good stuff and usual whining, plus thoughts of revenge and wives

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Good news, it looks like Pub Quiz is going to be published in time for production so it can be on sale at venues. I have been proofreading the copy which has thankfully been edited by John Adair who doesn’t miss a trick or any glaring errors either. I think my blog makes his eyes bleed.

That will be so cool. A book. A real book with my name on. I might send signed copies to people who don’t like me, with suitably annoying inscriptions. A book, my book, my first book and I am looking at this wonderful opportunity as a means to smite.

I read somewhere that writing was a form of revenge. I tend to do horrible things to characters based on people who have pissed me off. Writing is cheaper than therapy, but not much.

Rehearsals start on Monday, time to dust off the velvet smoking jacket and cigarillo case. Just to give a clue about the amount of work (and cost) involved in putting on a play even for a regional tour the invite list for Monday’s meet and greet:

The producers and associate producers, seven actors, director, assistant director, designer, lighting designer, stage manager, sound designer, assistant tour manager, production manager, deputy production manager, marketing and me and some press. No hideous warm up exercises, praise be, but coffee and cakes - hurrah!

I love my producers.

I am looking forward to it but feel a bit weird and nervous. Every time I read the play I see something else that needs a tweak. It’s exciting too. I will report back after Monday. I am going to pop in and out of rehearsals as and when needed and when I feel inclined and nosy. Psyche keeps the door open but I have no overwhelming desire to watch their every move and I cannot imagine anything more annoying that having a writer breathing down your neck.

My new play is moving at snail’s pace. I am sixty pages into a rough as a badger’s arse rough draft. Sometimes I am convinced that I am so utterly great that my ideas will write themselves before skipping off into fantasy commissioning land.

‘Huge lottery sized cheque, Miss Rodney? It would be our pleasure. No, no, the first draft is perfect, don’t even think of a rewrite.’

When I am gripped by this delusional state I write with crazed and obsessive energy. I don’t need sleep. I write until the early hours and wake up buzzing with new ideas and raring to go. Then there’s the slump, there’s always the slump. When you can get nothing done, lethargic and slovenly, full of doubt and free from ideas. Every word is a drag and a waste.

‘Minuscule income support cheque, Miss Rodney? Piss off.’

Misery loves company and I love reading about other writers suffering. I once read a book all about how a writer’s creativity mirrors the stages of manic depression, the highs and the lows. How the manic stage allowed an outpouring of ideas and how the slumps allowed new ideas to develop and shift before the cycle began again. Somehow I can’t imagine Richard Curtis having too many slumps.

The whole book could have been summed up with the footnote, ‘writers are self indulgent, self obsessed whingeing gits who often go off on one.’

I think a support group should be started for the partners of writers, especially the wives. Every writer needs a wife. I love my husband but know a wife would be more sympathetic and would probably cook more and have children and clean the house, maybe, if she was a better wife than me.

My wife would look up to me and be convinced I was a genius and take care of all the niggling aspects of every day life. I have met writers wives who have been like this but no writers husbands , they seem to have more sense and plasma TVs. One ‘writer’s wife I know referred to her husband as, ‘the master poet’. I thought she was taking the piss but sadly not.

I believe that behind every great writer is a wife, stuffed to the gills with Valium. Behind every not so great writer is a wife sharpening a bread knife and dreaming of life insurance payouts and Gambian beach boys. Behind every female writer is a pile of washing up and a house that is starting to resemble a landfill site - Ok, that’s just me, but before you judge me, remember, I am suffering from a mental illness.

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Tags: editor, mental illness and writers, Pub Quiz, published, rehearsals, revenge