I am going to finish this play today. I am, I am, I am. I think yesterday was one of the hardest writing days I've every had. The disparaging evil voices in my head were having some sort of wild and exotic party in my head to see who could come up with the cruellest insults they could. But I wrote through it. In fact I wrote a lot – about 20 handwritten pages. So take that evil voices. Kapow!
The reason for the frat party in my head was quite the feedback session on the play going up in November where a reader couldn't find one good thing to say about it. Not one. Not even that there were no typos. Or one line that was liked. Nothing. All of this is just ego stuff and one person's opinion is, well, just that. But here's another tip for the kiddies out there – never let anyone tell you that this job doesn't require you to have a massive ego that needs constant feeding. Actually, these moments are one of the few when men do it with more grace and dignity than most women can muster. Male writers are inbuilt with mechanisms that can toss off bad criticism and continue on with their lives scarcely skipping a beat. Is it a niceness thing? Women want to be liked and that insidious mechanism can stretch quite easily to their work. Men don't need to be liked. They automatically assume they are.
Today is my day for automatically assuming. Watch this space.
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