Away

For a blogger that started out with so much passion, it didn't take long to fall by the wayside. How pathetic. I promise I will do better.

I've just come back from my week in the country which was better than I could've imagined in ways I didn't even begin to imagine. Firstly, never underestimate the potential inspiration of a million cicadas and their ceaseless noise. It provides a rampant energetic soundtrack to the milieu of your day. Secondly, old adages contain more than a droplet of truth. You don't know someone until you've shared space with them. I learnt so many good and wonderful things about my writing partner J namely that she is a first class nurturer, listener and knows how to own her space. Could you ask for more? I also found myself relaxing and rejuvenating and feel now that all things may just be a little bit possible. No, you couldn't ask for more.

J and I set ourselves a daunting list of tasks to complete. Firstly, we were primarily there to work on our new play, The Cleaning Station. We conceived of this idea about a year ago but have been too busy on other things to really do much more than talk wistfully about it. We set ourselves a deadline of a week before we went away to have some sort of rough first draft in the other's inbox. We decided that we weren't going to write a play together but rather write our own pieces and then try and find ways to link the narratives. Our only stipulation was that it had to relate to a shared concept of the cleaning station. Basically this was defined as how humans find ways to nurture and cleanse each other the way that marine life do. It didn't have to be physically like the cleaner fish do but rather that life was a continuous set of battles and how do we find ways to shed the wounds of the last battle in order to fight in the next.

We both approached this in really different ways, J deciding to set hers on an oil rig and the blossoming friendship between a young girl that fillets the fish on the island and the oil rig worker who is alone and stuck on the oil rig. Mine is set in two rooms and is about a husband and wife who are dead in their marriage and how an affair actually breathes life into both of them in different ways. This is actually where we ended up. Most of the week away was taken up with talking these concepts through – what we were actually trying to say and how we were going to say it. This is not something that I am usually very good at. Talking about my work while I'm trying to write it is akin to heavy dental work minus the novocaine. But it was amazing how easy it was with J. We seem to have this instinctive knowledge of what the other is trying to say and J always asks the right questions – not the questions you want to hear but the questions that need to be answered.

We also talked a lot about ways to link the pieces and different things we could do on a stage that would find connections through the play. We're toying with using a screen and having a lot of filmic aspects as well as the use of specific objects that can be used in both plays. Nothing is set in stone at the moment but it was great to have that time together to just dream and imagine.

J managed to flesh out her first draft while we were away and I managed to nail down what I was trying to say and how my characters were going to say it. So now I'm back in my little house in the city and have just finished the detailed plan of my play ready for me to add the poetry and magic.

We also worked a lot on our screenplay but I'll leave that for another post. And I promise that won't be far away.