Moving into the realms of "The Unwell"

Hoffmole and I are both sick. We have managed to catch some weird cold over the bank holidays and even lemsip isn't doing anything anymore. Hoffmole is gahtered up in a douvet, an exes old "special" blanket and some drape that I found in Camden a few years back, coughing and spluttering like something out of the beano. He just needs a themomater and pjamas and he'd look like something from the same era that splurted "the Snowman" at us as a marketed childhood fantasy. I keep telling him not to go into work tomorrow if hes that ill, but I can tell that he'll go in anyway and be poorly forever more.

Speaking about work, I've come to the end of my tether. I mean, this time its for real.

I started in my daamned job in october 2005 and I'm still there now. Its the kind of job that you either have to have no feelings or be immune to everything via good christian thoughts to do. I am neither of the above and really want to find some new, part time employment, that isn't utterly badly paid and I won't get attacked (or at least less attacked), feel like a hypocrite, or spend most of my days screaching at forms that boxes need to be ticked in.

On the giant project news - well... lets just say I'm waiting for feedback from the others and, Lucy - I'll send you an email in a bit. I need to talk to someone about everything.

At least weird Al is gonna be back soon so I've got someone to go out on the piss with!!!

VBA award is closing everso near. It needs to be 70mins max length and the only play I have for that is "Sing, sing" which is shite, comparitivly. "Starchild and the Cave" would be a much better contender, and "Mermaids" is far too short.

My deadlines for the weekend are:

• Write up sceen 2 "Starchild"
  
• Finish the draft of scene 3 of "Starchild"
  
• Get hidiously muntered at Stu and Cat's housewarming
• Have annother tooth pulled out :(
• Print off the docs and take them to Playwrites Studio on Tuesday.
  
• Be nice to Hoffmole.
  

Welcome Home Jacko

Well, I went up to nottingham to see Mustapha Matura's play called "Welcome Home Jacko" and I think i totally missed the point.

there were 4 characters - all young rastafarian boys who hang out at a youth centre. Their youth worker person, a new woman who wants to work with them and Jacko who is an older memebr of the youth group who has just come out of a 5 year strech in prison for rape.

The whole thing is like, they talk about jail and what happened to Jacko and then history kinda repeats itself. It's an hour long, so not a lot of time for things to develop at a more moderate pace, but it was kinda predictable.

The one thing that did help though, was listining to Matura in the bar before hand. I was on a different table and he was talking to other people from Eclipse Theatre. and he said that "the young ones should remove the older writers and do something new" and that really stung home.
It's difficult enough for a young writer who wants to do something different to the norm. theatres these days only take notice of what is pretty much the same as what is in fashion at that precise moment. What seems to be "in" now(ish) is weird plays about relationships and sex tourism in jamaca... so here's the pitch, I'm writing a play about a boy made out of stars and a cave...

See, Howard is the ugliest cat in the world! Hoffmole thinks we should use his unique image as a logo and be "uglycat.com"

Today is the Greatest Day I've Ever known...

Well, not really. To be honest I feel somewhat mixed about what I'm supposed to do.

I have a ticket and travel paid to see "Welcome Home Jacko" by Mustapha Matura at the Playhouse. This means I have to take a treck up to Nottingham and then back again for Angela's birthday.

Hoffmole has just left and gone home. I said I would Clean my bedroom and throw out everyting I don't want, but, as you can see I'm doing blogbollocks again. The play don't start 'till 4, I need to get Angie a present, I'm poss gonna get that in nottingham so I'll leave in like 1/2 hour or so. I'm so tired... for the past week I've been doing the "I can't sleep thing" that I'm always duped into thinking I've got over for a few months then it comes back again like a vengence and I need to sleep and stop being so hypermanic. I burn up all my energy and then crash for a few months and spend the time sleeping, eating and thinking I'm a total asshole.

Last night Hoffmole took me over to see one of his weird mates. The man has far too many books on cricket to be normal. Also he served tea with a little milk jug that freaked me out. hoffmole just spoke bollocks at him and then relised he was talking bollocks and then tried to save the situation by pretending that he wasnt talking bollocks. the poor guy must htink that we are quite odd, as we just kept talking about everything we liked because it was wanky.

When I got home I had a real weird crisis. I relised how much writing means to me and how there is nothing i can do other than writing. I had a real "Grr" because I'm totally dissatisfied with my job, homelife is always brinkering on the edge of major destruction and I often can't realte to people at all and get bored and have a mardy and disapear (truly, guys - you think Hoffmole is bad? I was 100% worse a few years back!) and the only thing I enjoy and will wanna do is write... anyways - nuff feeling sorry for my self. I managed to relsie that I'm not too bad and to stop whinging like a little bitch.

Well and in other news Hoffmole read the first part of Starchild and the Cave. He really liked it, which is nice, and gave me some encouragement to do the rest (poss on the train to Nottingham)

Shiva

funny innit that you get inspiration from the weirdest things.

I'm hungry. I really want some Star Vishnu and for some reason the anticipation of eating Siek food made me want to wrote a story about someone who lives on a beach in Goa who accedently bumps into a death goddess and goes on a wlak down the beach with her. Now i know this thype of thing would be more suited to Hoffmole's style but I think I could give it a go... right?

Lion's and Tiger's and Bear's, Oh My!

Well. I'm a bad person.

Happy-go-lucky Sabrina has become Bossy tyranical Sabrina over a future project. I spent all sunday doing the arts council grant for it (like a retard) and I'm questioning my own sanity.

I've been compiling a list of Volunteers and people who "owe me a favour". Even the drunk mad girl down the pub has been roped in and they don't know it yet.

I've just been going round telling people what I've been up to now and I'll look pretty damned silly if it dont come to pass. Grrr.

And I recon it's 'cos it's time for me to go "help" to everyone I know. Everybody is going to get cryptic texts and emails over the next few weeks.

Be warned.

how to make the arts council hate you!

Firstly just keep applyin with stupid ideas that need funding. Today I woke up after a unsatisfying night out with every intent to work on starchild and the cave but was just itching to dive into a funding bid for a future project that i've been discussing with a few people. So i loaded up word and began with comic sands and, i dont know how they do it, but each question in the proposal requires the same answer over and over again. is it normal to keep repeating yourself like a drunk tramp on the form? is it designed so that a sleepy arts councilar can read it and eventually get the drift or am i just doing it wrong? probally the latter.

PMT induced mardyness last night, but what do you expect when you go out for a drink with your mate and she just invites yours, and your boyfriends, exes along? ghhhha! night of the living dead romances i tell thee!

Starchild and The Cave

is the working title of hte play I am developing for the playwrites studio. It's really good that I got offered this placement, but its also really bad 'cos I feel that it's gonna consume a lot of time. Stephen Lowe told me that a play takes as long as it takes to write and I have a feeling that this one might take longer than any other play I've written.

Mermmaids and Drowing Women didn't take that long. I knew where I was going and the structure was pretty much straight forward (which is odd, 'cos I was totally terrified about writing it!) Starchild and the cave is much more abstract and odd and weird and has very weird characters and is the first time I've tried to write a play with 5 characters.

and the 5 are:

• Starchild - male, part boy-part man. he has the notion that he is fairly new into the world and is quite nieve. He's a bit like a middle class boy that has just come out of private school into the real world. He likes to give off the impression that he needs looking after, but is actually quite manipulative and weirdly, wize beyond his years. he is born from the Sky and his main pourpous is to become a beautiful comic thing up in the sky. He knows this, but seems quite resistant to the idea - although his resistance is futile. Starchild can bestow things onto other characters (apart from the sky) at will.
  
• The Cave- female, her main pourpous is to become a cave. she knows that she needs to harden against the world and against forces like starchild. she is humanoid and feral and lives in the wilderness. She needs to settle in one place to become her fullest potential. she is the only character that needs to eat. she hunts and gathers food and offers it to other characters who dont need it. she (ideally) has no language that can be understood - apart from Starchild bewstows the gift of speach onto her that she despises. she is halfway through her journey of fully becoming the cave, but resists and wants to regress.
  
• The Sky - the sky is Starchilds mother - it is more of a female force than male but is essentailly beyond gender. She is both a benevolent and kind force. She knows that the cycle is that starchild must become a consmic thing in the sky as others have come before him. She is unsupportive of Starchilds fassciantion with the cave, insisting that hte tree and the cave are "other" to her and starchild. she abhores temptation and can be recked with malice. the only person she shows compassion to is Starchild. she listens to the tree, but sometimes will not take it in.
  
• The Tree - is more beyond male/female than the star is. it sympatises with both starchild and the cave and acts as a mediator between them and the sky. it dislikes the serpent and seems to be the only one that sees it. it has a solitary apple that hangs from its highest branch that symbolises love and purity. the serpent is after the apple, continuiously. the tree moves its branches to waylay the serpent and truly beleves that it can hang onto the last apple forever.
  
• the Serpent - is a non speaking part. it is a metaphor for temptation and corrution in all the characters souls. its main pourpous is to get the apple and eventually, as it gives up the apple will fall from the tree and it will have no intrest in it, which is the worst part for the tree.
  

Why has my post gone into italics? I can't seem to switch it off! Damned blogger!

Anyway - i really need to know and understand why I'm doing this and where the damed plot is going. I'm totally unsure about a lot of things. It's obviously a whole metaphor for realtionships and suchlike, but I dunno... might just end up being pretentious wank

Stressed...

...for no reason. It always stresses me when I have to meet my mum and dad for lunch. not because they are bad people, just because they seem to have their own "unique" orgainsation for such things. time is irrelivent to my parents, it just shifts about them rather then they shift through time. they are always very early for things, or very late and i dont understand the random phone set up they seem to have going on... its like mum has a phone, dad has a phone, neither one of them know how to use it properly, htey pinch my brothers phone and use that more and you never know which phone they will have on them that they will end up using... its damn annoying! Angela wants to meet (if we are going to an all you can eat chinese - which we poss will be doing) and due to her infinate gemini-ness she can never be on time for anything at all and runs on "angie time"... oh its annoying! For some reason I get really anal over lateness and not knowing where I'm supposed to be at what times. its one of the few things that i tend to blow up and htink it matters loads! dunno why! I'm possibly mildly autistic!

On other notes I have to go on 2 more training courses for work. Pregnancy testing training and "managing aggression and antisocial behaviour" training. sounds like its me that needs to manage my antisocial behaviour and aggression! I'm gonna be giving chavs pregnacy tests and getting beaten up by them for the rest of my life!

writing news - i wrote the first scene of my play and did some more planning. im really stumped!

Hubble, #Bubble, TOIL and trouble

TOIL is a wonderful thing. Its when if you do overtime you get some time off at a later date and today i have a day off, unexpected, out of the blue and totally paid for.

Working at The Bridge is the only place thats had such things and its really the most helpful thing when I'm so totally stressed and want to just explode from being at work far too much.

Today I would have had a TSS team meeting (boring), a scour over numhers and facts and figures that i really dont understand and if i'm really lucky i might just get attacked by a drunk homeless.

But instead, im getting my tripod submission printed off at the internet cafe, im gonna go into town in a bit and get a few bits done, im gonna cook Hoffmole dinner and im gonna write up the first scene of my new play and upload it somewhere on tinkrnet that only a few can access.

its actually quite nice to work for a smelly charity. ok, i have to buy my own bog roll, tea, coffiee and milk, but its worth it.

Ouch!

I've just come back from the dentist. My entire top lip is totally numb, as is my face on one side. My entire nose is numb and I'm slightly dribbling.

I'm also very hungry, having gone and got an appointment for 12.45, I missed lunch. Obviously I am now too terrified to eat anything ever again. Size Zero - Kate Moss, eat your heart out (or don't)

The dentist is a very nice man. He's called Dr Moss or Dr Wade or something with only for letters and instantly forgettable. He seems to be confident in knowing what he is doing. He has all the terrifying equipment lined up in non-too sterile looking trays. Like all dentists, he has bad breath.

He told me that I needed 2 fillings. I'm whats known as a "nervous patient" anyways - not liking to go to the dentist at all - and I was a bit freaked about going. but I convinced myself (with moral support from Hoffmole - thank you!!!) that fillings are run-of-the mill. In the 80's I remember having loads of fillings. It was when htey had the "drill-n-fill" policy of making cash with NHS dentistry - thats why the NHS is so rubbish now and nobody can get an NHS dentist and all the shoddy fillings done to poor 20somehtings are falling out and nobody is about to fix it...

Anyway - 2 fillings. run of the mill. totally normal.

Numbing injections (bit i was worried about the most to be fair, but it hurts less than getting your nose pierced). Sit about in the waiting room for 10 mins for it to take effect....

And trudge back up the stairs. He talked me through the entire process but I just couldnt hear him as the girl with the tubes and a mask was making such a racket with the hose in my mouth. Firtly, Drill the holes bigger (dont know why), Secondly silver caps ("silver is better and stronger for the woosh, woosh, woosh"), thridly something twisty with long metal toothpicks coming out of mouth at all angels. fourthly ("Cant see m to get this cap in...") cue weird almost pain...

Yes. Done. Over. I-Can-Go-Home-Now-Relif.

"Just sit back Sabrina. Now I'll raise up the chair (raise, raise, raise) You did very well... Have a good rise just to get all the bits out"
(gargle, gargle, spit)
"And now we can carry on with the extraction..."

WAIT A MINUITE! EXTRACTION? WHAT? HAVING A TOOTH OUT

Clamps, massive pliers, break tooth the wrong way, jank it out. It felt weird and you could hear it and it made me laugh and I wouldnt say it was an alltogether unpleasent experince...

...probally would'nt do it again if I had the choice though...

And I had to bite down on some gause and walk home looking a bit like someone who had downsyndrome with the numbness and the dribble and the blood...

Boast Boast Boast!

Well I figured as this is supposed to be a writers blog I should really recap all my wonderful achievements so Brain dosent get stale recounting them (goes backwards)

• April 2007 - Short Story Tinfoil Flowers and Stars published by www.umbrellastories.com
  

• Febuary 2007 - Placed on the Nottingham Playhouses "Playwrites Studio". A ten month long intensive playwriting programme under the tutorage of Stephen Lowe. third play in progress, as yet untitled.
  

• December 2006 - Awarded Arts Coucil Grant for a year to rewrite, reserch and redraft first novel Daddy was like the Autumn
  

• Sept 2006 - March 2007 - mentored by Amanda Whittington, writer in residence at The Nottingham Playhouse on second play Mermaids and Drowning Women. This play is currently being considered for the Momentum Young Playwrites festival
  

• Currently Literary Co- Coordinator for Ladyfest Leicester 2007 – this project is committed to new, independent writing from female writers.
• September 2006 - short story Rose White, Rose Red published at www.drunkenpoets.com
• Attending The Leicester Writers Club, unconditional membership offered beginning September 2006.
• 22^nd – 26^th August 2006- Residency with Theatre Writing Partnership’s Momentum New Writing Festival. Based in Nottingham at The Lakeside Arts Centre.
• April 2006 – Present - Momentum Writers Forum Literature Development Moderator.
• June 2006 - interviewed by Ambrose Musiyiwa for article Meet Sabrina – Poet and Dramatist in www.OhMyNews.com
• May 2006 – Emma Rosoman (currently Royal Court Writer, previously Writer in Residence at The Nottingham Playhouse.) presented first play Sing, Sing Death House to the Royal Court Theatre.
• 2005- 2006 – studied with Momentum young writers programme with Emma Rosoman
• June 2006 - attended writers’ development weekend at Hopefield Hall, attended sessions ran by Tyndale Street Press, www.pulp.net, The BBC and Grants for the Arts.
• May 2006 - Came joint third in Leicester and Leicestershire Short Story Competition for piece entitled The Colour of Magic.
• 2005 – Present – currently working on first novel.
• 2005 – Published short story Toyland at www.umbrellastories.com
• 2005 – Received unconditional offer to study prose writing under Graham Joyce at the Nottingham Trent University.
• 2005 - Studied undergraduate Creative Writing, both prose and poetry with Kris Seifken.
• 2002 – 2005 Features Journalist for The Ripple newspaper in the Arts and Literature section. Proficient in Quark and Photoshop. Interviewed local artists such as Freda Warrington and Diana East.
• Writer development Blog at http://sabrinameilismith.com

Future Projects

• Complete Daddy was Like the Autumn by the end of 2007
  
• Ladyfest Leicester 2007 - October 2007
  
• Play festival at the Y theatre with other local writers
  

• 
  

again...

... i should be writing but am not. It's bank holiday monday and that means the perfect oppourtunity to really get my head down and start on this new play or revisit the novel, but no. Instead I've been "broardning my horizons" is some weird and wonderful ways.

Mostly i've been sat in my scummy bedroom, listning to music and reading old Selecet, Vox and Kerrrrangggg's from the early 90's and late 80's. dont as k me how i got my dirty little paws on these...

But it has made me relise that music journalism has changed so much in hte past 10 years (i went through a breif stint of wanting to be a music journalist when i was younger) in hte old days it looks like all htey did when they couldnt get artists to interview was pretend to be axl rose's agents and call up eurodisney. now its a big money business.

and hte music ive been listning to: Belinda carlile, billie holiday, hte dwarves, babylon zoo, johnny cash, kula shaker, bikini kill, rolins band, the wildhearts, kasabian, artic monkeys, pussycat dolls... my taste in music has gone a bit odd...

yeah, and lets not forget the disney.

Hoffmole has been on my net connection getting lyrics and weird facts about disney movies. i saw Pinocchio last night. Freaky deeky!

Annother one down!

got annother story accepted on this website http://www.umbrellastories.com/frameset.html
its Tinfoil Flowers and Stars

1984

now, I know nobody is going to believe me but I'VE NEVER READ 1984!!! Honestly, I've just never got round to reading the smegging book and people just asume that 'cos I have an English degree and have dreads and am a writer that I totally know it inside out... this is a falacy that I sometimes play along with!

So now I've actually started reading it and I recon its really pretty good! I've read some of Orwell's other things (Animal Farm and The Road to Wiggan Pier) and think as a writer hes really good, but 1984 seems to have so much more thought put into it.

And its effecting my new play. Seeing as the star people and the cave people are metaphors for class and the relationships between the 2 of my main characters is simply that something beautiful cannot survive in a world where there is such segregation. It can be born out of oppression but it cannot sustain itself.

My first scene is a description of hte stage, the cave woman is onstage, hte man from stars forms and upside down, so hes obscured from her vision he says into her ear "It's not going to work" and then he dispirses into the stary backdrop and thats the end of the scene. I know it sounds odd, but I think that the whole short scenes thing might work in some ways. I also think I perhaps got a little inspiration from Mr Mack's newest play "Brutal" for the concept of short little scenes. It's not going to be like that all the time, but just a few well places orta do it!

On other notes "the boyfriend" seems ok... ish. He had a long, tedious rant at me yesterday about how sorry he is for being privilidged. How hes from the M/C, white, male and is totally miserable and feels like he can't have any vent for his mardyness. A lot of that is going in the play.

And you know what? I'm really fucking hungry right about now and there is a chipshop right next door BEGGING me to spend some money on a pukka pie and chips! yum!