Performing

The wonders of technology. I'm sitting outside, watching a tech/dress rehearsal of BNTA's production of 'The Foreigner,' by Larry Shue. On my laptop, using my phone to connect to the internet. There are burros braying in the background, and jackrabbits nibbling the grass behind me. The stars are slowly appearing above us, although with the laptop screen and lights on stage they aren't as visible as they would be. My bottle of Tempranillo is empty. There's a few more things to do to the set, but that's for tomorrow before our dress and invited audience final oh shit panic and scramble rehearsal.

They'll get done, they always do.

It amazes me how things somehow come together. Even after eighteen years of theatre, somehow it always ends up with an audience. My problem is, once the audience is involved, I lose interest. The fun part is over. And by fun, I mean stressful, frantic, frustrating, and tiring. But once the build up is over, I'm done. I don't know what to do with myself. There's something depressing about a theatre full of audience, because it's noisy, there's a tangible sense of expectation in the air, and inevitably some bugger isn't going to be happy. But we put on shows specifically to have an audience. There's no point in putting on a show if you're not planning on having an audience. They pay the bills.

Cos of all that, there's a quote from Shakespeare that's quite troubling to me. 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.'

That's all well and good, unless your point of view is like me. There's no point in playing parts if you don't give a toss about the audience. But I feel like that's what I spend half my time doing just that. Right now I'm playing the part of pseudo-bohemian, off the wall and off the cuff, artistically and morally and sexually and financially challenged artist. I'm working on being a writer. I drink too much, but then I make sure everyone knows I drink too much, because that's what authors do. I don't get enough sleep because. . .fuck, I don't know, but then I make sure everyone knows about it.

Maybe the Shakespeare quote does actually work for me. Although I work in theatre, maybe the only audience I really care about is the world, the ones out there that didn't pay for tickets. I don't give a shit that they're forced to watch the show, or whether they enjoy it or not, but maybe I should think about enjoying the performance more.

It's a bigger high than performing ever was. And my co-stars are fascinating.

September

Already? I don't know why I'm so surprised every year about this time. Summer is almost over-- although we've got another month or two of weather I would have called summer living in England. I'm on the downward slope to my next birthday. I think about all the things I said I was going to do this year, and try to work out if I can get them done in the next four months.

First and foremost, I had hoped to have an agent by this point. I finished draft one back in December last year, which seems like a lifetime ago. I re-drafted it, and gave it to someone who had offered to give me an outside perspective, a rough edit, before polishing it myself and submitting. She had it for a month. That month has now been five, I've given up hope of her coming through, and someone else has it instead.

Not that I've entirely wasted my time. As of tonight I'm thirty-two thousand words into book two. Starting book two before I'm done with book one is a definite help. It's drawing attention to things I left out, or need to mention in book one. When I get book one back I'm going to have to sit down and plot out on my whiteboard the exact timeline, because if even I am having trouble keeping up with the ages of the characters, what's a reader going to think?

My whiteboard. I have a 3' by 4' whiteboard hanging on my bedroom wall next to my bed, and every day it hangs there, silent and accusatory, reminding me of future book/play/screenplay ideas. I've jotted down a couple of almost-remembered dreams just in case. The problem is that I do a lot of my writing in down time at work. I know the music and the show so well by now, that it almost serves as a quiet place that I can shut myself off from the world. But it's not practical to take the whiteboard to work every day.

Anyway, back to the goals for the year. Agent, nope, but book two started? Hells, I'm almost half-way through. I've started work on a bunch of other projects, some literary, some theatrical. I built a set for the show BNTA's opening in less than a week. I came up with a new five year plan. So while I suppose I only had one goal for the year, I haven't achieved it and in the time left I'm not sure whether I can achieve it, there's all these other things that I've managed to do without even having them as goals.

I hate the idea of a bucket list. When I think bucket I think of the galvanized ones my grandfather used to have in his garden. Though there's nothing wrong with them per se, they had a tendency to sit there, year after year, collecting rainwater and mosquito larvae. They never moved. No one cared about the water they had in them, except maybe the mosquitoes. And the list part of that? Making lists is useless for me. If I write out a shopping list, I'll inevitably leave it at home and forget half the crap on it. And if I remember the list, how do I add to it in the store when I don't have a pen? A list is too finite. I've just got things I'm going to do at some point.

Like get an agent, as soon as book one's in the state it needs to be.

busy

been slacking again, sorry. Actually, writing this blog is a bit like writing letters. I always seem to open with an apology for being such a crappy correspondent. I lost touch with so many people from back home (England) because of my inability to send letters. Not write them, I was always pretty good at that. But for some reason the actual process of putting a letter in an envelope, adressing the envelope, affixing a stamp, and putting it in the post box has always presented me with a problem. I just can't do it. I still find letters I wrote years ago and never sent. I have a CD of wedding pictures and a set of Mickey Mouse ears I still don't seem to be able to put in a box and send to a friend. My drafts folder has emails that have been languishing for years, as does this blog.

And the excuse I use is I'm too busy. I get distracted, and have to save what I was doing, and then never get back to it. I started writing a blog about a wierd dream I had a couple weeks ago, got interrupted half-way through, and when I came back to it decided that you guys really don't want to know about some of my dreams. I don't remember them very often, but when I do I worry about myself. But I still have the half-finished blog, as a testament to how busy I am and so I can say 'look, I really do do a lot of things and I'm always busy and life gets in the way of my life. . . ' and so on and so forth.

It's all bollocks. Yes, I'm busy, but I still waste time. I'm especially conscious of it right now, what with the panto opening in a week and a novel to finsh (the first draft) by the end of the year, and working 40 hours a week and a bar habit to maintain. But with all that going on, I look at the way I spend my time and think to myself I could be doing more. Did I need to spend an hour on digg, going through the latest user-submitted news stories? I mean, at the end of the day digg seems to be one big circle jerk, 'I-digg-your-story-so-you-digg-mine-even-if-it's-a-picture-of-a-fricking-squirrel-in-a-jello-mould' situation, and there seem to be fewer and fewer decent articles woven in with the fluff. So take off my digg time, that's an extra 45 minutes to an hour. Then there's. . .let's just say 'other internet activities.' There's another hour. Reading books I've already read? I probably spend a couple of hours a week doing that, but I don't think it'll stop any time soon. Which reminds me, must get Good Omens back- lent it out again, and I really don't want to buy a sixth copy.

So there's a chance of getting an extra twoish hours a day to get more stuff done. The two hours I always lament for and wish that the day was 26 hours instead of 24 hours long. I could use them to write (incidentally, the book's up to 54k words, and I got my 20k for October). I could use them to take more photographs, something I always feel like doing and always claim 'I'm too busy' for. Hell, I could actually go through the huge box of paperwork that's lurking beside my bed. I could organize my life.

I'd say I'm going to start to use those two hours a day better, but I'm too busy-- wait, hear me out. This time it's a legitimate claim. Snow White opens in a week, and as always there's a tonne to do. But as soon as the panto is done. . .no that won't work, because then we go dark and I work days and that always messes with my body clock. So around mid-December I'm going to make a concerted effort. . .bugger, they've added shows cos of Christmas and New Years. . .

Nope, enough. Here's the deal. I'm giving myself until after Snow White, and then I'm really going to pull my thumb out me arse, focus on what needs doing, and make myself even busier than I am now, and at the same time stop using it as an excuse.

Motivation

If I knew how to get this, I'd be done by now. It comes and goes, but there's almost no rhyme or reason behind it. I'd describe myself as generally motivated, with a side order of wherewithal, a dash of laziness, and a garnish made up of procrastination. And the problem is I'm the sort of bugger who always eats the garnish.

You should, you know. It's generally there for a reason. Parsley is used as a garnish because it helps to freshen breath, so chew it after the meal. But anyway, today I tried to set aside some time to write, and it didn't really work very well. I did no writing. I was online and I read several interesting articles, a couple of funny ones, took care of some Producer stuff for BNTA, and then the two hours were up and I had to head in to work. I accomplished a couple of things I had to get done, but why is it I keep putting off what I really want to be doing? And why is the internet so full of shinies that keep distracting me?

I'm thinking about maybe doing another Primm weekend. Or maybe not in Primm this time, but somewhere that isn't so devoid of distraction. That was the problem with Primm- I may have managed to churn out 18 pages, but do you have any idea how much time I spent playing with the stupid games on my iPhone, or looking out the window, or wondering around Willaims Sonoma (they had a sale on)? I think I'd do much better going all the way to the coast and trying it there. On the coast I'd be able to take a break from the writing, maybe go for a romantic walk along the beach as the sun goes down. . .it counts, I'd be walking with my most frequent lover. . .I could even do it on the beach!

I mean write. You people.

Anyway, the less there is to distract it seems the more able I am to distract myself with completely pointless stuff. Hell, I could be writing right now instead of trying to come up with more ways to joke about masturbation. Hey, get it? Come up with?

Sorry.

ANYWAY, the point is, as of now I'm really going to make a concerted effort to do everything I keep talking about, all the things I know I should do but keep putting off. I'm going to edit my short stories, maybe even excerpt them here if anyone's interested. I'm going to keep plugging away at this whole bloody novel thing. I'm not going to get sucked in to the cracked.com lists, or what other stupid thing Limbaugh said today. I've got a book called The Freelance Writer's Bible, and it's got some really helpful advice in it. I was reading it earlier, and it talks about setting aside time to write as one of the most important things you can do. And suddenly I was motivated. I actually put down the book and started writing, got a page knocked out in not much time at all. So thats going to be the new me. Promise. Watch this space, I'll let you know how it goes.