Tuesday 28th July 2015

I've let things get away from me, somewhat. I'm the middle of selecting the plays (and the actors, and the directors) for the next round of Cast Iron (catchily and inaccurately called Cast Iron VI) - there's a certain amount of juggling that has to go on to ensure a balanced and varied evening, which does mean that some deserving play submissions have to get bumped to a later date. Plus, I occasionally can't accept a play simply because it has casting demands that we can't currently accommodate (or, as in one case, a helicopter and a mountain. This is a 40 seater studio theatre.)

I also got word today that a script I'd sent out earlier in the year got as far as the semi-finals. I don't quite know exactly what this means, as I don't know how many people entered in the first place, but I'm going to regard it as a good thing. It becomes a very great challenge to actually FINISH THE THING, and even rejection slips (because a rejection slip is essentially what it was) is a signifier that effort was put in, put in to the point of completion.

I suppose this is one of the main, self-serving reasons I set up Cast Iron - to actually have a reason / excuse / no excuse to actually finish stuff. Many so-called writers (and I include myself in that disparagingly named group) have so many brilliant ideas that safely remain brilliant because they remain merely discussed rather than actually completed and sent out to the unforgiving eyes of the public. I am of course guilty of discussion rather than actually writing many times, most often on this blog, which - just to complete the joke - isn't actually updated nearly as often as it should be.

However, this public announcement of ongoing projects is my way of embarrassing myself into being galvanised enough to carry on writing (yes, I know, me and several million other so-called writers). By the end of this week, I should have emailed all the relevant people for Cast Iron VI, and pretty much sorted out what I'm going to be seeing at the Edinburgh Fringe (oh, yeah: I'm going to the Edinburgh Fringe).