Thursday, January 19, 2012

Wiki love

Just in case you were wondering, and I know you all hang off your seats in a perpetual state of unease, distress and pure bewilderment regarding my wellbeing, NO! I AM NOT COPING WITH THE WIKIPEDIA SHUTDOWN. It's 11.00am in the morning here and apparently I have to wait until 4.00pm this afternoon before I can get my intellectual crack.

Things I should know about but can’t because Wikipedia is offline include methods for stuffing a chicken, besser blocks and which number child is Peaches Geldof. I want to say that all this is research for the play I’m writing but I don’t want to lie to you. Will someone please go and change the law or whatever and get Wikipedia back. I can’t get any dumber. I just can't.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Train talk

Things heard on the train this morning (Part1)

- Baby, you need to be an app

- Darren, defrost the fish fingers or suffer the consequences

- I got explosives on my mind.

I should also point out that these looked like ordinary people.

Conclusion: THERE ARE NO ORDINARY PEOPLE!

I need to get a new train.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Love

I started out this afternoon writing something about Valentine’s Day and came out with this …

MINNIE: Just so we are clear, I don't think about dating serial killers. Well, I do, but not in a creepy way. And not all the time. I hold down a job. It's not a particularly exciting or demanding job but it's mine. I turn up. I sit at my desk. I don’t do much more than that but in this world, turning up is usually enough. I also am a member of a book club. Or I was, but they threw me out because I kept calling the other members stupid. They were. That's an absolute. Anyone who calls Dan Brown a deep and probing thinker deserves to be called stupid. They also deserve to have Dan Brown in hardback hurled at their head, and I hope the scar it left on Betty’s face is a long, red rope of a reminder about how angry the stupidity of others can make a person. They threw me out but forgot to remove me from the email list so I still get their poxy exchanges about what books they are reading. I should remove myself because it’s incredibly upsetting to read that The Time Traveller’s Wife is glorious and Pride and Prejudice was full of people that spoke weird … Also I just think I am going to be one of those people that ends up with a serial killer. You know. I'm just the type. I look like a serial killer wife. So I've got to put a little bit of thought into it all. You know. Prepare myself. Are you a serial killer Jason?

Somehow I don’t think this is going to have a happy ending …

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Good/Bad

Things that are bad but really good

1. Getting drunk for no reason on a Sunday night and having to front up to work on Monday morning.
2. When you wake up in the middle of the night with a pounding headache and you drink a big glass of water.
3. Coffee in the morning, with a hangover and when that doesn’t work, the justification of an egg and bacon sandwich.
4. Listening to crappy songs on your ipod and feeling like you can take on the world, once you’re rid of your hangover.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Baby, I didn’t mean it

So, I've been working on this play, which I was calling the Rainbow play and then I was calling the f*(#@ing rainbow play and then ended up calling it the Thing. What are you doing? Hating the Thing. I was trying to rewrite it, I've been trying to write and rewrite the thing for a couple of months, on and off, and well, I think I've killed it. I think I killed it until it is dead. I'm not quite sure what I did or whether it is actually dead or just in a head trauma deep coma from the banging with a blunt instrument (read: my pen) but I've come to the conclusion that once you start calling your play The Thing, it's time to put it down. Let it rest. Let it heal. I hold hope that there will be a time in the future where it will flicker its eyes and I will know what to do with it. I have so many plays like this. My writing room is really an intensive care facility for plays in various stages of recovery from the brutal beating I have delivered in the pursuit of artistic glory. I'm like the neighbourhood thug. Plays should really run and hide when they see me coming. But then again, plays survive. The beatings I gave New Light Shine would make normal people weep at the sheer, thuggish brutality (For one draft I set it all in a forest – for anyone who has read it, you know what a beating that is) but it recovered, it really did. Some plays don't know how to die. So deep down, while I beat the crap out of plays some time, I really do love them all.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Best Thing

Sometimes, when it is all too much, and you just can't be arsed, it's time to go to the pub. Drink, eat, talk absolute shite, come home, write 13 pages. In my ongoing series on how to write, tip number 34923 … Just go get drunk.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Important information

Okay. Here's a tip for all you newbie playwrights out there. Are you ready? This is great advice so you might want to sit down. Are you already sitting down? Don't get too comfortable. This is important. I don't want you nodding off halfway through. Do you have a drink? Do you want a drink? Do you have a drinking problem? I don't want to give out this advice and have you forget it because you have one too many Bacardi and cokes. Do people still Bacardi and coke? I used to drink Bacardi and coke and then vomit everything from my ribcage down. I'm getting away from the point. Here's my tip … When you start something, finish it. Don't start it, think I don't know where I'm going so I might just stop for a while and do something else OR I'm halfway through a draft of a play but I have a publishing contract for another play and I need to get this play perfect because I don't want to sit down with my published play in a couple of years and DIE OF HUMILIATION … just as an example. Start it, finish it. Trust me, you are going to save yourself a lot of angst.

Also, I really hate summer.

That is all.

Houston baby

If you happen to be in Houston, Texas at the end of this month or the start of next month, you can check out my new short play, Piercing the Skin, at Obsidian Art Space along with some other fine playwrights. If you don't happen to be in Houston, Texas at the end of this month or the start of next month, then you are dead to me. Kidding. Sort of.

You can check it on out here

Monday, January 2, 2012

OMG!

Holy crap! It's 2012. How the hell did that happen? I swear to god it was like 1993 twelve minutes ago. I was graduating high school without a clue in the world about the … world, and then a couple of decades passed and, well, I have no idea what I did with them. Where does all the time go? WHERE?! Because it's 2012. 2012! I've got to go and … get a clue about the world.