I sat next to a man on Saturday who observed me ticking off the parts of the day's schedule (I was at a writers' conference) and took the next logical step of asking me if I were someone who liked lists. The glow in his eye made it clear that anything other than 'yes' would prove a crushing disappointment and so, since it is all too easy to be a crushing disappointment to those I meet, I admitted that, yes, I indeed was a fellow list-lover (and alliteration fan for that matter) and that bullet-points were my particular weapon of choice. It is, therefore, perhaps not that surprising that the news update is going to come in the form of a list, although - just to be slightly daring - I'm going to go for numbers rather than bullets. Let's call it a mark of respect for all those engaged in fighting in the Middle East.
Here goes...
1) Success! Yes - actual success. In December, my Christmas Play appeared on stage in Above Bar Church. Startling things happened. I acted. I drank a lot of water backstage. I threw a fez into the air at the end in true graduation-style flourish. People clapped.
Key things I learned (here come the bullets):
- Burger King does a remarkably nice burger (double Aberdeen Angus)
- People will applaud jokes if you let your actors perform them differently to how you'd imagined.
- Cameras make people laugh - particularly disposable ones.
- I can successfully catch a pregnant lady falling backwards.
- Fezzes should not be tossed into the air at the end of a play
2) Blind optimism! Potential, but unlikely, success. Yesterday, I sent off the play that I began writing at university (6 years ago) to the local theatre, expecting that not only will it be a huge hit in Southampton but before the year is out we will no doubt be talking about national tours, film versions and potential Oscars (I'm assuming I'll be writing the screenplay for the film version...). On the other hand, it is minutely possible that I'll receive a 'you have no idea how to write and you've just wasted an hour of my life' email any minute now...
3) Encouragement! I have recently joined the Association of Christian Writers (ACW) and attended a conference on Saturday - yes, the one with the fellow list-lover! - which I found both encouraging and challenging. Simple conclusion: I wish I did this full-time. Additional conclusion: I need to be given an enormous cheque through the post (as in amount of money, the size of the cheque itself is irrelevant) so that I can ditch the day-job and spend hours at the laptop.
4) Competition time! It may well cost me £5 (or, to put it another way, the cost of a Dylan album in Fopp) but I'm actually going to enter a short-story competition for the first time. That's what the ACW does to you - first you become a member and before you know it you're splashing the cash to get your work out there. On the plus side, if I win (and it is an earth-shatteringly-large 'if') then I would more than recover the fiver, which, as I am sure you will feel comforted to hear, has already led to a number of day-dreams in which I have spent my future winnings in a wife-defying manner of technical indulgence (i.e. a new computer monitor).
5) Days off! Incredibly, my work has a bursary that pays for people to pursue worthy interests, such as curing cancer in your spare time or putting together a proposal to get us all out of this financial mess we find ourselves in, and I've somehow gone and secured it for myself by suggesting that I spent a week at home completing my novel. I'm imagining they'll be hankering after a dedication to the college being plastered across the opening pages if it's published - hey, I'll happily call the novel 'Itchen College is great' if someone actually wants to publish this thing - but I can't be anything other than thankful really, can I?
And at 5 we shall stop. 5 is a good number for a list. As is 7, 10 or 12.
I've decided to try and write where possible and so do check back here if you'd like to see what I'm thinking about the weird things happening around me.
While writing this blog entry I've just watched my cat walk across the road, pause half-way to take a look around her before stopping entirely. Banging on the window did little to make her move and I think I may have actually held her up a little as she simply stood and stared at this crazed over-protective father-figure panicking that a car would crush his little pride and joy any moment now...
In the next blog - the news on whether or not Maisie survived her walk...
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