Are we Writing for Art? And is Art a Springboard to Fame?

I'm building a play.

Like, from the ground up.

If my reality show about building plays needed a title, it would be 'From the Ground Up'. Except that' s already a show, so it wouldn't be. It would be called, 'Laughing on the Outside, Crying Within'. Or wait, that's my autobiography. Ok, well there isn't a show, so there doesn't need to be a name anyway. Stop hassling me.

Anyway, I'm building it and this is what it looks like right now:


It's actually amazing to see it like that. I had hit a complete and total wall with it, and didn't write a word for a week. I didn't see it ever becoming anything more than a collection of little scenes. And then I had a meeting with the two directors (co-conspirators? They're kind of my patrons, because they're letting me do this with their slot in a festival, so maybe they are like my wealthy dowagers), and they were just fresh eyes and guiding lights of help, as always. So we took the scenes that I had, and some kind of bled into one another, and the ones that didn't, we found a way to make them bleed. MAKE ALL THE SCENES BLEED.

And now it has a kind of structure, or at least, the frame, of a structure that I can now start to fill in, and it is like a little journey, which is nice.

Anyway. It's great. Sometimes, all you need is a helpful meeting to get you off the playwriting ledge. And I really was on a ledge. Ugh, creation is just the most frustrating thing. It comes and it goes and you have to just keep hammering away at it. Sometimes it gives, and sometimes you just end up hammering for hours. Hammering and yammering.

These are the two gorgeous muffins that are making my stupid ideas into something that other people might be able to look at.


Julia and Eric. THEATRE CREATORS OF TOMORROW. And today. Because they do a bunch of cool stuff, and I go to it.

So it's great, and it feels hopeful and full of possibility, but I still have lots of work to do. There's a lot more still to write and writing takes a discipline that I need to haul out of myself with a crane. Like exercise and not swearing. So difficult! And not only that, but after I do that, which will kick my ass and involve me giving up and restarting and hating myself and all the other things that writing always involves, and THEN I have to GET UP AND START ACTING IT.

YOU WROTE YOURSELF INTO THIS MESS, YOU ACT YOURSELF OUT!

And that is another rigour that right now I am looking forward to, but will also be challenging and involve me giving up and restarting and hating myself and all the other things that acting always involves.

But one thing at a time.