They Do Say It's Your Birthday

It's my birthday tomorrow. I don't care what anybody says...I love birthdays, and the older I get the more I want to celebrate them.  So I'm off with Mr D (I decided to stop calling him "hubby" here - he deserves better) for a weekend in Dubrovnik.  Yes,  some might be surprised to hear I've decided to spend my birthday weekend in Croatia of all places, but I hear the city is beautiful and, most importantly of all to me, right on the sea.

So, no blogging from me on Sunday.  I'll report back next week. And in the meantime, happy weekend to all  and happy birthday to me.



Courtesy of YouTube and doctorzalus 77, whoever you may be.

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PS BREAKING NEWS:
Stanley Park has it's online premiere on Thurs 3rd June (for one week) then it will air on BBC3. Please visit, watch, and leave a comment on the blog - tell them if you like it and why.  Leo needs good feedback to get the series. Let's help CurvingRoad's own take this next big step in his career.

Notices

I'm aware that my blogs have been a tad on the long-winded side lately, so I thought I'd give us all a break and just post  a few notices today:

1.  Writer and editor of Gold Dust Magazine, David Gardiner,  asked me to publicize this year's UK Away Writer's Retreat to be held in Wales during August.  Although I cannot give a personal reference for this retreat, I do know David's work very well and am a real fan.  Look at the website here.  It might be just the productive escape you're looking for.

2.  As I mentioned here, BBC3 will be airing a pilot of the television series, Stanley Park, which is based on the play, Sh*t-M*x, that CurvingRoad produced in 2008.  I have now learned that  this will air on June 9 and you can watch clips on the BBC site here.  I'm so excited about this.  I know it will be wonderful, and the thought that I helped lead Leo to this in some small way is thrilling. I hear it will also be up on BBC Iplayer during the previous week as well.

3.  For those of us in need of bucking up -- and isn't that all of us? -- I found this site listing rejections of famous authors' works.  I love this stuff.  Thanks to Louise Marley's blog for heading me in the right direction.

And now as promised, that's all for today.

Going Beyond the Words: The Process of Rehearsing

This week we started rehearsals for ''The Next Curve."  As a writer, this was utterly fascinating.  Yes, I have already had the intriguing experience of workshopping plays, both my own which I discussed here, and someone else's, which I described here.  But rehearsals are yet a different kettle of petunias, so to speak.  It may seem obvious to say, but in rehearsals you have the actors themselves who will be portraying these roles there doing the work. Obvious yes, but that is a  huge difference.  When the hired actors are there, they have more at stake.  They have already begun the process of creating their roles out of their own experiences.  They came on day 1 having already done research and given a great deal of thought to their characters.  Even Day 1 is far from starting from scratch.  So what actually has happened in the first few days of rehearsing?

Our Director, Ellie Joseph, began with the question, "What does the text tell us about the character?"  We then went through every page and made a list of what we know from the words themselves, everything from the obvious "He's a man" to the surprising, "By saying X she's showing she's not as confident as she lets on." By the time we had gone through each play in its entirety, we had created an incredibly full picture of what the playwright had told us about his characters.  I put those words in bold because what happened next was where the alchemy started.

Anyone who has ever taken an English class in school knows that there are layers upon layers within any well-written text.  The fun, and the struggle, is to find those layers that the playwright might not even have been aware were there.  Our Director began that process of discovery with some improv.   The actors were asked improvise various scenes that may have occurred  before the time frame of the play itself.  "What was their first meeting like 20 years earlier?"  "How did the earlier offer of help come about?"  Through these improvs the actors are able to spontaneously begin the process of changing their characters from figments of somebody else's imaginings to creations of their own, based not only on the playwright's clues from the text, but also from an understanding of the motivations and impulses that can be inferred from the text.  While necessarily remaining true to the author's intention, the play becomes something new.

All writers know that their words have subtext.  As humans, we can't help it.  Our lives inform what we write, and as readers, how we receive what has been written.  But the beauty of the rehearsal is that you can see it actually happening right before your eyes.  It is magic, and it's enough to make you want to write for the stage -- as crazy as it may be.
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PS: Thanks to all who posted their congratulations about the publication of my next novel.  It really means a lot to me to know you are all out there rooting for me, just as I'm indeed rooting for all of you!

A Long-Awaited Announcement

I have been waiting a long time to officially tell you this....
My new novel, A Clash of Innocents, is going to be published! The aimed-for publication date is October, 2010 and it will be published by a new indie publishing company called Ward Wood.  Here's how it happened.
     Remember last year I lost both my agent and my publisher? That spurred me on to think that I would try to use my new novel to get a new agent here in the UK, and sell the book to one of the big corporate houses.  I took a deep breath and starting sending out my query letters.  I sent out three, all to some of the highest profile agencies in the country.  I figured why not start at the top.  The first one read the entire novel, liked it, but said the usual "not commercial enough for me to feel secure in our ability to sell it." Fair enough, as expected.  The second sent back a polite note saying they were not taking on new clients.  Also as expected.  To this date I have not heard back from the third.  I started to create my list of next submissions, but then I had a fateful conversation with Adele Ward.  She said she was beginning to discuss setting up a new indie house of her own.  She told me about the business model and about the reasoning behind taking such a bold move in the present economic climate.  I was intrigued.  When she then also told me that her business partner was none other than Mike Fortune-Wood of Cinnamon fame, someone I had often heard about and whose business acumen had just recently been extolled to me by another independent source, I became excited.  Adele explained that, at first, they would only be taking submissions by invitation and she asked to see my novel.  I spent a frantic weekend reading it one last time, making the inevitable tweaks, and then I sent it to her.  A few weeks later, Adele reported back that she loved the book and would not only like to publish it, but publish it as their first novel.  So then I had a heart-to-heart with myself and a few trusted advisors.  Would I give up the dream of the big publishing house?  Dare I remain an "indie girl" despite my difficult experience with my first small press?  What would be best for my career?  It didn't take long for me to decide.  The invitation to have my work play such an important part in a new venture to be run by two such well-established and talented professionals was a very special opportunity, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  And now that it is "officially" happening, I couldn't be more pleased.
     The creation of Ward Wood can best be read about in Adele's blog here or here.  And now, I invite you to be the first to read what A Clash of Innocents is all about:

    It’s not supposed to be cold in February, not in Phnom Penh. Deborah, a 60-year-old American expat, is on her way back to the “Khmer Home for Blessed Children” which she has run for ten years. A young woman in her twenties is waiting for her. Another American, but with flip flops and a backpack, she asks, “Are you Deborah Young? I’m here to help.”
    So begins a story of hidden identities and questioned motives. Who is this young woman? Who is Deborah? Who are any of the displaced Westerners who find themselves raising the leftover children of Cambodia’s violent past? Against her better judgment and building suspicions, Deborah allows the young woman, Amanda, to stay, but when a sick infant is left on their doorstep, the horror of the young woman’s past catches up with her and infiltrates the orderly workings of Deborah’s home. The precarious well-being of Deborah’s “family” of forty forgotten Khmer children is jeopardized, as is her own emotional life.
    Against the backdrop of Cambodia’s violent past and the beginnings of its new Tribunal for Justice, a story of displaced souls unfolds. In Cambodia, innocents are everywhere. Everyone is innocent, or so they would like to believe – everyone, except the few who, for their own private reasons, take on the guilt of the many.

I do hope you'll stay with me as I bring this, my second literary baby, into the world.  It will be another wild ride, I'm sure.  But I couldn't be more excited.

                                           The Gulf of Thailand, Kep, Cambodia

From Sh*t-M*x to Stanley Park

I know I'm a control freak, but I couldn't have organized the timing of this if I tried.....

On September 30, 2008, CurvingRoad opened it's biggest production to date, the play Sh*t--M*x by Leo Richardson.  Perhaps you remember? It ran to great reviews and cheering audiences for three weeks in London's West End Theatre, The Trafalgar Studio.  This was Leo's first play.  Although he had trained as an actor, he had no professional training as a writer.  But talent will out.  Here was the blurb we ran on all the pr:
    Raggedy Anne is gagging to go out with LB, but he has a few guilty secrets. Dirty Debbie isn't really helping matters; all she's concerned about is finishing her first erotic novel. Maybe Bent Ben will find out what's wrong. And will anyone catch the eye of the elusive Harry the Hottie? This funny yet gritty play shows just what it is to be a teenager.

Since then, Leo's career has skyrocketed.  Flying back and forth to L.A., all sorts of new projects are being discussed.  But I am now thrilled to be able to announce that in just a matter of weeks, BBC 3 will air the pilot of the new 6-part series Leo has developed for them, based on his play.  It is now called Stanley Park and you can read the BBC's write-up about it here.  There is also a new facebook group here, where Leo has provided us with hilarious excerpts from Debbie's latest erotica, an interview with her Superking smoking, gin drinking guardian, Aunty Pat, and a few touching pieces of juvenalia from the ever-intense Raggedy Ann.  Here's one that I just must share with you:

I went to stand outside the Premiere of New Moon last week, and Robert Pattinson looked at me. It was amazing, but afterwards I hit a real low. It inspired me to write this ode.


An Ode to Robert Pattinson;


Yesterday i’d never seen you.
I was merely just a fan.
But today you finally looked at me
Yet you didn’t see who I am.


Though Ben was screaming in my ear,
I think, I thought it true,
That your wave and words were just for me
But instead you looked right through.


A part of me was ruined.
A part of me was crushed.
Like the ice from the machine in Nandos
But instead I was the empty cup.


I wish that you would bite me.
With your hollywood sparkling teeth.
But I am effervescent to you,
And you’ll never know what’s underneath.

- Raggedy Ann (Nov 2009)
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Perhaps that says it all.  So please look out for Stanley Park in June on BBC 3.  And as unbelievable as it may be, CurvingRoad is at it again at the same time with our newest effort.  If you're in London between June 8 and June 26, come on by The Old Red Lion Theatre near Angel Tube in Islington to see our newest show: The Next Curve: 2 One Act Plays.  Who knows what this production will lead to for our two new authors.  But if you'll allow me a moment of mushiness, I will say that being a part of bringing such great talent into the public eye has been one of the great joys and privileges I've had in this writing life of mine.  Having the "old" Leo and the "new" J.D. and Michael all coming together at the same time is rather amazing, don't you think?

How to Put on a Play: The Next Lesson

It might seem as if all has gone quiet on the theatre front, but don't you be deceived.  The last post about CurvingRoad's new production was all about the workshop here.  Since then we've held production meetings where the  "creative team," which includes the director, set designer, lighting designer, stage manager, producer meet to discuss logistics.  You'll notice that in this list of "creatives" the playwright is not mentioned.  Correct.  We are now getting to the point where the writer fades into the background and begins to feel the reins of control swiftly slip through his/her fingers.  As a writer myself, this is a bittersweet moment.  The theatre is all about taking a writer's imaginings and bringing them to physical reality on stage, right?  But the person least involved in that is the writer himself.  To be honest, once the play has been handed over to the creative team, the last person that team wants to see is the writer.  The play is now theirs, and although an occasional rewrite may be requested, now's the time the writer should be slinking off to his office to begin conjuring up new worlds.  Yes, come out to take your bow on opening night, but otherwise, let it go, let it go.
     Okay - there are some exceptions.  Sometimes a work is created in an especially collaborative way, and the writing might be done in the presence and with the input of the director and actors.  Sometimes a director and a writer will know each other very well and have an especially close working relationship.  But generally speaking, once the script has been accepted, the writer bows out as gracefully as possible, and the more gracefully the better.  So,  for example, casting? That's the job of the director and producer.  Although it can be scary, it can also be fascinating for a writer to see who has been chosen to bring his words to life.  It may be exactly the sort of person he had in mind.  But it may not.  And that is where the piece really does take on its own life.  The words become a part of other people's imaginings, and so the magic begins.  Some writers don't see this as magic.  Some see this as frustration and betrayal.  Some writers have been known to walk out on productions, disavowing any future connection to it.  But  I believe that, in today's theatre more than ever, those writers should probably stick to writing novels or poetry or short stories. I've said it before but it bears repeating: today's theatre is a collaborative effort.  Embrace it or risk all sorts of pain and frustration.
       I am happy to say that CurvingRoad's new playwrights, J.D Smith and Michael Hart, understand this.  When asked to do rewrites they have each said, "yes, of course." And now that the rewrites are done, they are sitting in Washington and Edinburgh (respectively), preparing to do an occasional promotional piece or interview (if we're all lucky and the pr firm can sell the idea), and then book their flights to London.  June 8 is sooner than you think.  Here's our new flyer to prove it:

And here's the  plug.  If you want to come and can't quite read the flyer above, book tickets via the box office at The Old Red Lion Theatre 0207 7837 7816.  And stay tuned for future installments of that exciting new series, "How to Put on a Play".......

Elizabeth Baines and "Too Many Magpies" on Tour

One of the great pleasures of this writing life of mine is that I get to know other writers and follow their work.  Elizabeth Baines is one of these.  I first became aware of her work via her excellent short story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, published by Salt in 2007.  Salt has now published her beautiful novel, Too Many Magpies, and I am thrilled to be able to host Elizabeth as the first stop on her blog tour and engage in a bit of to and fro about her work and her life as a writer.

*The theme of the magpie is haunting and runs throughout the narrative of “Too Many Magpies.”  I was wondering if you had the idea for the theme of the book first and then found the metaphor to illustrate it? Or, as sometimes happens, did you have the image of the magpie in your head first and have the story somehow grow out of that image?

Hmm. Do you know, it's very hard to say! I must say that once, when I was newly pregnant with my first child, I was going through the park on my way to the shops and saw several magpies and thought of the rhyme, One for Sorrow etc, and that incident did stay with me. But I had no idea that it would end up in a novel, as it does in Too Many Magpies, or that the magpie would provide a fundamental symbol - I wasn't consciously storing it up as material for a novel. When I sat down to write the novel what I was consciously concerned with were the story of the charismatic but sinister stranger and the themes of fear and uncertainty, but when I began to write, the magpie image came flying out of the past and roosted right in there! So it's kind of hard to say which came first in the process, the magpie image or the egg theme/story. I guess it's best when it works like this, a sort of alchemical fusion which transcends the components of a novel  - it certainly feels best, to me, anyway, when I'm writing, and I hope it works in the finished result here!

*I believe I heard you say that you wrote this novel quite quickly, as if it came out all of one piece.  Is that true?  Does it often work that way with you?

Well, yes, I did write it very quickly, and yes it did come out all of one piece. Each day for two months (October and November) I went into my room at nine in the morning and wrote solidly until the evening, printing out and revising each evening after we'd eaten. During that time everybody in the house was very fed up with me, and the way the writing of the novel took over our lives - they would come home to a darkened house and me still shut away upstairs, and have to call me down for the evening meal, and then I'd be off up again to the landing where we kept the printer!  But at the end of that two months it was done.  But no, it's not always that way: the novel I'm working on at the moment will have been the work of several years, on and off - I've left it, sometimes actually abandoned it, and then gone back to it -  and it will have gone through several drafts. I think it depends very much on your prior relationship with the material: how familiar you are with it, how far you have worked it all out emotionally and intellectually, on either a conscious or unconscious level (or both). And also on things like how quickly, for each novel, you hit on a novelistic device that seems to work - in the case of Too Many Magpies the magpie image which just pulled the whole thing together for me and made the novel appear to write itself.

*You write in different genres, as do I. When writers do this, I’m always curious about how they decide what genre to work in at any one time.  Does the idea choose it’s own genre?  Do you decide you want to write a story/play/novel and then sit down to find an idea that suits that genre?

I find that ideas do arrive with their own forms, don't you? A short story usually comes to me primarily as an image or sometimes a phrase (with ideas attached), a play as primarily an issue (with characters and a situation attached), and a novel as a much more complex package of themes and images and situations. Clearly, though, there are occasions when you're commissioned to write something and it is the form and not the story that will be the given, and you'll have to think up a story that suits that form. This process always feels to me far less organic - and the real hard work of a commission for me is thinking up a subject that MAKES the process organic. I have twice adapted my prose for radio drama as well, which I know appears rather to go against the idea of a story having is own form: Power, one of the stories in my collection Balancing on the Edge of the World  and my novel The Birth Machine, which is being reissued by Salt in October. However, to change them from prose to drama I found it necessary to turn them into entirely different creatures, and 'Power' I think was actually turned by the different form into something of a different story. You can read about that in more detail in the stop I made at Debi Alper's blog on my last tour.

*Like any good novel, “Too Many Magpies” is full of complex characters and interesting themes.  What was the impetus for writing this?  A character?  A theme you wanted to explore? Both or neither?

There were several triggers. Scientific versus magical thinking is one of my long-term themes (it's a theme in The Birth Machine, too). Also as a parent I'd already thought long and hard about the implications of this theme for one's hopes and fears for one's children and for one's strengths and vulnerabilities as a parent, and knew I wanted to write about that. There was one particular experience concerning one of my children which I wanted to write about, too, and which is central to the novel, but I won't say what it was, because it's a plot-spoiler!  Separately, I had also been toying for some time with the idea of a charismatic, anarchic  stranger who comes along and challenges and disrupts the conventional middle-class life. Then one day I was in Didsbury library - I find the library just about the best place in the world for getting inspiration for a novel - and for some reason I remembered how once when I made a birthday cake for my kids the Smarties I put on top went all frilly round the edges, and that was it: the first line of the novel, 'On the baby's first birthday, the Smarties on the cake went frilly round the edges' just dropped into my head with all of those other things attached, and I started to see the whole thing (if a bit mistily)! And of course as soon as I rushed back to the house and started to write, the magpies came zooming in and cinched it all.
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Fascinating stuff.  I do love getting to drill people about their work and processes.  Elizabeth is very forthcoming about her writing, and is at the forefront of the sort of marketing that small presses and their writers now do so well.  For more information about Elizabeth and her books do check out her podcast readings on the Salt blog.  You can also watch a film of Elizabeth talking about the novel.  I also urge you  to follow the rest of her tour.  You can find the schedule here.



 

Pretty Please

I thought I'd write about an issue that a new writer may not think about: permission.  Let's say you find the perfect line for your character to quote to her beloved, or there's a song lyric you have always loved that would be the perfect epigram to your new novel.  Well, think twice before you get your heart set on it.  Everything that is quoted, no matter how old, how much a part of the language it has become, needs to be considered for permission.  Getting that permission is the responsibility of the writer, not the publisher, and that often means not only the paperwork, but also the payment. 

For example, in "Tangled Roots," John loved the Doors and often had old Doors' songs roaming through his brain.  It worked well in the text.  But getting permission from the estate of Jim Morrison took some doing.  First, I had to find the song publisher, then they had to ask the estate, then they asked for money which I decided to pay.  The process took a few months.  When I was writing the book, I had no idea that such permission would be necessary, nor that it would take so much to get it.  Maybe I should have known but I didn't and I bet that there are many new novelists out there who also don't know.

Now picture the calendar pages fluttering away in the breeze and you find me writing novel number two, "A Clash of Innocents."  I knew not to use quotations in the text.  Anything that seems like a quotation I actually made up myself,  But there is a wonderful quotation from e.e. cummings' novel, "Eimi," that I fell in love with and decided I wanted to use as the epigram to the book.  I tried not to love it, but you know how love is....so this past week I found myself in correspondence with W.W. Norton and Company, the original publishers of the book and the guardian of his estate.  They actually were lovely to deal with.  They have been reasonable, efficient, and surprisingly inexpensive.  So I'll be able to keep my beloved quote in the front page of the book.  And to be honest, it was quite  a kick receiving emails from them, as you might imagine.  Luckily, not a bad result this time.

At the same time, we at CurvingRoad are beginning preparations for our next production in June, and one of our plays, "Dig," requires a gun and blood.  Of course, we have to get permission.  So we are now discussing it with the council in which our theatre resides.  How many shots will be used? What sort of gun?  How much blood?  We'll be granted the permission, I'm sure.  But it is a palaver going through the process of getting it.

So the moral?  Well, the usual one, I suppose.  Do what you want, just be aware of the consequences.