just sacking it all off and doing a PHD wouldn’t be a hell of a lot easier. But that’s just the draft 1 blues talking- I don’t know enough of my play to be comfortable with it, and I haven’t got the confidence and experience to know for certain that I’m traveling in enough of the right direction to find it. I seem to have started writing a love story. So far nothing else has come into it. I know there’s lots of stuff simmering away, and it’s really good that I’m approaching it character and feelings first, but it’s hard to feel like it’s going to come together into saying something new, I feel like I’m like trying to give a boulder a transfusion, if you’ll let me take the metaphor to an extreme. Ona has become much more bolshie than I remember, well not remember, imagined, in my head, there’s a stoicism in her which would make you wonder why she didn’t just run away, but I think they keep her drugged a lot. And not every woman that gets trafficked can be a defeated mouse, people react in different ways don’t they? I think a lot of why I feel particularly weird with this draft is that before I’ve been very plot heavy to begin with, and this time, the characters are just talking, getting to know each other, and in a way that makes me feel vulnerable, as a writer certainly, and as a general control freak doubly so! I should really get back to it, think I’ll do some on the train tomorrow because that means no internet, and no internet means no hours of endless distractions. In the meantime, do check out the following wonderful things that I have found during hours of procrastination:
- Sarah Haskins. She’s amazing. Yoghurt, Cars, and Chick Flicks particularily worth a look, but heck, they’re only 3 mins long each, and all hilarious.
- Outnumbered – back for a second series, and just as brilliantly understated and true as ever, loving yet acerbic semi-devised script, and just the right amount of precosiousness make this worth looking out for
- Icanhascheezburger cheers me up, every time
- Swearing in Lithuanian – this was technically research, and so I didn’t even feel that bad! my favourite? Kad tau ezhys kelnese ishdygtu – ‘let the hedgehog appear in your pants’.
- Trevor Goose and His Dark Night of Lights – which I’m going to see in Warwick in a couple of weeks “Is it a gig? Is it a panto? Is it a misjudged Danish cabaret? Well, it’s all three, as local heroes Talking Birds bring to Warwick Arts Centre a Christmas Show for those who want their festive entertainment skewed and a little bit heartbreaking.” Well looking forward to it.
So yes… back to writing I guess, I just struck upon the idea of using seasons, as well as Ona’s varying baby-bump, to let you know where you are in the story… might talk more about the struggles of temporal structure another time, but for now,
Adieu.