Where are you going? Where have you been? (9/6/14)

"Weekly" I thought. "I'll come back weekly."

Originally it had been 'every few days' but I settled for weekly. Then it stretched to every 10 days and suddenly we're a fortnight between blogs. Yet somehow, despite writing nothing and publishing nothing and not looking at the site, I'm still receiving page views. If anybody wants to cough to reading the old stuff on the sly then I'll gladly come round and shake their hand. 

Sometimes you spend so much of your allotted writing time writing that you forget to write. If you understand what I mean.

An update then. And let's be honest, if you weren't willing to indulge my ego you wouldn't be here.

Since the beginning of the year, since 25th of January when I became 'redundant' (and I use that term since I only started officially trading as a self employed writer on the 1st of May, everything prior to that was an unpaid hobby) I have written the following;

Two ten minute two handers for Merseyside Script Initiative (henceforth referred to simply as MSI as they're now called MSI presents)'s 'Public House Challenge' - short scenes that could be performed as though set in a pub, or possibly, probably, even performed in a pub. I was happy with both of these (the second, a reunion of two old MerseyBeat era colleagues/rivals more than the first where a decent human being threatens to kill a scally in order to see his reaction, to break him) and on the back of them started attending MSI meetings.

Through which I learned of the 'Page To Stage Festival' which runs in Liverpool in September and will stage ten one act plays for up to five times each over a fortnight. I couldn't write a one act play that ran fifty minutes, I didn't have the experience. Until a few days before the deadline when the word 'monologue' entered the conversation. Can I have one character talk for fifty minutes? Am I capable of talking for fifty minutes myself? Can I write that down?

James is in his early thirties, always wanted to write but somehow ended up writing 'the wrong stuff'; he's made a fortune from writing 'erotic literature' (think Fifty Shades), he's wildly successful but far from happy. The play is fifty minutes in his company, the assessor's feedback was enlightening, varied and showed the different thought processes and tastes of a varied audience. It's made the cut and I'm pretty damn delighted. In September I have a play being performed.

Obviously the next step was to go longer. The Royal Court has a competition for new, previously unperformed writing. The only drawback was that it had to be comedy based. I can't do comedy. Can I? Never know if you don't try. The thought 'what if there were a psychic who only ever saw really shit, useless ghosts' became something else, became a comedy and a ghost story and a love story and a story about redemption and you're getting no more details than that because it's been entered so do us a favour and touch a piece of wood (table, chair, whatever) and wish me luck/believe that it will happen whichever theory works best for you.

Which only left a sit-com to work on. Pitching it to a local TV station as part of MSI's bigger, overall pitching. A simple story, a bitter sweet love affair of two sad people trying to become happy again. There was a read through and the laughs weren't there (and this was on the third draft of the first write) so you have a choice - listen to the feedback and take it on board and make the changes that you think will work from the opinions of a very varied room full of people or give in, submit and decide that you'r not good enough.

In my twenties I'd have opted for the latter. Now? Now it's the former. It takes time to get here but the journey gives you the stories. If you don't want feedback then don't join things. Episode One - rewritten. (Hopefully) More laughs, a bit more tension, some conflict added to make the love story run less smoothly, all of which changes the ultimate ending of the series and wipes out the plotting that I had for each episode. I'm back to a blank page and I have the choice; fear it or fill it.

And that's where we are, four months into this new life that I decided to start at the age of fifty. Fifteen hours of writing a week (legal thing), nobody paying me yet (and it's the 'yet' that's important there, I'm working for the future). It's a start.

(haven't even mentioned the novel, have I? There's time, there's plenty of time)