Wednesday 22 May 2013

My back started to give in today. A viscious twinge, that actually stopped me in my tracks on my way to work. For a moment, I almost had to double over. That hasn't happened for a while - in fact, the last time was when I was in the later stages of rehearsals for Medea last year, when, for about twenty minutes, I had to give my director notes from a sitting position, almost unmoving. But here's the thing. There's an app called TimeHop, which sends you a message occasionally to remind you of what you were doing (or at least, what you put as your status update) on this day a year, or two or three years ago. I just got today's text, and it turns out the last time my back locked up was exactly this day last year. Of course, it could have something to do with the last minute stresses of directing, but Medea wasn't until the end of June - almost a month away. The fact that my back twinged on the same day, a year apart - before I'd make enough of a connection for it to be psychosamatic - is a bit odd, really. I'd happily declare it as an entirely meaningless coincidence, but I've seen enough films to know that it must be a glitch in the system. Any minute now, I'm going to wake up. That feels appropiate, actually, since right now, I just feel half asleep.

Rehearsals continue to go well for A Beginning, A Muddle And An End, and we continue to learn stuff about improvisation even in this last week of rehearsals. (Oh, yes - it's the last week of rehearsal: you should really be getting your tickets right about now - https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/search/searchEventDetails.asp?sid=&returnPage=promoter&event_id=35283 ). Much of it is reaffirming what we already know, like the fact that we've got a pretty unique - and very challenging - set up in terms of the long form improv that we're attempting. Most troupes (read: sane troupes) will have a cast of four, maybe five. Sometimes just two. Occasionally even one. A show with nine - count 'em, nine - performers, all jostling for stage and story time, is a great testament to each improvisers skill and generosity. When I consider that a couple of them had rarely (or never) improvised before, it's genuinely breathtaking.

I've already known this for a while, but I won't be directing next year, or at least I don't expect to. It's a process that takes up a shocking amount of time, and I've not been able to see anything in the last three Brighton Fringes by sheer dint of being busy with my own productions. I'll always be greatful to the New Venture Theatre for allowing me to indulge some simply manic and entirely risky ideas. When people - management commitees, fellow directors and writers, and indeed the actors that you are responsible for - give you their trust, it's an empowering thing. Not just for you as the director, but also for the person giving the trust. I'm not saying as a director that you're always right - or even often right - but when someone has faith that you want the best, then - even if you both make a couple of mistakes along the way - you get to the best a helluva lot quicker.

Wednesday 15th May 3013

Riiiight. It’s that point of the fringe. That bit when I’m very aware that I’m pretty much sleep walking, I haven’t eaten a decent hot meal in days, and I haven’t properly seen the inside of my flat more longer than eight minutes at a time, tops, either side of what we might generously call ‘sleep’. It’s my own fault, of course. I bring it on myself. And I’ve only got one project going on at the moment. The original plan, you might remember, was to have four different things going on at the same time. That’s FOUR. For various reasons, three of those have been pushed back. No, forward. Hang on, surely it’s forward? You go forward in time, don’t you? So if you delay something, it can only happen further away in the future. But bringing stuff forward means doing it sooner? Whatever, you know what I mean. 

All three of the other projects were bumped due that old friend ‘circumstances beyond our control’. In other words, not down to me. If I had a say, I, uh, very likely wouldn’t have said anything, and I’d still be working on four different productions while juggling a full time job, weekends of running workshops, while committing to a full blown Crunchie and Crusha milkshake habit. I’m barely awake and coherent as it is with just the one project, I’d hate to see how I’d be (not) coping if everything had gone to plan. 

It’s all gravy, though: Beginning Muddle End is going well, while still terrifying. Tickets are beginning to sell even though there’s still a couple of weeks to go to the off. This is the first time that Brighton Fringe has done the full four weeks of May, and that will doubtless have some kind of effect of ticket sales as we hit week 4 (the week that we go up in). As yet, that effect is unpredictable – audiences might be exhausted and penniless, but equally, there’s always a significant number of audiences that circle the fringe for a week or so before finally leaping in and making their choices. Anyway, the link on the NVT website is here: 

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/search/searchEventDetails.asp?sid=&returnPage=promoter&event_id=35283

Last night’s rehearsal was lovely. I find (for me personally, at least) that a great deal of improv is learning, and then re-learning, the same thing over and over again. The same motif, but re-applied with all the other knowledge you’ve picked up inbetween. As a loose and easy-to-argue contentious point, I’d argue that most short form improv exercises are essentially the same rules, the same game, just with different bodywork. A Mini Metro and a Jaguar are undoubtedly very different experiences to drive, but essentially the same rules apply equally when you’re behind the wheel of either. In improv, no matter how scary or unfamiliar the new game or technique appears to you, if you follow the same basic rules you picked up in improv nursery: Listen, Say Yes, Commit, then it’s almost impossible to go wrong. 

Almost. 

Because even those simple rules can get a bit fuzzy. Recently in Sunday night workshops, I’ve attempted to shave it down to a simple instruction – Be Generous – but even that doesn’t really work if you haven’t already put a few miles on the improv clock. Let’s face it, if everyone on stage is busy being oh-so-generous, then not a great deal else happens on stage.  So it is required that on occasion, you have to put in a hell of a lot of effort into remembering what the apparently simple instructions actually mean. It’s very likely that at your first improv class, you were told to ‘listen’. And, sure, you get that. Everybody gets that. Listening is good, listening is important. And once you get told to listen for the third, tenth, and 100^th time, you know the score, you understand: yeah, yeah, listen. By that time, of course, you only hear the instruction, you don’t interact and engage with it: ironically, you’ve stopped listening. 

With that in mind, last night’s rehearsal was mostly about re-setting some simple map markers. Being told to drive is no good to anyone if you haven’t already taken a bucket load of lessons, the tests, swerved to avoid that damn chicken and hit a few geese (uh, maybe not that last one). But once you’ve put in all that spadework, then you can go forward with just that one word: drive – and all the hard work is wrapped up within that neat little package. And so it is that with the collected tools and proud battle scars of more than a few weeks of improv bootcamp under their belts that the Beginning Muddle End cast can set out into a rehearsal with what are actually complicated notes pared down to simple, single words. Words like Why, Now, How and Shh. All of which are surprisingly complicated concepts that deserve a weekend workshop of their own. 

I’ve been very aware in recent weeks that as long as you’re simply listening and responding (this links in with Shh) that the story will very much look after itself, and by proxy, you and the audience. All you need to do is respond honestly (this links in with the Why). I was considering making the qualification that clearly it’s different for prose – books, novels and the like – because those things generally have to be planned to within an inch of their lives. But that’s not precisely true. I mean, it’s true that a good novel these days probably spent some of its life (half an afternoon, at least) as a half-assed spreadsheet, but that doesn’t mean that the story itself isn’t simply responding to the very simple needs of its own narrative. If you just listen and respond, you can end up telling a story that is seemingly complicated and dense. Take the seven volume Harry Potter saga, for instance. There’s lots of stuff going on there: vast empires fall, kids go through puberty. And pretty much everything in between, including Helena Bonham Carter doing Goth-babe. No, wait, that was just the movies. Where was I? Anyway. The point is – spoiler alert – that not a great deal of complicated stuff happens in the books. The way JK Rowling delivers it is complex, sure, but that’s only because the characters have no idea what’s going on, shrouded as they are in smoke and mirrors. But the central spine of the story is: terrorist fails to assassinate possibly important kid who is saved first by his mother’s love, and then by the love of some guy who pointlessly loved kid’s mum. And that’s it. That, alone, is the story. The plot – horcruxes and suchlike, is only just so much sprinkle. And, in fact, all the sprinkle – the awful Dursleys, Hermione’s cleverness, the blinkered Ministry Of Magic – only exist as a honest and vital reaction to further the meat of the central story, or as a piece of misdirection so that you don’t notice significant plot points being seeded in the first three books. The last two books are largely about resolving everything that’s already been set up: while there are surprises and new information in book seven, it’s all been there since the first novel. Again, for something that seems so twisty turny, everything in those thousands of pages is vital, honest, elegant, and above all, simple. Even the big reveal – the literal reveal – at the end of Wizard Of Oz – tells us that things aren’t nearly as complicated as they might appear. And, if we want to read the film in a particular way, the ending has been set firmly in place before we ever leave Kansas. 

At some point, I’ll talk further about what I actually mean by Why, Now, How and Shh. But, like all the best improv rules (and some particularly nasty quicksands) the rules are constantly shifting. Not changing. But shifting. And who knows what’s buried down here?

Monday 13th May 2013

I've only seen one thing in the Brighton Fringe this year, and it might well be the only thing. The trade off is pretty good, since that one thing is excellent - Bitch Boxer (coming back to the fringe at the end of the month), but I'm acutely aware that it's about the third fringe in a year that I haven't been able to see anything. Time just vanishes. Of course, at this time of the year, I'm normally working on my own production, which, even if I feel like I'm not attending to it as well as I should, chews up all spare time and energy with the full force of a particularly nasty patch of quicksand. I've already decided that I won't be directing anything next year, at least not in the fringe. It seems to consume a vast amount of energy and emotion for something that I do outside the day job, in the evenings, where it's bundled up roughly and inefficiently, bursting at the seams. See, I have no idea what that's meant to mean. You can see I'm tired. 

However, we're on the home stretch now. This is the final couple of weeks of rehearsal (if rehearsal is an accurate description, which it isn't) for A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End. Up until now, my crew has consisted pretty much entirely of me. This is nobody's fault but mine - it's down to me to get hold of a production manager, lighting designer and the like, but I haven't been able to find the time to get anybody - because a good deal of my time outside rehearsals has been taken up with the sorts of things a production manager might take care of .. you can see how it can become a effortlessly self-repeating circle. Luckily, I've managed to bless myself with a new production manager just this weekend (nothing like leaving it to the last minute), and hopefully that will stave off the otherwise certain event horizon in which I wonder why things haven't been done in the production, before realising that I've somehow expected everyone else to read my mind. And, yes, I'm aware that professional directors with a full production team are guilty of this trait as well, without ever thinking that it is actually a guilty trait. 

By the way, my cast are doing nearly impossible things. Not actually impossible things, because that would be, well, you know. But nearly impossible things. It's a cast of nine performers, all sharing the space with each other, each having to boldly tear off a strip and sail down a narrative that is - quite simply - made up as they go along - while, at the same time, bending to the need of the other performer - to eight other performers, who will doubtless each have at least six different ideas as to where they think the story might be going. I'm learning as much as I ever did about the craft of improvisation. It occurred to me this week that the very first thing I did for the New Venture Theatre was a long improvisation performance, although I'm not precisely sure that I ever referred to it as such in the time that we did it. Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not even entirely sure that I even knew that it was long form. Certainly, in that performance, which only had about five days of prep, and then - thrown in at the deep end - things seemed a helluva lot easier. This time, it seems like a much bigger mountain, and that time, I was one of the performers (I'm staying off stage this time, for various reasons, which I might chat about on a later blog entry). 

I suspect that at least part of the reason why I find the long form so overwhelming this time round - even if I'm not in it - is because last time round, I was going in blind. I really didn't have any idea what the hell was going on. And naivete is a significantly underrated state of grace: if you don't know that a thing is impossible, or at least smucking difficult, then you're much more likely to wade in with much less concern about the cuts and bruises you might earn before the experience is over. That time, I was simply reacting, responding - not overly concerned about creating a coherent narrative, just reacting honestly to what the hell was going on. As anyone who's done more than one session of improv - long or short form - will attest, that's a great place to be in, improv. You can be too intelligent in improv, and your imagination, your smarts, aren't always your friend. 

Quite often, improvisers, experienced or first timers, will get concerned that their story doesn't really make sense, that it's meandering with no sense of direction, floating off into the wind. And, yes, of course that can happen, but lots of times - I'd say almost eight, even nine times out of ten, concentrating on making the plot clearer, giving it the ol' three act story arc treatment - is not going to do anyone any favours. It will always look false. It will always sound false and forced, dry rusty brakes screaming in protest. We panic that what we say has to be vital, and important - particularly if it's the first scene (the first line) in the play. But it doesn't. I'm pretty sure that most of Pinter's first lines are, on the paper, pretty banal. It's the attitude behind them that give them the import (and allow them to be re-evaluated after the fact). We don't talk in exposition, and whilst it's true that stories (plays, improv, films, whatever) are not exactly real life, there's no reason to speak in exposition there, either. Just because it's wise to only say what's needed on stage, and not to babble, it doesn't follow that every single thing spoken has to have the motive of story behind it. This is a complicated idea, much more complicated than I have the intelligence to voice here, because it might suggest that you're allowed to say things that have no purpose, which isn't the case at all. But neither should you be declaring that it's your plan to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. Even if - especially if - it's clear that your character's main aim is to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. It's like the acting advice that's most famously attributed to Michael Caine in Educating Rita: just because your character is drunk, doesn't mean that they want everyone to know it. As a performer, you say everything with a purpose. But your character does not have to mean everything they say. 

Which (sort of) brings us back to simply reacting, responding. If the only thing your characters are discussing is making tea, then there's an attitude behind that. Maybe one person is always making the damn tea, and resents that fact. Maybe the other character never makes the tea because they're convinced they are terrible at it. Why? Maybe they think they suck at everything. Is the other character, and more importantly, the other performer, aware of that? Do they (the performer) ask why - at least in their head? How do they react to this new found piece of information? It's this that drives the plot along. As improvisers, we don't really have to worry about plotting out a perfect plot that. In real terms, that's not improvisation, because we're laying down a safe path through the woods to follow. If we simply react, and respond, and throw out - gift out - our responses with verve and energy - then the story will look after us. Story is an awesomely strong beast that simply requires feeding and a loose leash. It doesn't need to be told where to go; it will smash us on the head, go through our pockets, steal our change, and gallop away down the road, laughing loudly. All we need to do is hold onto the leash, tight. 

And listen. 

Wednesday 8 May 2013

I'm no good with bikes. I'm so no good with them that I buy a couple a year. Repairs are beyond my skill, energy, and usually time, so I generally just buy a cheap old bike (£30 or thereabouts) ride it til it falls apart - which happens in an absolutely literal sense more often than you might think - and buy the next cheap one. You might think it ends up being false economy, but generally I'm in the plus column, although it does seem that the next bike always falls to bits at a point when I really don't have the time to start walking to work again. Not including the train part of my journey, the walking bit of each day is nearly two hours. It can be a massive exhaustion throughout the course of a week, not really leaving any time for things like food, and sometimes sleep.

Anyway, last month, I paid slightly more for a bike. It was still second hand, but I was certainly shelling out a bit more than usual. Generally speaking, it was worth it: it was clearly a bit of an expensive bike in its previous life, and much, much lighter than any of my previous bikes. Much lighter than all of my previous bikes, all together, in fact. That being the case, it's a much smoother ride, and much more pleasant to use. Well, it was. I had to get it repaired last week because of brake problems, etc. It wasn't a particularly expensive repair, but still one that I could ill afford. And this week: the pedals have started dropping off. The problem is that the nut of each pedal has become completely smooth on the inside, meaning that the threads have entirely gone. There's no purchase, no grip. So I ended up walking home (well, to rehearsal) tonight. It's very annoying, particularly as I don;'t see it getting repaired until next month. That's next month, for crying out loud. 

I think what annoys me most about the pedals is that it's a simple thing, designed to do only one thing, incapable of doing that one thing. A single function item that fails at that function. How disappointed its parents must be. I get annoyed by this sort of low achiever quite often. I have to wear cuff links each week for the Ghost Walk, and I find them annoying out of all proportion. But at least with cuff links, they are clearly quite awkward items in the first place, as the job of putting them on would be made much easier if you just had an extra hand. It's the other things that exist in spite of their obvious design faults that really annoy the hell out of me. Chief amongst them is the tray on the back of seats in Southern Railway trains. Who the hell decided that they had to have that awful, squealing metal against metal shriek when you pull them down? Or indeed, up? Because these things are designed. They go on drawing boards and the like. There's very likely some kind of prototype mocked up, so that the client can see what their money is being spent on. At no point, did nobody raise a hand, no matter how shyly, and suggest that perhaps passengers didn't actually want the sound of hell accompanying their journey home? The trays on the trains wouldn't have survived one week of The Apprentice. 

Which suggests only one, somewhat sinister option. That it's all deliberate. That these things really are sent to try us. That everything is designed with the specific intention of keeping us in a constant state of annoyance and tension. This would explain a great deal. Like the Daily Mail, for instance, and Jeremy Kyle.

Thoughts On Forty

Met up at the weekend for a coffee with a couple of friends and their beautiful little girl. As you might imagine, I don't get many chances to play catch up, especially during fringe season, which is normally given over to rehearsals, planning, and panic attacks. Indeed, I think I only see these friends a few times a year, in real terms. Somewhat inevitably, the same conversational gambits come up again, largely what I'm working on at the moment, how is my actual day-job work, who I'm (not) seeing at the moment, yadda yadda yadda. 

This time, however, there was a (almost) new one. 'So', I was asked / reminded / warned. 'You're forty next month?' I allowed that this was true. I don't particularly have a problem with getting older (let's face it, I was born at the age of 38), but I do feel pretty awkward about attempting to do anything to do with my birthday. I'm totally fine with celebrating other people's birthdays, obviously. In that case, I'm absolutely fine, if invited, with rocking up to whatever venue and helping celebrate a friends birthday. But when it comes to my own, I'm a lot more anxious. I'm inordinately convinced that if I attempted to organise some kind of birthday bash, then it would be on the very date that everybody I knew had other plans. I know, I know how self defeatist that sounds, but it shouldn't. I'm not fishing for a 'aww' here, I'm simply denoting the banal possibility that everybody's calenders wouldn't quite match up. And then of course I'd feel needy and fishing for a 'aww'. Which would be a terrible way to celebrate your birthday. It also feels - from my side of the table, at least - overly arrogant. Well, no, not arrogant, but you know what I mean: 'Hello, come celebrate knowing me. And the fact that I haven't died yet.' It just seems all so tiresome. I figure if you've known me for a while, you probably (vaguely) know when my birthday is without me reminding you, as indeed proved to be the case with this couple at the weekend. I generally feel awkward about reminding people about my birthday (somehow, I feel the only natural response is 'and?'). If you don't know, or indeed care, then that's perfectly fine and acceptable. That's at least honest. It's why I even dislike the birthday greetings on a facebook wall - tons of people, who previously had no idea that it was your birthday, see someone else say 'happy birthday' on your wall, and then do the same - three seconds of typing, and duty done. It doesn't really mean anything, does it? I'd genuinely much rather someone entirely forgot, and then, apropos of nothing six months later, suddenly asked 'oh, did I miss your birthday?' That, to me, is honestly more meaningful. I'm being serious. I feel so (out of proportion, admittedly) seriously about this that I ended up disabling the wall function on my facebook account after, in my first year on facebook, being confused that so many people were, for the first time, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd previously been pretty confident that they didn't give a damn. 

God, that sounds bitter, doesn't it? It's not meant to, seriously. I'm just allowing the possibility that perhaps my (and indeed your) birthday isn't exactly important to anybody other than your closest friends and family at any given time, and I'd much rather not worry people's timetables with mine. I'm acutely aware that I've probably gone a bit too far in the wrong direction: in recent years, I've passed a reasonable amount of birthdays with absolutely no comment and little regret. So, why this blog entry, which is a clearly an ill disguised plea for someone else to kick me up the rear to actually get something done? Well, of course, it's the 40 thing. Bloody milestone birthdays. They put an undue amount of pressure on you to try and mark the occasion in some way. Last year, the birthday coincided with the last night of a production I was directing, 'Medea', so I was able to smuggle in some kind of celebration without feeling the pressure that it was all about 'me', but actually about the last night of the show. This year, however, I've got no such beard. It's already giving me a slight headache. And I haven't even had a birthday drink yet. 

Monday 6th May 2013

In the final few weeks of rehearsals for my Brighton Fringe show, 'A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End'. Well, I say my show, but it really belongs to the cast. Whatever happens now, it's a really remarkable achievement from everybody involved. Embarking on an entirely improvised, narrative play is a pretty big ask at the best of times, but when you consider that a couple of my actors hadn't really done any improvisation of any description before embarking on this production, the work that they're doing is genuinely brilliant. 

Not that it's any easier for improvisers who have had a lot of experience. In fact, it can be even more difficult, because it's so easy to get stuck into one particular 'method' of improvisation, simply because you know that that works, or indeed because that's the 'right' way to do a scene. Which is ironic, really, because that's almost the opposite of improvisation, since, in theory, you're not leaving yourself open to new untried methods of telling a story. So I'm grateful to my cast for continually throwing themselves into the dark, and seeing where the story leads them. It shows a humbling amount of faith, if not in myself as the person who claims to know what the hell he is doing as director, then certainly in each other as fellow performers. In each rehearsal, watching, and working with these improvisers who, in some cases, are learning certain improvisational techniques for the first time, I find that I too am learning more and more about improv. 

The DukeBox Theatre has a full programme during the Brighton Fringe, so I debated for a while about whether or not I should give Iron Clad Improv a break for the month of May. It's still a relatively young group, though, so I decided that I wanted to keep the momentum going, although there was always a risk that the numbers would drop slightly in a new location. I'm glad I did keep it going, however, because although it is true that the numbers dipped slightly on our first Sunday over in Hanover, it was a great session, and bodes well for the rest of the month. 

I keep meaning to upload a couple of essays and reviews on classic and nu-Who (Doctor Who, in other words) before this season ends, as there's a couple of theories that I'd like to put forward before they become proved / disproved onscreen. I have an odd little theory that links The Great Intelligence (the current Big Bad) to stories dating as far back as the very first season. I may be reading too much into things that have been (or indeed haven't been) seen onscreen, but then again Steven Moffat is a fiendish little showrunner. Hope to get those reviews / theories uploaded before the end of the week. 

Another thing I need to try and get done as soon as possible is a couple more short stories. There's a competition coming up for entries for ghost stories, and I happen to have a couple of ideas that would suit well. I've now got this long list, in date order, of upcoming competitions, which is very useful for focusing the mind. Nothing like a deadline or two for galvanising the procrastinating writer. There's a couple of other reasons too. Firstly (and probably most important), it means I actually have a reason to finish that story before getting distracted by that other shiny story. The excellent Chuck Wendig puts it very well, suggesting that you shouldn't cheat on your first idea by messing around with the new, sexy idea. Be faithful to the first one. Put the effort in. For someone like me, whose hard drive is littered with a hundred and six unfinished ideas, this advice is invaluable. 

Perversely, however, the other reason to actually finish these stories (or ideas, or whatever) is in order to come up with new ones. As writers, we're often concerned that we're going to run out of ideas, that the well is going to run dry. But I'm increasingly not convinced that's quite the case. Actually, we need to use up those ideas, chew them up, spit them out, make way for the new stuff. Which will come. Otherwise, we're just screwing around with the same old stuff, pushing our peas around the plate, becoming ever more bored with the lack of flavour, and losing the energy to come up with something new. 

Well, that's what I think today, anyway. Tomorrow, it'll probably be something about a gluten free diet, and women who wear too much kohl on their eyes. (I have no idea). 

Monday 29th April 2013

When do you throw in the towel, and realise that the story you're working on isn't actually any good? I'm in the middle of a couple of tweaks on a short story that's due a deadline to tomorrow. Any tweaking is purely cosmetic now, just a tightening up here and there. At this stage, I don't want to do too much of a rewrite, because the story itself is pretty much written. Completed. Finished. As well it should be. I've sent it off to two other competitions already.

Basically, the not so hidden punchline to that paragraph is that, not only have I posted the story to two previous competitions, I've also had it rejected twice, too. It hasn't even made the long list. I just got the last rejection a couple of days ago, meaning that it's perfect timing to release it from statis and get it out there one more time. Now, I'm a reasonably paranoid and self deprecating kind of chap. Hell, I'm also a unreasonably paranoid and self deprecating kind of chap. Any lack of praise for my work will cause me to tense up, convinced that whatever it is that I'm working on isn't worth any kind of comment whatsoever, and people are all too willing to change the subject before being forced into a situation where they have to concede that whatever thing it is that's under discussion is just disappointing, whether it be a short story, a play, or maybe even sexual congress. Maybe that that middle one. Whatever. Obviously, being like many other creative types, these paranoid feelings remain in check even when people say flattering things. Maybe they even get heightened, because we're hard wired, most of us, not to really take on compliments, not without a great deal of effort and self coaching. Many famous actors refer wryly to the recurring dream that one day they're going to get 'found out' as someone with no talent. Why should it be any different for a creative type who hasn't even had a career yet?

Look, I know how a lot of short story competitions work. I've heard the horror stories about, uh, the stories. The unpalatable truth is that the people judging these things have to wade through a remarkable amount of dreck, of stuff that is at best unoriginal, and at worst, seemingly unfinished. And a lot of the time, judges are forced to wonder to themselves 'does this writer know? Do they actually think they're good?' Presumably they do. Here's the thing: I actually like this twice rejected story. It's not any great and powerful change of events, but it is a sweet moment. A passing kiss, if you like. So I have no problem with sending it off one more time. To see what happens. I keep in my mind all those popular tales of the authors who had their most famous story rejected thirty or forty times before finally getting accepted. Sometimes, it really is just a numbers game.

(while writing this blog, I came across a flyer for the very short story competition I'm about to enter. I've decided to take this as a good omen. On the other hand, while writing the last paragraph, I spotted someone pushing a ten foot wicker man down a Brighton high street. I'm being serious. I haven't yet decided what sort of omen that is. Probably best not to think about it too much)

Saturday 6th April 2013

I'm probably two, maybe three drafts away from the final draft of a story I'm working on called 'Broom Handle'. If I'm lucky, it's only one draft. When I had the idea for the story, it seemed really simple. And, actually, it is: the idea itself is quite a basic one, and shouldn't require too much in the way of complicated add-ons. But because the concepts aren't that simple for the characters themselves, I need to be a bit clever about how I'm telling the story, a cleverness that's currently hiding from me. Over the last few drafts, I've begun to hate this story. Not actively, not with real passion, not even so much that I consider the writing (and re-writing) of it to be a genuine chore .. but certainly enough for me to question if the story is actually good enough. And, by extension, if I'm good enough as a writer. 

Again, this is why it's useful to have deadlines. If I'd been writing this story a year or so ago, pretty much at any point in my history, there's a damn good chance that I'd have given up on it by now. After all: what's the point? Who's actually waiting for this story? No-one. (actually, that's a bit of a lie: two friends have asked to read it when it's finished, because they quite liked the sound of the idea behind it). It's so easy to let a pretty good idea wither and die even before it's finished. That's any idea: whether it be for a short story, a film - or even a little blog like this: if you don't get the damn thing down as quickly as possible, even if it's not particularly good, then there's a very good chance that nothing will get written at all. Of course, that's a major factor in itself: so many things don't get written because they are not perfect in their first incarnation. Then the inner critic gets disheartened, dials back, and thinks that they'll do better if the first running jump is much better. What happens, of course, is that there are lots of running jumps, quite a few bad stumbles, and then: nothing. Nothing actually gets finished. Writing (as well as anything I do, like acting, directing, improvising, whatever) seems to be a journey of constantly re-learning the same things, over and over. You can have twenty years in the same discipline, and still, in that twentieth year, re-realise with evangelical fervour the thing that you learnt in the first day. For me, in this past year, it's been this: it really is irrelevant if I write every single day. Even if I'm producing, say three thousand words every single day: that doesn't matter. Sure, it's relevant, but those three thousand words a day don't really add to the pile if you don't do one simple thing: ACTUALLY FINISH. 

I think it was doing Nanowrimo last year that really cemented that ethos for me. Now, I haven't yet looked back at the novel that I finished in November (with about thirty minutes to spare), and I'm reasonably confident that it's a pretty shoddy bit of story telling. But I know that it's a pretty shoddy bit of storytelling  and that in itself has been a instructive experience. Just the pressure of finding narrative closure (or a deliberate lack of closure) for my characters demanded of me a certain amount of discipline  that I hadn't always really buckled down to before, mainly because of that old idea that nobody's actually waiting for the story, so it didn't matter - not really - if I didn't actually buckle down and finish the damn thing. 

This year, I seem to have got a lot better at actually finishing stories. Some of them, I even think are reasonably good. So far, fate doesn't quite agree - none of them have been shortlisted for any short story competitions that I've sent them off for. On occasion, I suspect that the story wasn't quite right - either for whatever comp I was sending them off for, or maybe even that the story itself wasn't perfect. I haven't sent off a story that I didn't think was as good as it could be, however. 

So, these deadlines are a real life line. As I've indicated, there's a reasonable chance that if I didn't have a deadline for this story (April 15th), I might have bailed on it quite some time ago, as just so much damn hard work. It's easy to forget, however, that writing - good writing - is supposed to be damn hard work: it's not as if you can just throw one word onto the page after the other without so much as a re-write or checking over to see if it makes any sense whatsoever (like this blog, for instance). It really is - without getting pretentious about it all - an actual craft, and that demands a certain amount of respect and hard work. It can take a very long time to understand exactly what that means. I suspect I'm not even close to truly appreciating what I'm taking on. 

Lots of rehearsal this week for both the Brighton Fringe shows. With Three Kinds Of Me, we're having to do a fair bit of re-write in order to get the balance of the show right for the new space (and the new running time). We always knew that, just because of these seemingly innocuous and irrelevant details, that the show would be very different, that, indeed, it would be about something different, but it's still a helluva challenge to rip up what you've already achieved, and, for all practical intents and purposes, begin again. Well, I say we: all of the work is being done by writer/performer Sarah Charsley, who is doing extraordinarily well. I can imagine how challenging it is to totally re-do something that you are creatively so close to. 

As  well as 3KoM, we've got A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End, the totally improvised show. I'm still debating with format, etc - I don't want it to be too much of a ringleader/circus type improv show, where the 'director' directly addresses the audience and asks them to call out suggestions, because I feel (this week, anyway) that this is not quite in the neighbourhood of what I want the finished product to be. This isn't a judgement call on one kind of improvisation as opposed to another, but I certainly want the audience(s) to have the very real experience of a play - rather than an extended sketch - being formed before their very eyes. This week, we were rehearsing in the DukeBox Theatre, which gave the cast a good chance to experience how it will feel to perform on an actual stage, with light and music / sound. Things are beginning to fall into place .. 

Tuesday 26th March 2013

Another rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me last night, the first of two plays I'm directing at the Brighton Festival Fringe. Although an earlier version was performed at the New Venture Theatre in October, this is a slightly different beast, adapted for the fringe, which means that we're still at the stage of tweaks and re-writes, discovering what it's all about, Alfie (it's not about Alfie. That was a needlessly confusing diversion). This, I imagine, is to be expected when you have a writer directing a writer in her own script. Certainly, I have to be very mindful that any suggestions or revisions I offer are done so from the mindset of a director, not a frustrated writer (even if it's actually a frustrated writer that's come up with the idea for the revision). I find it endlessly curious how the meaning of a story can change over time, even if you don't actually change the words. A single story can mean something completely different to people depending on when they see it - ie, what year or decade - and what they themselves bring to the story: if they've recently become a parent, or come out of a relationship. The final writer is the audience. I think that's already been said elsewhere before. Probably by somebody able to write the idea significantly more elegantly.

It reminds me of a story that John Cleese used to tell, about the first time the Parrot Sketch from Monty Python aired. The morning after, Cleese was stopped in the street by an admiring fan who told him how funny the sketch was before turning serious and conspiractal: 'So,' the man said. 'It was about the Vietnam War, wasn't it?'

I'm finding meanings in stories a particular challenge at the moment. This week, I have four deadlines for short story competitions all jostling for position. They're all pretty much on the last draft stage because I have been working on them before I had any inclination that I would be entering them for competitions. There is one in particular which I am rather afraid that I'm going to have to rip apart and start all over again, simply because I have no idea what it's actually about. I mean, it makes sense, and has a plot, and events happen one after the other in an attractive fashion, and it's a perfectly pleasant read, but I'm not entirely sure what the point is. I'm cheerfully confident that there are plenty of stories, books and films that have no real rhyme or reason and are nonetheless entirely successful. But I can't help thinking that this story needs a bit of bones under the meat, that it needs to be about something other than simply just the plot. Or maybe I should just bite the bullet, and post the bloody thing off before deadline. If I think it's good enough.

All of a sudden, I have two Ghostwalks this week, which depart from the same place and same time as usual - 7.30, outside the Druids Head in Brighton. This week, it's on Tuesday (tonight, if you read this quick), and Thursday. It's been a bit of a slow season so far, largely to the bitterly cold weather that continues to hang around like the lonely and slightly too sober chap at a party who's still there when all the music has been switched off. Hopefully an improvement in the weather is not too far away now, and anyway, in just a few weeks is the the Fringe.

The other thing I'm doing for the fringe is the entirely improvised show, which is going very well in rehearsals, although we only have one rehearsal this week, which is a bit of a strain. Although it's true that due to the very nature of the show being improvised, there are no lines or moves to learn, it's obviously good to keep the group together as much as possible. Each rehearsal is either adding to the tool kit, or keeping those tools well oiled and sharpened. It's dangerous to let the momentum slip for too long, otherwise everybody runs the risk of getting a bit rusty: a good improv show - short or long form - is all about trust and confidence in everybody else on stage. However, this is the only week that I expect us not to be able to meet regularly. Up until now, it's been like the first fifty seconds of a ride on a roller coaster - that very sharp incline to the highest point when you can hear all the gears working hard to get you to a certain level. After Easter, however: that's when it's full speed ahead.

He's Not Only In The Wrong Decade .. He's On The Wrong Planet

Look, it can't be much fun being trapped in a newspaper that's mostly only fit for lining the kitty litter tray. Believe me, people, I've written a load of these blogs, and I'm reasonably confident that I can count my regular readers on one hand. Using the other hand. Which would be less than five.

I have every sympathy with those writers who need to earn a crust, in a time where the print industry is spluttering and panicking worse than someone trying to defend Rebecca Brooks at the Leveson Inquiry. Newspaper barons pay taxes too. Actually, maybe they don't. I haven't got the data on that. If only there was some method, deserving of universal respect, that could look into these kinds of things for us.

Richard Littlejohn, on his twitter account, declares 'I'm not the bigot you think I am', which as an introductory salvo, is the same kind of Hallmark greeting as 'I'm not a racist, but ..'. He tells us that he's not the bigot we think he is (which leads to the disturbing thought - exactly what kind of bigot is he?), but he's clearly capable of some pretty bigoted stuff. Some of you will be aware that this blog is roughly modelled on an article he published just before Christmas, but without all the vile stuff. I'm not able to repeat it, even in a clearly satirical way. Presumably I'm just not as skilled a writer as he is.

For instance, Littlejohn is so skilled, he was able to create a furore over Christmas last year over very little. When Lucy Meadows made the move from her previously male persona to become a woman, the school board were notably and suitably proud of their teacher that they supported her fully. You might guess that it's difficult to find a more nervous and paranoid group than the average school board. Looking after kids while the nations tabloids look on ensures you think over your more sensitive decisions very carefully. One imagines that the announcement on the website wasn't exactly the first time the PTA had heard about this, despite Richard Littlejohn's need to play sleight of hand otherwise. It's worth pointing out that the twitter account I'm referring to has not been updated in a good long while. It does appear likely that it is a spoof account, and nothing to do with Littlejohn himself. Then again, the evidence for that assumption is mainly to do with some tweets containing quite shocking bigotry that you'd think nobody would put in a public forum, and, well ..

But, has anyone stopped for a moment to think of the devastating effect all this will have on the people who really matter? Adults with IQs as low as 7 aren't equipped to process the type of bigoted idiocy that Littlejohn spouts, swallowing it without question or concern, repeating it in turn to others. At least the Express doesn't really have an opinion to repeat.

The article quotes a father who is apparently concerned about his boy, who allegedly is afraid that he'll suddenly turn into a girl. Nobody thinks to mention to the dad that there's an excellent solution to this thorny issue: actually talk to the child (rather than a tabloid newspaper).

It's very unlikely that the Leveson Inquiry will make any real change to the way that newspapers - tabloids in particular - will treat innocent people, regulation or no regulation. The problem is the same as it ever was: this bizarre idea that if someone has made any kind of choice to live apart from what we clunkily call the norm, they surrender their rights to respect and privacy. This seems to apply if someone decides to become a singer, a film star, a woman, or even someone who would dearly love to find their missing daughter alive. The often stated opinion is that such people have to expect press intrusion. No, they don't. It's really that simple: no they don't. I have yet to hear one intelligent or even reasonable argument why they do. Bullying is bullying, and we still seem to place all the responsibility on the victim, arguing that they should either put up and shut up, ignore it til it goes away, or - even better - not to do anything that draws attention in the first place. This is clearly not good enough: the most concise and effective way to combat bullying is to actually blame the perpetrator. Not the victim. But for some reason, we seem to be remarkably unskilled at that. Incidentally, one of the reasons why rape culture seems to becoming ever more ingrained into our lives, rather than less. It's not just Littlejohn, and I've always been a little uneasy that we throw our hands up in horror at the victimisation of members of the public, but somehow consider public figures to be ipso facto fair game. It just allows newspapers (and not just tabloids, if we're honest) a little more rope with which to hang us.

Look, freedom of speech is a great and noble thing. And it does protect your right to state your opinion. But it doesn't protect any right to be a vicious bully about it. And certainly not be be a fracking idiot.

Sorry, in that last paragraph, I went off the Richard Littlejohn template. But, as is increasingly obvious, it's very easy to go off Richard Littlejohn, full stop.