Friday 12 July 2013

Last night I managed to finish writing a play that I’d been working on. OK, it was only a ten minute play, but I still have a pretty keen sense of achievement – even more so, since I’d managed to finish it (final draft, an’ all) a full two days before the actual deadline. Normally, I find myself hacking out the third or fourth draft just a few hours before the final submissions are being accepted. And while I do refer to myself as a ‘writer’ on various websites and twitter feeds, this is why I’m somewhat wary of describing myself as such in real life. 

You see, writers actually write things. They get things done. I can’t always claim that great honour. Sure, I have ideas. Some of them are pretty good ideas. Some of those pretty good ideas would make well received books and TV programmes; because I’ve seen other people have the same ideas, and write the books and TV programmes before I did. And that’s the point, of course: anybody can have ideas. Ideas are cheap currency; ideas are all around us, over-laden fruit on trees. I sincerely believe that writers who complain that they can never come up with ideas are simply not recognising that at least half of the thoughts they’ve had that day are in fact ideas that could potentially make a good story. But that’s a blog entry for another day.

This blog entry, however, is about the ideas that I do have, but never actually develop into a full script. Most writers will recognise this: a new and shiny, sexy and exciting idea that’s fun to write for the first thousand words or so, and then – well, then, it feels too much like hard work. Particularly if  writing isn’t actually your day job, and you have to fit in between shifts of your actual hard work. And then, horror of horrors, you end up having another new and shiny, sexy and exciting, brand new idea that suddenly seems a helluva lot more alluring that the crappy old idea that isn’t cooperating with you right now. So you drop that idea, and move onto the new – until the cycle repeats itself, again and again. I’d argue that, even if you’re writing two thousand words a day, if you’re not actually finishing anything – if there’s nothing produced at the end of the day that has a beginning, middle and an end – well, then: you don’t actually get to call yourself a writer. I say this, and yet I’m still figuring it out for myself.

Even that’s being overly romantic about it. That line about it seeming too much like hard work? That’s uncomfortably near the truth. A lot of us so-called writers don’t actually write (or, more specifically, re-write, edit and finish) our work because of sheer laziness. That’s it, nothing more noble or mysterious than that. Oh, yeah, sure, there’s other stuff , like fear of success (not fear of failure, you’ll notice. But the crippling fear that somebody will like what you’ve produced, and expect that you can come up with more of the same). But there’s only one way to get past that: just get the stuff written. Now, some of you might have a sneaking suspicion that I’m writing this much more for my benefit than yours, and in that you would be entirely correct (let’s face it, the only reader who bumps up the hit counter on this blog is me myself when I’m trying to check if anyone else has wandered past).

And stuff gets in the way of your writing. I mean, literally. I started this blog on my way to work, and had to break off from writing when real life got in the way. I had a whole eloquent point to end on, that I could write up in my lunch break. Well, it’s now my lunch break, and the eloquent point has entirely vanished. No idea what the hell I wanted to talk about. Now, the other option would have been to junk this blog altogether. But, what exactly would have been the point of that? Now you, who have invested two minutes in reading this might have something to say about that. If I hadn’t committed to  actually writing and completing this blog, then right now, you’d be two minutes in credit. But let’s face it, what would you have done with those two minutes? (Don’t answer that. If anything you’re thinking of right now could be completed within two minutes, you probably don’t want to advertise the fact)

Sometimes – often, in fact – you’re going to have to write the crap in order to get to the good stuff. Maybe a hell of a lot of crap. But maybe, just maybe: you end up writing something decent. As long as you understand that it will almost always in that order. 

NaNoWrimo : Day 1

Had a Ghostwalk tonight (well, last night, now) that was particularly well attended despite the appalling weather simply due to the fact that it was Halloween. I was a little nervous because a couple of friends were in the audience (friends always seem to rock up to the Ghostwalk exclusively on the nights that the weather is bad), but it all seemed to go pretty well, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and there were enough skull shaped lollipops to go around. 

It being Halloween, the Ghostwalk was later than I usually do it, and by the time I got home, it was already past the witching hour - in other words, November 1st. While this meant that there was no immediate need for me to start shaving (more about that another time), it meant that before I was going to go to sleep, I could already get started on my NaNoWriMo novel. To have any chance of completing 50,000 words by the end of November, I need to be logging about 1,700 words on a daily basis, which I'm already fairly confident that I'm going to fail miserably at. But it's only the start of NaNoWriMo right now, which should mean that I'm more able to hack out a few hundred words than I will be ale to in, say, two weeks time, even if those words make absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

While I have a rough idea of what's going to happen when in my story, I haven't really thought about it too much in advance, preferring to write it out almost as free form association. Tonight, that was the right thing to do, although obviously it may not work that easily for the rest of the project. I'm already aware that in the 2 or 3 pages I hacked out tonight, there are some terrible turns of phrase, and occasionally (on more than one occasion, in a piece of prose that lasts less than 4 pages), I'm jumping rather too suddenly from one subject to the next in order to make a point. 

Refreshingly, however, none of this seems to matter. All the prep and pep talks on twitter right now, which are mainly on USA time (where NaNoWriMo won't kick in for a couple more hours) cheerfully remind you that whatever you've written in a month's time, won't be ready in any way for publication. This month is just to get the damn thing (in this case, the damn thing being a very first draft) down on paper. I'm fairly confident that there will be at least 200 times in November where I'll really regret signing up for NaNoWriMo, and that anything I write is truly dreadful. What's comforting, though, is that by hacking out a thousand words tonight, I've already had that reaction twice already. Which means I've only got to go through it 198 times more. 

NaNoWriMo Wordcount: 1,177.  

The Last 200

I've come out to a coffee shop with the specific intention of finishing  up a short story that I'm working on, since I tend to work a bit better if I've got myself out of the house where there's too much temptation to stay in bed and re-watch box sets of '24' (currently re-working my way through season 4). This is important, because I've got a deadline to meet before Wednesday. The short story that I'm working on - In The Middle Of The Night - I would have been working on anyway, since I'm hoping to put together a collection of short stories on the kindle. My hope was to have them all finished by January 2013, and while that's certainly still possible,  I don't just want to rush and hack them out. After all, no-one knows who the hell I am - it's not like anyone is eagerly awaiting this book. 

The reason, therefore, that this particular story finds itself with a deadline in to days time is because I hope to enter it for a short story competition. The reasoning behind this is three fold. The first is fairly prosaic: if the story actually gets anywhere, then I can assume that it's got a chance of finding a larger audience outside those who feel contractually and emotionally obliged to tell me that they like it. Secondly, of course, if it does really well, it will have some financial reward. And if I can't get flattery, then I'm happy to take the money. Thirdly, of course, if it does really really well - ie, if it is a runner-up or even a winner, then that's obviously something that I can plaster on the promo material for the book.

So, this is why I'm here in the coffee shop. It's a 3,000 word story (not actually that long), and I've completed about 2,800 words. It isn't, as you might have thought, simply a matter of just if providing the missing 200 words. There's still a bit of shifting around in tone and texture, and, at the moment, the resolution to the story just jumps out a bit suddenly, without a great deal of lead-in, so I need to fix that. I think it's probably a relatively easy fix, however, and I'm not overly concerned about it. 

And that's why I'm in this coffee shop. With some ideas and a laptop. But not, as I've only just discovered, without the external hard drive on which I've saved the latest draft of the story. That, I've left back at home (probably on the bed, next to the 24 box set). Which means that I'm not likely to be able to finish the story today. Again, though, I'm not overly concerned, since the deadline isn't til Wednesday, and luckily I've managed to remember to bring out a hard copy of the short story collection. This, luckily enough, chimes in with the way I very often write: printing out a hard copy (or seven) as I go along, and reading it as I would if it was finished, all the while scrawling notes and annotations over the text. There's still something very alluring and persuasive about seeing the words on a page of foolscap. It makes the whole thing a great deal more accessible and - 'real' than just seeing the words on a screen. All of which, I guess, means that even though I don't have the hard drive with me, I don't really have any excuse to stop writing the story today. Which in addition means  I'm really using some delaying tactics in writing this blog. 

Despite the fact that I was paranoid that nobody was going to turn up to my first improv class, there was actually a nice little turn out. Of course, I'll need a few more on a regular basis in order for me to break even after hire costs and everything, but it's a promising start. We played a few short-form improv games, and it was a very decent evening. I'll go on about this a lot, but the main bulk of what I'll be saying is that the improv classes will be held every Sunday at the DukeBox Theatre, at the back of the Iron Duke pub on Waterloo Street, 7.00 - 9.00pm. It's £5 per workshop, and there's loyalty cards available. 

By the way, I'm going to be doing a couple of Ghostwalks this week. Because it's Halloween this week, there's a special late night one (well, at 9.00pm) on the night itself, which is on Wednesday. There's no need to book, and you can just rock up to outside the Druids Head pub (not the Druids pub, which is something else) at 9.00 on Halloween. For those of you who have been saying for the past year that you're definitely going to come one time, this would seem to be a perfect opportunity. Just saying. 

The Sound Of Deadlines As They Woosh By

So, I failed. Utterly. I had meant to complete at least 500 words for the short stories I'm working on at the moment, particularly as I'd missed my vague daily target of 1,000 on the previous two days. But, no luck: 500 might not seem a great deal, but the trick is to have them make some sort of coherent sense. Now, you may think that such concerns about coherence haven't previously constrained me before (such as in the writing of these blogs, for instance), but I feel compelled to make the occasional effort.

However, at the end of last night, I couldn't even manage the 500, ironically because I'd been entering that day's blog entry. Ironic because one of the main purposes in my keeping up to date with the blog is to ensure that I don't get too rusty with the writing. But I've decided not to feel too guilty about missing last nights writing session (although if the same happens tonight, then we have a problem). If I was going to beat myself up about the fact that I'd missed a night's writing (alright, three) then it would be very easy to get despondent, and go three weeks without bothering to flip open the pc. Better to keep the momentum going, even if you stray from the path for a couple of days. I imagine it's a bit like attitudes to giving up smoking. Now, I myself have never smoked, so I've never had to go through the whole trial of giving up, or trying to, but it seems to be that the problem is all contained within those two words, 'giving up'. There's not much wriggle room there; you're either a smoker, or you're not. You either still smoke, or you've managed to give up. So, when someone who is trying to give up has a faltering moment, and has 'just one' cigarette, then it's too easy to think that they've dropped from having 'given up', back to being a smoker. I've often thought that instead of 'giving up', we should try the phrase 'pausing'. Everyone's allowed to pause. And it means there 's no pressure: if you successfully 'pause' smoking for a good long while - say, three years - and you happen to take a puff of someone else's fag on new years eve, then no-one can judge you, it's not like you've fallen off the wagon; it's not like you now give up giving up, and go back to smoking 20 a day.

All of which is a tortuous way of saying that, despite the fact that I haven't written a great deal over the past couple of days, I'm not going to panic about it too much. Although, to be fair, you can only go so long, not writing, and still call yourself a writer. But I'd rather not get back into the groove of going too long without writing again. Too easy to let things go fallow, let the ideas wither into dull nothingness.

There are things to get in the way, however: there's another rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me tonight, and both Thursday and Friday are taken up with Ghostwalks, which are beginning to have a different feel to them as the nights get darker.