The smell of the greasepaint...

I was reading the blog of a blogger friend this morning. I read it almost every day and each day it gives me food for thought, often amusement, and usually some insight.

Today after reading and commenting on it I was inspired to dash of this doodle using a piece of cardboard I’d cut up for the recycle and the inks I’m constantly getting moaned at for leaving around the kitchen.

My friend writes plays and is thinking of stopping.

Now, play writing never appealed to me. All far too lovey and then there are the critics to content with and the greasepaint and the buggery. No, I don’t think that I could be bothered to write a play. All that exit right and exit left, the asides, and the stage direction – Harrington leaves via the French windows.

I love working with words but having your words made real on stage seems somehow to negate the writing and make them something else. Something both real and unreal at the same time - if you see what I mean. Like the people who think that Coronation Street is a real destination somewhere up t’grimy North.

Yes words – such powerful and important things.

My friend not only worries that his plays aren’t worthy but he also worries that his blog posts are becoming far too much the same. Hard to avoid if you write from the heart as he does each and every day. Hard not to focus on the things that are at the centre of your being and that you agonise over, the things that make you tick, those things that wake you at four in the morning dripping with a cold sweat.

The thing is with words that whilst it is about the words themselves and the mood they create it is also about content. Content is always the rub and everyone who writes regularly is bound to find their writing developing certain themes and the trouble with that is that you find yourself saying the same thing over and over in pretty much the same way.

Hence - Tarzan goes to Mars.

Most of the best writers are only remembered for a few pieces of their work and the main body goes unnoticed, sometimes unread. Even Shakespeare had his howlers, and let's face it he spent most of his time saying the same thing over and over in much the same way methinks forsooth.

Like photography, painting, poetry, or any other art, playwriting, any writing, is part idea, part skill, part chance, and part accident. If you can get just a few things down that are different and that are appreciated then you are doing well, after all how many photographs do you need to take to get that one great shot? (Phil answer this one please.)

So, if you like writing plays, as my friend does, then I say you should keep on writing them. Who knows one day my friend may blunder into the right mix and be the toast of the West End. It might only happen once, but at least if he keeps trying he’ll have had the chance of that once, if he stops writing then he’ll have no chance at all.

As another friend of mine once told me as we drove along the long road to Aberdeen ‘Dream big and dare to fail’.

And that sounds about right to me Mr. Bailey.