Monday, August 28, 2006

I was very sick last night...

After the Momentum festival it kinda gave me the courage (is that the right word?) to have a pop at redrafting "Sing, Sing" so I did a 2 day redraft session and took it to a workshop on sunday to read it aloud and see where things are going wrong.
Anyway - it did help, but a bit of me thought I perhaps shouldnt have bothered as i got the whole "ripple" effect again where everybody erupts and begins arguing... I wasnt really quite sure why, but my play defo had something to do with it and they all started rowing about it and stuff. it felt a bit like when your a kid and your parents argue and your stuck in the middle wanting them to stop...
and now I'm an adult i did the most adult thing I could do to take control of the situation and got very pissed and shitfaced-ly drunk!
Hense... I was sick last night. I had a second peice to read, a peice of prose which I got some other guys to read out for me and the nervousness of something read combined with the booze made me throw up. friend of mine tried to be "gentlemanly" and hold my dreads out of my face but he failed and I got quite upset that one stank of vomit and tried to clean it with hand soap i n the bathroom (big mistake)
Anyway - I know i should be proud that what I write gets people talking but a lot of me wishes that It was just entertainment... I wouldnt get so nervous then!
On the plus side i got to hear Lucy's play "youths" which I really, genuinely loved and annother one called "gods" which seems so different form stuff the guy usually writes... so much better!!!

Sunday, August 27, 2006

New (stolen) Story

Right I am now buzzing an idea arround my head about 2 out of work actors one of which is crap with girls who gets together with a playwrite who hates everyone.
Its just in images at the moment and i have an image of an aftershow party in the theatre, on the stage... the type of civilised thing that has a buffet... and my characters sat in the stalls griping and sniping at everyone!
then annother image of my min female protagonist in a terrible victoriana style dress (the type of thing i may be hunting charity shops to find now as you never do get floor length dresses with sleves anymore!)
and everyting from the other actors POV (or prehaps too withnial and I)
anyway - its in stages in my head!!!

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Momentum Festival


Well, it is a very 2 tiered society. I feel absolutly knackered after being at the momentum festival for most of the week... its still going on but I'm just not "hardcore Litrature" enough to continue... it's weird 'cos I swear I was less knackered after going to Download... yes, thats right the real rock festival! Momentum has worn me out more!
firstly, Its such a lot to take in. All the workshops, all the plays and readings, you just get home and feel like your brian needs a defragmenter programme running through it just so you can relax. I didnt get my play read out. i wonder why? perhaps becasue it was one of those things done in the ancient greek / roman traditions (or maybe it was just absolutly full of incest and peodophillia and rape and bad language and aborted feotuses and the audience of old wifeys that have nothing better to do would be a bit freaked out... hehe!) Anyway - one of the things I learned was how to restructure my play (rewrites in 2 days and a workshop on Sunday) and I got to seea really good reading, play called "Silence" by Ivar Waldemarson which was just brilliant and (personally I thought, but I have a weird attitude towards theatre) I reconed was probally better than teh Earl of Mo'Bay.
Anyway this whole 2 tiered society thing... some of the resident writers there (me being one of them) were so poor and I mean REALLY poor that we were rathering to walk to Beeston and pile our bus fare to nottingham together just to buy food. Its like communist Russia for writers, absolutly terrible. We had had little sleep from the dreadfully intense itenary, no food, hearded arround like cattle... made me so mad. some writers however had accomodation and little stickers on their name tags with "playwrite" on them... Just goes to show howfar licking arses will get you...

Sunday, August 20, 2006

the restructure shuffle!

Right - as I have been led to believe - the mid stage of redrafting lays with character and plot! So what I am now doing is cutting characters, polishing some up and even inventing some new ones! Arthur now has a "nice" mirrored versoin of himself called Oscar - Oscar was his old best mate from school - a posh boy who wasnt so innanely fucked up and a physical remider of what Arthur could have been. Oscar may fall for Mary in a juxposition way, I'm not quite sure.
and Mary herself has gained a bit of a backstory - she was badly dumped and went off the rails a bit - thats why she is so strange and fucked up! she has real problems admiting that she is actually quite upset and it manifests itself in stange devient behaviour! there is another character, Charisse (told you I would bend to your wishes and get you in there dear!) Charisse is a graduate - one of my narrators university friends who is immaculate in prada and vesache - but quite hard and aggressive as well! she breexes in and out of the characters lives and my new opening chapter begins with her. she shows how easy it is to get wrapped up in one your life as she is the pepetual outsider POV
Emily has become more different - she is an extreeme sports fanatic who loves punk! All I really know about her at the moment is that she was out surfing, landed on her head, got 7 stapes and went back into the water to finish off the wave! She's nuts! I may change her name.
Then there is my Narrator - I have actually given her a name and backstory! I never bothered before saying that i didnt want to pinpoint her blah,blah, but really I am just lazy her name is Jocasta for the moment and she is quarter french, quarter barbadian and half chinese! a real ethnic mixbag!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Charisma


I now have a very real problem of creating a character with perfect charisma! I've actually done it! and now I find it very difficult to write about any other characters in the damned novel!!! Arthur is my perfectly developed character and every exchange i write about other characters leads back to him in some way or annother... its really very annoying!Hes a really ugly, tall gangly like creature thats pompus and arogant and manipulative and slightly sinister, but he is also really quite likeable... in a manipulative "little-boy-lost" way for most other characters... or is he really?
His attitudes and lifestyle are a mirror of the regression theme in the novel - he symbolises what the narrator really wants but socially (and due to her own neuroses) she cant embrace fully. He's like the ID (Freudian psychoanalysis) to her ego... perhaps i should invent a superego character? Maybe that is where it goes all wrong???

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Character Cutting

In real harsh writer terms I am now cutting characters from the Novel. Emily is really not needed as annother female character, Mary is wayyyyyy more developed and more juxposed to my two main characters, and I was thinking of inventing annother character called Oscar- who to be fair is a "nice" version of Arthur, he and Mary could get together! Highlight annother way that relationships between classes and race could come about.
Anyway - been developing the "tool" characters that were innitially in the book just to spurn on the plot - namely Terry the dealer and Judy Arthurs girlfriend.
Well.. all that and sleeping and eating chinese takeaway!

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Crackheads and Yardies


Well now I have decided to create annnother bit of my novel! Subtext or Subutext... I'm not quite sure! I got the inspiration when I thought to myself "how does Arthur score? hes a nice, posh boy that has wondered, via his self destructive streak, into the world of drugs... no self respecting dealer would really sort him out!" and the answer lay with his coke dealer, Terry.
So I created more of a character for Terry. He started off as a slightly letchy, older dealer type and has progressivly got younger in the book and more niave! Very strange! Anyway, Terry picks up for Arthur and charges him a ridiculous price for his heroin and crack.
hmmm... The structure of my passage is a little suspect... it begins with an exchange between terry and Arthur and Arhtur compleatly missing the point of discression and dealers paranoia, then it moves via Terry into a world that is not seen by my main narrator or by Arthur. Terry goes to a crackhouse full of Yardies to score and then back home again. the exchange with the yardies is very serious and low pace, but when he gets home I attempted to write something almost comical! via text message and Vanessa Feltz it does relieve the tension built up by the Yardies and stuff...
anyway, i'm proud that i wrote something on my novel and now i have a clearer idea of the direction of subtext... i know wheich characters to enhance and with to cut!

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Hawk



http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h255/cheeseandchives/amusiyiwa_297540_9490252.jpg

check out my hawk!


organisation

my unofficial "agent" is moving in at the end of the month and she is bringing scary organisoation skills with her! I dont really understand what a wallplanner is or when the dates are for anything and i tend to just be confused most of the waking time so it might be fun... either that or i may end up pushing my knuckles into my eyesockets and bawling my eyes out as Charisse yells at me for missing all the deadlines and fucking about with my finances! ho hum!