Eight years ago my chum Shaun Bedford said to me the words: Ivory Ravenscroft Meet Saffron Delicious. It was a ticklingly whimsical phrase.

In my head it soon made friends with other thoughts and a year later, while grimacing around my first pint of Guinness in Temple Bar, I pitched back at Shaun the rough story of a man whose search for love leads him to an unorthodox dating agency.

It was a telling so bare it didn’t managed to cling on in my memory, so I left it there Dublin and we carried on dancing in the lift with Ian Stubbs (his is another story altogether. One day it will be told).

The general idea wasn’t forgotten though, and I eventually turned it into an outline and then a treatment. Last year, seven years after first thinking about Rowan Larkle, I finally finished the screenplay for this feature length romantic comedy.

But of course that is not the end of the story. Because as I’ve come to realise, writing is mainly in the rewriting. Previously even getting to the end of a feature screenplay would have been an achievement, but now I knew that this draft was only the first. Of how many?

Five. So far. I’m glad I didn’t know it was going to be five, I wouldn’t have known where I would get the energy from. As indestructible as I tried to make all of those drafts, and sometimes naively hoped they would be, I knew they were all another step along the way.

But as far as that first step goes I say: thank you for the names, mon frere Papenfois.

8:20, Starbucks

It’s raining outside and I’m trying to get my head round what needs to be done to get this thing off the ground. The short film Fleur-de-lis will be shooting in two months and there’s an awful lot to think about. More importantly there’s an awful lot to actually do. And that’s the point; I know where I need to get to, but what are the particular actions I need to take now and the coming weeks to get there?

The storyboards need to be finished, that’s important (it’d be good to know what we’re trying to shoot). Casting, I need to write up some casting sheets to give an idea of the kinds of actors we need for the parts. Budget, I have to work out the most efficient way of spending the limited funds available. I need to place ads for the key crew required. A lot to do, a lot to fit in around my day job and other writing commitments.

Thankfully I now have my calendar, onto which are mapped out the next few weeks of pre-production for Fleur-de-lis. The grainy dregs of my coffee are now cold. Tick tock.

Writing is an indulgence. By which I mean that the process itself is necessarily the gratification of the unhindered exploration and production of an idea. Time must be set aside in exclusive service to the writer’s whim, even for a donkey of an idea. Before any words or drafts are produced there is no one else involved in this process. It is internalised. To an onlooker that person at the back of a coffee shop may well be just staring into space. But that middle distance is the field where the writer takes their donkey out to graze. Where they can watch its mostly unremarkable movements until the donkey does something of import and therefore worthy of record. The field is guarded. Setting out in the morning the writer offers “I’m going to see the donkey”. The people who know the writer accept that there is a donkey because they have no reason not to. Though they’ve never seen the donkey and when they think further they realise they haven’t even got close to the field. The field is guarded.

Now isn’t that lazy donkey-led metaphor for the inherent indulgence of writing a little, well, indulgent? But it pleased me to write it. I wanted to explore the selfishness of writing and the donkey gave me an in. Thank you donkey. I spoke to no one before or while I wrote about the donkey. I ignored what else there was to be done while I thought and typed. I know that my donkey is no more remarkable than any other that has ever existed. I don’t care; I’m doing this because I want to. Not only do the preceding four sentences in this paragraph begin with ‘I’, but I will then ask someone to read my indulgence. For it isn’t enough that I have sated my donkey love, the gratification of that desire is now record and I desire further that you witness it.

That would seem to be selfish.

Let’s indulge another idea. Carpentry is an indulgence. By which I mean that the process itself is necessarily the gratification of the unhindered exploration and production of an idea. A chair. Or perhaps, more neatly, a carving of a donkey. Words and ideas make a play, a novel, a poem. Wood and ideas make a table, a chair, a small summerhouse with picket fence surround. In both a process results in a product.

That which we create is necessary by its very invention.

A final indulgence. Imagine the writer’s idea as a spark, an ember (this is a very old donkey). It must be nursed, sheltered from the elements until it can become a fire. This is the job, to shelter and nurse, without guarantee of reward.

The writer has to go out, not because someone has to, though we know someone must, but because they need to. The carpenter may make one chair, but buy another for his home. That he makes and what he makes are two different things, process and product.

And out there it can be dark and cold. The way back might not be how you remember it. And you might not have any help, because the shelter in which you try to poke your ember to life is the field you’ve guarded all this time. It’s just you, mixed metaphors and a confused donkey all wondering what the hell you are in service to. And just as you think it’s completely hopeless and that it couldn’t possibly get any worse it starts raining.

But then your donkey does something worthy of record. It lifts you onto its shabby back. Improbably, this lame creature manages to carry you and your fistful of fire all the way back. As you return all your doubts melt away and you see now that it couldn’t have been any other way.

There you sit on a chair with your companion and by firelight you both share in the story.

The good news is I’ve rumbled myself already. I should be storyboarding. They’re sitting on the table in front of me, the storyboards.

Little rectangles filled with pencil people doing the pencil things I’d like them to do. They need to be more inky, more definite. That’s the difficult part and why I’m blogging instead of bringing some motherlovin contrast to those rectangle worlds. It’d require me to be too permanent, too definite. They could always be redone of course, should they go awry. And that’s the point of drafting.

I completed the 3rd draft of my romantic-comedy a couple of weeks ago. On every draft I think ‘ha, got it’. Inevitably I haven’t quite, or there’s something not working in the way it was intended. Then the next draft becomes the definitive take on that tale. And I have notes aplenty already for that next draft. I’ll catch that pigeon, dammit.

Because you want to make something permanent, something definite, right? Whatever else is going on in your life, at least you would have that sofa thing sorted. Almost complete. Until your alter ego blows up your apartment. And you realise everything changes. Permanence is tricky. In fact they should be called quasi-temporary markers.

To be definite, that’s the aim. Defined.  To be bold and clear in your statement, whatever it might be. Black and white (and all the shades of grey you hope to hold in-between).  It’s a confidence trick. If you do anything with enough confidence it will be convincing*. Why is it a trick? Because most of us aren’t that confident. The only reason they might appear so is because that line you created was pencil a dozen times before it was ink, and the first time anyone saw it, they saw ink. Black and white. Defined, definite.

It’s tricky. And that’s even before you’ve sated your urge to procrastinate by blogging about it instead of actually doing it.

*I poached the confidence thing from Neil Gaiman. Find his original words here (as well as further tips on writing, from him and other much practised writers).

Saturday 16th April was New Writing South’s first industry day for playwrights. Held at the Nightingale Theatre in Brighton (a space I was not as familiar with as I am with the bar below it -The Grand Central does excellent Toulouse sausages FYI), it took the form of a series of talks and panels from theatre professionals. I thought I’d make some notes on the speakers and the major thoughts I was left with.

David Lane’s opening session on the role of the dramaturg was extremely enlightening. The word dramaturg is one I’ve heard and nodded wisely at the mention of without really knowing what it meant. Broadly the dramaturg works in support of the writer and the play they are trying to write, as opposed to a director who is largely approaching the play from a staging-centric perspective. Among other things this could involve interrogating the understanding of an underdeveloped character or recognising areas that might benefit from research.

THOUGHT#1: Is your idea best suited for stage? How does the structure of the play support the narrative?

Natalie Wilson of Theatre Centre described their work in taking professional theatre to young people and teachers. The challenge for the writer of devising pieces that work both on stage and in a pared own setting of a school hall was a good reminder that spectacle does not have to come from elaborate sets and lighting cues. The words of the script can do all of that for you and can sell an idea bigger than you could hope to establish even with production design. This came up again over the buffet lunch, in a nice chat with some nice people from the New Venture Theatre. We agreed that such constraints are a fantastic to push against and it is the creative response to them that often produces exciting results.

THOUGHT #2: Be aware of the staging of your work when devising a piece. Embrace your limitations and turn them into strengths.

The Heather Brothers were a joy to listen to, as they imparted some of their experience gained from many years writing for musical theatre. What came up here, and became a repeated point throughout the day, was the invaluable process of standing material up in front of an audience, as to assess its strengths and weaknesses. Not solely an approach for musical theatre, in fact many of the panels touched upon this as a worthwhile part of any script’s development. This session also got one of the biggest laughs as one brother recounted an unfavourable review for a production where the critic had the review posted in the paper’s obituary section.

THOUGHT #3: Get your work in front of an audience. Now this is obviously your hope for your script anyway, but this kind of feedback on a script in progress can reveal problems while you are still able to fix them.

Simon Day of The Plasticine Men gave an accessible, open and consequently inspiring account of his experience in taking the initiative to produce his theatrical work, in the absence of existing resources or support in the West Midlands when he first set out. The efforts he made to make his group’s show Keepers underlined that there are rarely easy solutions or piles of cash out there to grow your project. Initiative, hard work and thread of self belief that will keep the whole thing on track for as long as it takes to get to where you want to go. Simon’s admission that his early achievements were in part due to naiveté and bloody mindedness was a reminder that it’s sometimes easy to rationalise yourself out of a course of action when you know what is involved and how stacked against you it might be.

THOUGHT #4: The person you can ask the most of, to invest time, money and passion into your project, is you. If you aren’t passionate about your project, how can you convince others that they should be?

Steve Harper from Theatre 503 spoke keenly on the Brixton theatre’s Rapid Write Response scheme. Writers are invited to submit their own plays in response to the theatre’s show. Each month several of these are selected for a script in hand performance at the end of a show’s run. The turnaround is short, only a few days, encouraging writers to write instinctively on an aspect of the show that spoke to them (no matter how oblique!). The scheme is a great example of Theatre 503’s commitment to new writing and worth submitting your work to. Writer’s Nights offer reduced tickets to shows for which the Rapid Write Response scheme is open on.

THOUGHT#5: Get it written. Sometimes in not over thinking an idea and creating more spontaneously you might surprise yourself.

The final panel saw Steve of Theatre 503 joined by Literary Mangers Chris of the Royal Court Theatre and Sebastian of the National Theatre in an open discussion about the Literary Manager as link between the writer and the theatre and vice versa. It really helped demystify their submissions processes and though the statistics are daunting (the National and the Royal Court each receive around 3,000 unsolicited scripts per year and will develop around 12-18 scripts, which will include commissioned work), the overall feeling was heartening.

THOUGHT#6: Good work will always get noticed. Theatres, rather than being the stone wall writers often think of them as, are voracious searchers of new material.

Thanks to New Writing South for organising this constructive and engaging event!