Since I last blogged I have been keeping up to date with my writing challenge and I must say it is going very badly.
I am writing every day but 98.5% of what I’ve written has been total shit. Excuse my language but there’s really no other way to put it – it has been the biggest load of poop the literary world has ever seen.
On the 16th I wrote a play with members of the orchestra discussing who is the most important. As much as I tried to steer it toward a punchline it resisted me and wandered off somewhere only to fade away…
17th February we were tasked with rewriting a movie. My brain threw out a few alternatives like Bruce Willis keeping his shoes on and the dumb blonde resisting having sex or running upstairs when chased by a knife-wielding maniac but that was about the extent of my creative insights.
Less said about Day 18 the better. I went to a dark and disturbing place and wrote a play that I promise will never be read, seen, or spoken of again. Luckily it was very short.
During this week I got Spotify and some Bluetooth headphones for the first time. Yes, I have joined the 20th century and am right up there with the latest technology dontcha know…! This heavily influenced my Day 19 play and I actually listened to music while writing it, which is something I never do. And I will never do it again. If I call that a stream-of-consciousness monologue then that’s me being very generous indeed.
Day 20 I decided to return to my new favourite characters – Less and More. They got to discuss why we have rules and which ones we should obey. It was nice to be back writing in voices I am familiar with and although it won’t win any prizes it was fun to do and didn’t stink as bad as the last few days.
This seemed to break my losing streak and Days 21 and 22 have been much better. Day 21 is a monologue in the style of a phone call from a woman waiting for her blind date. I started out thinking it would end sadly and badly but the characters had other ideas and it ended up being a sweet and funny play.
Day 22 started out as all laughs and then got serious. It was meant to be a play written for children but I decided to write a play written and acted by children for adults. There is something lovely about writing in the voice of a young kid. You get to call people poop-heads and go on about lasers and monsters and cars. The serious part was again not something I planned but rather something that just happened and I literally cried while writing it.
The last time I cried while writing was during my novella, Horizon.
It’s a strange experience to have a voice so strongly in your head that you have to try and keep up with their emotional outburst and do it justice while letting the intense emotions lead your writing.
Anyway, with that upsurge in creativity, I’m hoping that the home stretch will be a bit more successful.
My aim for the near future is to look through all the plays I’ve written over the last few years and organise them into books to be published on Amazon. After doing writing challenges on and off for the last five or six years I have a wide variety of monologues and large cast plays that deserve a chance to see the light of day.
That’s why I started my podcast…Shouting In the Evening – available on Spotify and all good audio app thingies.
I always feel guilty when I write something good and then just put it in a drawer…or rather, leave it in a file on the laptop.
Hopefully, the next few days will give me some more good plays to add to the mix – but I’m happy just as long as I don’t have a repeat of Day 18!
Please note: I chose this image on Canva very carefully – this is me, filling my plays for the last few days in their rightful place…
The Reluctant Writer 