Tag: writing

  • Buzz In & Out

    Buzz In & Out

    How DO prodigiously creative people do it? We all have the same hours in the day. We have the day job, the lovely people in our lives and then maybe stuff like making music and art and enjoying other people’s! Rather than wonder / despair and feel inadequate, the only way is to see myself…

  • Make Work. Bring something into existence.

    It turns out I am writing a novel. The first such attempt in maybe 13 years. I had forgotten – hiding in my scripts and what they demand of me – that this process plays a different instrument inside. I hear a different music. Another thing, quieter and much, much stronger, is happening. And I…

  • “The Pitlochry Play” #2: ‘Skin in the Game’

    “The Pitlochry Play” #2: ‘Skin in the Game’

    Due to some unexpected cancellations in the diary, and some jiggling about of other stuff I am a major over-achiever: October’s expenses are begun, there’s mugs soaking in the bubbles, and here I am. I’ve just sent another thank you letter to one of my funders for the “Pitlochry Play”, and as I wiped the…

  • The Pitlochry Play #1: the sound of water

    The Pitlochry Play #1: the sound of water

    I’m here in Pitlochry, land of Pitlochry Festival Theatre and much, much more. Today’s day 3 of my playwrighting residency at the theatre and I’m rolling around like a pig in poo at the luxury of all this writing space and thinking time. I’m not here to share anything about my “process” with you, but I can’t…

  • Wanted a Genie, found a Muse

    Lovely news – I’ve just been awarded a writers’ residency at the fantastic Pitlochry Festival Theatre to start work on a new play. And it all started because I couldn’t get to Mull and in the (relatively) short time my child was away with relatives. In July, I’d been facing the standard single parent dilemma:…

  • Glittered Knickers…

    I love it when a plan you never knew you had comes together. An old friend up at Bath Uni decided we needed an International Women’s Day entertainment night in Widcombe. It’s over 20 years since I did one of these, back at the students’ union, so when she said, “Want to do something for…

  • A Song & Dance for your details…

    A much-loved but unproduced theatre script,  A Bit of a Song & Dance, made the BBC Drama Script Room long-list! They had a record number of entries, and a phenomenal amount to read, so I’m especially pleased – and grateful! As all writers out there know, there’s subjectivity in all of this, too, so I’m…

  • 1 year on; 3 new screenplays & a magic cauldron

    Ha, make em laugh, eh? More like, make yourself laugh. I just spotted an old post from a year ago: The Awful Art of Unwriting. It’s a confessional, where I admit to not having done a new spec screenplay (as opposed to a play) for about 5 years. In the last year, I’ve written three: one comedy…

  • 9 1/2 weeks. OK, 12. But I couldn’t resist.

    9 1/2 weeks. OK, 12. But I couldn’t resist.

    If you were born after maybe 1975, you might not get it. But if you’re roughly my age (a grand forty-four and a half) you might now be hearing a dodgy John Taylor* theme tune and getting memory-whiffs of a tousled, sweaty Kim Basinger staring in a confused fashion at all the identical rows of…

  • Fingery-Pokery – The Artist’s Way

    I heard about it. I saw it in a friend’s vast personal library. He said “Here, take it.” It sat on my shelf for a year. I started it. Wow. I’m reading / doing / taking / following The Artist’s Way. It’s a course in a book. I’m fed up of feeling my work is…

  • “weird” “new” “habits”

    “weird” “new” “habits”

    It was when I joked, “Yep, it makes me feel like a MAN!” and then the women laughed knowingly that I realised I’d surprised myself… When I’m not doing fee-paying client work over here, I’m parenting or writing. Or researching for the writing. Or applying for grants, entering competitions…you get it. This time last year…

  • The Awful Art of Unwriting

    I’m not entirely sure why but er, um, I haven’t written a speculative  screenplay (plays, I have done) for err, um, five years. There you go. I have no more secrets. What the merry heave-ho have I been doing? ‘Cos I’m pretty sure I call myself a writer a lot of the time. There’s been…