Writer's Block

You will notice that this blog hasn’t maintained the initial burst of enthusiasm that accompanied its launch back in September 2011. There are many reasons for this.

Firstly it was launched largely as a vehicle for talking about my depression, and I’m feeling a lot better now, thanks :-) (Although I do still have my moments!)

Secondly, I just simply haven’t had time, what with work, rehearsing for Confusions with HTC, and training for the London Marathon.

Thirdly, I’ve had the dreaded writer’s block. Not just blogwise, but with writing in general.

Actually, no, it’s worse than that. I am writing. Rather, I’m starting things and not finishing them. I have a lot of ideas. I’ve been working on a short story about a depression sufferer who meets the love of his live while he is stood on the edge of a cliff contemplating jumping.  I started another short story inspired by the emptiness of a house after the Christmas decorations come down on Twelfth Night, and an elderly person’s reminiscing about Christmases past. And my counsellor has been nagging me to write something about a particularly significant childhood event.

The thing is, I’ve started all these pieces but I just can’t finish any of them. And I think it’s due to a crisis in confidence. I see the words on the screen, and I just really don’t like them!

Luckily, I’ve had a timely kick up the backside, which will hopefully recalibrate the old creative process and get me back on track writing again.

Yesterday I attended another of Claire Hamilton’s wonderful writing days in the Forest of Dean. The theme for the day was play writing, and the guest tutor was the excellent local playwright, Shaun McCarthy.

We studied the general form of the play, which is similar to the “START” narrative structure for a story, but tends to be a bit more restrictive or prescriptive due to the constraints imposed by the practicalities of actually staging the play in a fixed space in a limited amount of time, and of the expectations of the audience – they tend to like convention rather than experimentation, in format at least if not in content. We studied a number of examples of opening scenes and we looked how the dialogue in that opening scene is vital in terms of setting up context, characters and theme development. 

We also did a couple of interesting exercises. Firstly we had to write the opening scene of a play in which two friends were in a situation which was disturbed by the arrival of the partner of one of them with a particular object. Then we had to write a short pitch for that play. Would you go and see this?

Carmel and Eve’s idyllic Cotswold Coffee morning is shattered when Carmel’s husband Charles brings home a knife seemingly belonging to their teenaged son.
Does Broken Britain extend beyond our inner cities? How well do we know our own children and what strains do their actions place on our relationships?

After lunch we had to develop a plan for a play inspired by the recession and then write its opening scene. The plan had to include the following elements

• Cast
• Premise (existing state of affairs)
• Inciting Incident
• Crisis
• Climax
• Resolution

So, watch this space for a cracking new play set in the Welsh valleys about unscrupulous types who exploit the victims of recession, the desperate measures people are forced to take to put a hot meal on the table during hard times and the way our prejudices come to the fore when the going gets tough. And if David Essex is at a loose end, I’ll need him to play the head of the gypsy family that come to town…