Flowerfield

This is the working title of a new project: an idea that has been nipping away at me for weeks now. It is very hard to describe this process - the sheer compulsive delight of it - to anyone who doesn't work creatively. But it is, I suppose, the answer to that perennial question - every writer has heard it, at almost every reading - where do you get your ideas from?

THIS is where you get your ideas from, except that it's almost impossible to define what 'this' is! It's a process, I suppose and you feel it as much in your stomach as in your head! Butterflies, like the feeling you got as a child, when you were anticipating something wonderful. Something seen or heard or discovered, sparks something else in your imagination. And then you spend days, weeks, sometimes months, thinking about it all, often in the early hours of the morning. On this occasion, I was quite alone, visiting a place, (briefly) at a particular time of day, at a particular time of the year. It was a place I had written about before, but the character who came into my mind had nothing to do with that. This was a new person, new to me, but it was as if I was suddenly looking at something through her eyes and with her memories. This is a very odd sensation, for sure, but it is also very wonderful, and more exciting than anything else I know. I knew instantly who she was, what she was doing there, why she had come back there, and what her memory of the place was. I also knew something about the history of the place. And I knew that there was doing to be some connection between the two. What I didn't know - and still don't, not in any great detail - is what exactly that connection is, and how the story is going to pan out. But I'm slowly but surely starting to put the pieces together. It always amazes me how this feels like 'finding out' rather than 'making up.' It's as if the story exists somewhere as a truth, and the writer's job is to tease it out, rather than invent.

A Warm Welcome Back to Wordarts

I've been away for quite a long time. Actually, I haven't been away at all. I've been writing and revising madly, pondering and contemplating changes and coming up with lots of new ideas. There's something about springtime that always has this effect.
Besides, I'd found myself getting bored with my own blog and that will never do! I needed a break, but here I am, on the first of the month, back on board. Moreover, I have a nice new agent, with a nice new agency, a whole host of new projects, several things on the boil at once, and hope in my heart. And here's a nice new picture of an old source of inspiration for me - the isle of my heart and the setting for a brand new novel, with this time - I hope - the stonking great plot that eluded me for so long. Well, if not a 'stonking great plot' then an interesting plot. Involving, dramatic - and rather sad, too. Or so I'm told. Let's hope nice new agent can find a very very nice new publisher to take this one on board.

Random Strange Derivations (1)

There is a (somewhat revolting) expression for perspiring profusely, which is known as 'sweating cobs'. I'm not sure whether it's peculiar to my native county of Yorkshire, but that's where I heard it first. It was only when I was studying Old and Middle English that I learned that the word for spider is 'attecoppe' - meaning 'cup of poison' which is fairly self explanatory.
The word cob is sometimes used for spider in Yorkshire - hence 'sweating cobs' meaning that the droplets are running down, like little spiders! Strange or what?
When I was a child in Yorkshire, we also used to call those floating seeds that sail through the air in late summer 'hairy cobs'. We would blow on them and hope that they would float upwards, chanting 'hairy cob, hairy cob, bring me some luck' - or sometimes 'bring me some money'. I assume that these too were seen as 'hairy spiders'.
Not a lot of people know this! I didn't even know it back then, when I was using the word!

Stonking Great Stories.

Am gearing up to do yet more rewrites on what has come to be known as The Book, in this house. There are other books, some almost written, some half written, some planned. But THIS is THE BOOK. It has been through more versions than I have had hot dinners. Well, not quite, but it feels like it. And yet, each new draft seems to have been an important part of the process, leading me on to something new, exciting, interesting.
When I sent the latest version - so far from where this project started that it seems to me now like a completely different book - to my agent, I kind of expected editorial suggestions. But I also thought that I might finally have cracked it.
When he wrote back to me, with some notes, he also said - more or less - 'this is a very good book, but it isn't a great book. I think you have the potential to turn it into a great book. Do you want to have a go, because I will quite understand if you don't. It's up to you. I'd be happy to send it out, or wait for you to write something else - or have another go at this one. Your decision.'
He also used that dread word 'quiet'. Not, he was quick to stress, that he thought it was 'too quiet' - but he knows his market, all too frighteningly well. And he knows that that is the word that editors will use when they get back to him. 'Beautifully written - but quiet.'
After a little thought, I went onto my Facebook page and without specifying any details, asked my fellow writers (pretty much the majority of my Facebook friends are writers!) how they would set about addressing the problem of 'quietness'. I got a drift of answers at least some of which were helpful. Somebody (who had probably never read anything I had written, folk are like that!) said that I had to make my characters 'real' - but that has never been my problem. Actually, I suspect it's quite the opposite. My characters are sometimes all too real, which may mean that I sacrifice the drama. Another friend, a very fine writer herself, said that she gets the same reaction, and has been told by her North American editor, that she needs a 'stonking great story'. Several people told me that I must follow my heart. And there's some truth in that, as well. But, but, but....I can't ignore advice from somebody who clearly has my best career interests at heart.
I had a conversation with this same agent, a few days later, and he pointed out a particular scene in the novel which he thought worked perfectly, and was, in fact, an example of exactly what he meant. Considering his comments (actually, I have spent several hours in the middle of several nights, doing nothing but consider them!) I realise that what he is after, what the publishing world is really after, is a stonking great story, beautifully told. Failing that, of course, they will go for the stonking great story without the beautiful telling, every time.
All of which begs the interesting question - can I pull it off without the whole book coming crashing down around my ears.
I have to try.
And at least some of my midnight ponderings have revealed something else. The book itself has changed. What I thought was the 'story' of the book, is more like a sub plot. A very important sub plot, vital to the whole thing - but all the same, not quite the main theme, spine, story. That lies elsewhere, or not so much elsewhere, as seen from a completely different angle. And I'm still not telling it. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps because it frightens me somewhat. It is, let's face it, a stonking great story, but also a scary one.
But I have to have a try, because now that I'm aware if it, it isn't going to go away.
Lots more work. I'll keep you posted.

Television and other minor irritations (2)

A few weeks ago, the List Magazine wrote a piece about me, because I had a play on in Glasgow. One of the questions they asked was 'when did you first realise you were famous?' to which I answered that I didn't think I was famous. With one or two celebrated exceptions, writers are slightly famous for a bit, and then sink into obscurity again.

I don't think I realised just how true that might turn out to be, until it was forcibly brought home to me by a couple of subsequent encounters . First, a person who has known me for many years, turned to me on a certain social occasion and said 'you've written one or two radio plays, haven't you?' To which I replied, well, more than two hundred hours, actually! But I could understand it, because nobody really listens to the writer's name, even when they listen to a radio play, or dramatisation. I don't do it all that often myself.

A few days after this, I had occasion to express my own realisation that I didn't want to write for television at all. I think I said something to the effect that, in spite of a few past opportunities (outlined in the previous post) I had never really made a go of it, but now regretted nothing except the money. Cue a number of kindly reassurances that of course it wasn't 'too late'. It was though I had suggested giving up writing - which, of course, I hadn't! I was just pointing out that some years previously, I had made a conscious decision that writing for television wasn't for me, in the way that - for instance - a doctor might decide that geriatrics was not an area he or she felt any interest in. This is perfectly true. Which is not, of course, to say that I would turn down any offers to exploit my other work, so long as somebody else would do the actual TV dramatisation, pay me a reasonable amount of cash, and leave me to get on with the kind of writing I do best.

So what was all that about?

Well, I said it myself, didn't I? Most writers are slightly famous for a very short while. The newspapers come calling, take photographs, print articles. And then, dear reader, we all sink into obscurity again, until somebody comes along and - with the best will in the world - assumes that we are absolute beginners. It has happened to me on more occasions that I care to recall.

Which is not, of course, to say that certain kinds of advice aren't very welcome indeed. Oddly enough, some of the most helpful advice I have had, in recent weeks, has been from much younger editors, directors, actors, agents. So many young people seem to have a certain wisdom and insight that we ignore at our peril. And it's very refreshing to tap into this youthful perspective. It helps to keep an older and perhaps overly cynical writer on her toes!

Television and other minor irritations (1)

I attended an excellent talk about Writing for the Screen a couple of evenings ago. You can read the lecturer's take on it here. It was a brilliant talk, partly because the advice on how to set about constructing a script for television was so direct and clear, but partly because it very much 'told it like it is.' Stuart doesn't pull his punches. He has had a great deal of success in television, so his experience is invaluable - but he has also had his fair share of television induced hassle and his advice for coping with it (treat it as a job, don't take it personally) would almost certainly have been invaluable to me many years ago when I had a few opportunities in television and still thought that I might want to write for that medium.

Back then, I had several short plays produced for STV, followed by a spooky serial for teens. It was called Shadow of the Stone - and boy, was I ahead of my time there! It has been one of the misfortunes of my writing life that whenever I have come up with an original idea, and had it knocked back, 'because nobody is interested in the supernatural', etc etc - I have seen it become flavour of the decade, several years after I have lost interest!

Anyway, after that, I wrote two episodes of a Scottish based television series called Strathblair - and then, following a successful stage play for the Traverse, I was approached by a script editor to develop a 'rural' series for television.

There followed a couple of years, during which I worked through successive hugely detailed proposals, outlines, sample scripts, making changes along the way. It was a truly vast amount of work. Somewhere, on a shelf, is the box file, or several box files, full of the paperwork. Eventually, I realised that it was never, ever going to be made. The script editor had simply been earning his salary. Whereas I hadn't been paid a brass farthing for any of this 'development' work.

Don't get me wrong. In any area of writing, you have to be prepared to do a lot of work up front and uncommissioned. But at that stage in my career, I had already had several competent television projects produced. So there should have been development money. In effect, I worked for nothing, for two years, on the promise of a pot of jam tomorrow. Only tomorrow never came.

God knows why I never asked for money, nor why I didn't give up sooner. But of course the money is so good, in television, when you finally get any - good, that is, compared to almost any other area of writing - that the innocent are tempted to soldier on, as I did.

Somewhere along the way, though, I realised that television was not for me although the realisation had little to do with that one bad experience. I think I found the process itself way too frustrating. I have no problem at all with collaboration - you can't work in theatre without it, and it can be tremendously rewarding. But television is largely weighted against the interests of the writer. And I couldn't just do it 'as a job', because whenever I write something, I have to be passionately involved in it. I can't help myself. Which, of course, raises the stakes. 
UK television dramas - with a few notable exceptions, Doctor Who springs to mind, and that's why it's so blooming brilliant - are often engineered by committees of executives who want to have their say. What emerges is the kind of thing we see on our TV screens. I'm told that in the US, by contrast, experienced writers are likely to be much higher up the 'food chain', much more influential in the process. Teams also work together, so that younger writers can be helped by older and more seasoned writers. I'm sure that happens here, but since even those older, more seasoned writers have very little real clout in the overall process, it doesn't help. But it does serve to explain why a significant percentage (but not, of course, all) US dramas are so much more vivid, imaginative and original than anything we see on our screens here. True Blood is a good example. Would that ever have been made here in the UK where we are supposed to be so 'daring'? I very much doubt it!

The Director from Heaven

A few posts back, we were discussing the Director from Hell. The Secret Commonwealth, of course, had the opposite - the Director from Heaven. She was young, enthusiastic and incredibly talented. She was also a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Her name was Jen Hainey and I suspect she's definitely going places! Well - she already has an enviable track record for a young actor/director.
I always have enormous admiration for theatre directors because it can be a difficult job, quite a large portion of which involves juggling and reconciling egos. Mind you, the ego of an actor is often in inverse proportion to the talent! Some of the loveliest and most self effacing actors I have ever worked with, have also been by far the most talented. They produce these jaw dropping performances and ask you afterwards 'if it was alright'! On the other hand - and naming no names - I can think of a few towering egos with the tiniest talent who specialise in making other people feel small. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often.
But even when everyone gets on well, there is something about the process of developing a play for the stage which exposes vulnerabilities, in actors, and in the writer - and when it comes to making it all work smoothly, the buck stops fairly and squarely with the director. He or she must have a strong artistic vision of how she wants the play to emerge, must be immensely practical and well organised, but with an understanding and imagination, must be able to do a great many things at once - but must also be sensitive enough to reassure everyone involved.
I've been reading Russell T Davies' immensely enjoyable and inspirational The Writer's Tale, in the introduction to which he relates the story of the taxi driver who asks 'So do you think up the story and the actors make up the words?'
I've been asked this, or something like it, more often than you might believe. Some people seem to have the idea that the playwright comes up with an outline on the back of an envelope, while the actors improvise all the dialogue!
But during my recent production, people made what amounts to the opposite mistake. They would say things like 'What a lot of words the actor had to learn!' Which was, of course, true. It was what is known as 'a big learn'. And because actors take their cues from each other, a monologue is certainly challenging for an actor. But to equate a performance with simply learning the lines is akin to equating a performance of - for example - a piano piece with learning the notes. I can make a fair stab at learning the notes of a piece of Mozart, on the piano. Will I play it like Alfred Brendel? You bet your life I won't! I'll never be able to do that in a million years of trying.
Which is what marks the difference between somebody who can learn the lines - and a fine actor. But the work that allows that fine actor to produce a wonderful performance mostly takes place after the words have been learnt. And the person who facilitates, encourages, soothes, suggests and helps an actor to 'find' the performance of a lifetime can - when the relationship works well - be the director. This in turn involves a flair for collaboration, an understanding of what makes a good piece of theatre coupled with tremendous energy and a very definite skill at managing people. And that's what goes to produce the director from heaven. Who is, it has to be said, beyond price!
Thanks, Jen - and I hope we work again some time!

The Let Down

I had an email from a friend last night.

He had been to see the play, and loved it.

So, he asked, what happens now? Do TV/film offers pour in? Or is that it?

Well, sadly, that tends to be it. Which goes some way towards explaining the reasons why writers become a little miserable at the end of such a project. One minute, or so it seems, there you are, being taken seriously, congratulated and hugged on all sides (actors and others in the theatre are nothing if not touchy/feely) and the next you're back in the garret, all on your own, with only the PC for company, wondering what to write next. The change is instant and faintly depressing.

It isn't so bad for actors, especially if they have another project in the offing. If they're lucky, they have a little break and then they are onto the Next Big Thing. But for the writer, the sense of let-down can be intense and disturbing. You add the play to your CV. You print out any good reviews and add them, along with production pictures to your portfolio, and then ... well, you move on.

With books and stories, you at least have something to show for it all, something that still exists, something that you can look at occasionally and say 'I did that!' But even if a play is published in an anthology, there is a sense in which it still only exists as a real entity when it is in production. The words on the page are all well and good, but they need actors, director, designer and audience to animate them, to recreate them, to - essentially - turn them into a play.

It is - moreover - a dimension which is seldom properly communicated to students who study drama as a form of literature. If literature students never actually see a play in performance, then it is a little like music students spending a whole year studying Beethoven's Ninth without ever listening to the music. Something, arguably the most important thing of all, is missing!

The Director from Hell

Last week, in Glasgow's Oran Mor, I met one of Scotland's most distinguished actors, who greeted me with tremendous enthusiasm, and the words 'Oh God, that awful play....' He was talking about an early stage play of mine, called Heroes and Others, written for the then Scottish Theatre Company, a play in which he was unfortunate enough to be cast. I could see my lovely young director blench at the words, but both of us hastened to reassure her that neither of us (because I had been nodding in vigorous agreement) meant the actual script. Nor did we mean the performances, because the production in question had involved a number of equally talented actors. No, we meant that the play had been comprehensively mauled, as had writer, and actors, by the Director from Hell. The man is dead now. I can't help but be rather glad about that, I'm ashamed to say! He was an actor of some talent. But he was a really crap director. I was young and inexperienced and he rewrote my script.
Day after day, I would try to reinstate my dialogue, and he would compromise a bit, and then go away and rewrite my script again. It was the single most hideous theatrical experience of my life. Added to that, we were rehearsing in a derelict theatre, ice cold and dusty, and what with the dust and the stress, I had the worst asthma attack of my life. Looking back on it, I realise, queasily, that I could have died. Killed by my own play.
I was simply too young, and too inexperienced to fight him, and the person who should have been on my side - the artistic director of the company - was far too chicken to back me up. I remember bursting into tears on a number of occasions. I also remember encountering other weeping cast members in the loo. They too had been humiliated by the director. Now, whenever I meet anyone who was remotely involved with Heroes and Others, they say 'Dear God, that play!' It has become the benchmark for horror, for all of them.
It put me off writing for theatre for years. In fact it wasn't till I got the chance to work with Philip Howard, at the Traverse, that I tried again. I couldn't bear to look at the reviews of Heroes and Others, and indeed, filed them away. A few years ago, I read them properly, and realised that they weren't half bad. Well, not as far as I was concerned. What they were all saying was 'This is a good play, struggling to get out of a terrible production.' And they were right.
It wasn't until earlier this week, though, meeting that splendid actor, that I realised the full extent of the damage done to me by the Director from Hell. Somewhere inside me, all these years, had been the sneaking suspicion that the play was not a very good play. Or not good enough. It was about Solidarity in its early days, and was a subject that was very close to my heart. So it was doubly hard to see it so utterly changed. But I still had the sneaking suspicion that he might have been right and I might have been wrong.
'We all knew' said the actor 'that this was a wonderful, warm, thoughtful, family drama. What he turned it into was crass political polemic. He ruined it.'
I've been thinking about it ever since. And I'm sure the actor is right. It has - I suppose -given me what they call 'closure'! One thing I do remember, about the whole experience, is that I was under immense pressure from the company NOT TO TALK TO THE PRESS. I still don't know why I didn't talk to the press. I was, I seem to remember, interviewed very kindly by Joyce MacMillan. I'm sure she knew that it was not a happy production. Word gets about and she couldn't help but see the stress on my face. But I didn't break ranks, didn't tell her the full story. And I should have done. I was young, and inexperienced, and I didn't know any better. So I kept quiet.
Of course, when you are involved with a production, your first loyalty is always to your fellow performers, your director, actors, the people with whom you are working, and about whom you care. But this was different. Nobody was happy on that production. Not me, not the actors, not anybody who was struggling to cope behind the scenes. What was going on amounted, I now realise, to serious bullying. It should have been outed. I should have taken my script and walked. But I didn't. And it has taken me all these years to realise that - back then - I had written what might have been a perfectly good first professional play. If I had been brave enough to speak out. Which perhaps explains why I now tend to stick my head above the parapet rather too often for my own good.

Rehearsals and other complicated things

Have realised, over the past week - as I realise every time I'm involved with a new play - just how poorly understood is the process of developing and rehearsing a play, especially a new play.
This was brought home to me a few years ago, when I happened to be talking to a young performance student who clearly couldn't understand why she was being asked to analyse texts, when all she wanted to do was - well - perform. It was obvious that, having come from an amateur dramatic background, she seemed to think that professional performance involved being told where to stand and where to go, while learning the lines and making them sound natural. Similarly, somebody just asked me if rehearsals involved me 'making sure that the actor said the lines the way you want them said.'
Well, there is, of course, a sense in which all these things are true. Playwright David Mamet, famously, only asks of his actors that they read the lines the way they are written. But he IS David Mamet! There is also a sense in which all these things are only the tip of a much more difficult, but much more interesting iceberg. It is impossible to underestimate just how much rehearsal time (and pre-rehearsal time, with whoever is directing the play) is spent in analysing the script, discussing what it means, who these characters are, why they speak and behave the way they do - and what are the complex emotions underlying the words on the page. If director and actors bring a fine emotional intelligence to the project, the whole experience can be truly rewarding. But however rewarding, the process is never simple or easy, for any of those involved.

The Secret Commonwealth

Play rehearsals well under way now for The Secret Commonwealth, which will be opening the new Oran Mor 'A Play, A Pie and a Pint' lunchtime theatre season. Spent Monday and Tuesday in Glasgow - then came home and left them to get on with it for a bit. This is a single hander, so 'them' consists of the director, Jennifer Hainey (young and brilliant) and the actor Liam Brennan (a bit older, and also brilliant.) I've worked with Liam before both for stage and radio, and it is always a pleasure - he's such an intelligent, thoughtful and compelling actor with a huge breadth of experience, including a spell at the Globe, in London. There is also going to be music in the play, provided by young Gaelic singer and musician Deirdre Graham. Rehearsals are both stimulating and scary, in that all those involved ask difficult questions, and you had better be able to answer them! I always find myself stressing this to beginning writers when I'm doing workshops or courses in writing drama. Actors and directors will inevitably want to know all kinds of things about the text - and the person who has to have the answers is you. The buck stops fairly and squarely in your lap. No question, it's difficult, because quite often we do write instinctively, and find out why and how we've structured things afterwards. So sometimes, in answering these questions, you find yourself having to think on your feet - but mostly, you actually find out things about the play that were there all the time - just that you hadn't fully articulated them yet, even to yourself. If cuts are to be made, they are frequently to be found in sections that don't quite fit in. And it's during rehearsals that these sections will probably become self evident. All in all, an interesting and rewarding process - but always collaborative. If you don't like collaboration, the answer is simple. Don't write plays!

Wuthering Heights - again

Got up very early to watch the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights on TCM, with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. I have a long and loving relationship, not just with the novel, which I adore, but with this particular movie - although I'd be the first to admit that the film and the novel are very different. On the other hand, there has been such a procession of horrible dramatisations of this book, that the Olivier version always seems like the benchmark against which all others fail miserably. At least this version looks good and - praise the Lord - actually uses some of the dialogue from the novel. Most of the versions I've seen (and I've seen a lot) seem to involve the relentless imposition of somebody else's vision on a book that people clearly obsess about! Me too, me too...
The reason I'm so fond of the Olivier film is that it was my dear late mum's favourite movie. I grew up knowing about it, and was actually named for Catherine. I was trundled over the Howarth moors in my pushchair as far as Top Withins, the ruin that was supposed to be the site, if not the model, for Wuthering Heights itself. But, beyond all that, my mum's Yorkshire family were great readers, so I was also introduced to the novel itself at quite a young age.
Olivier looks right as Heathcliff, and, although the film relentlessly excludes the satisfying second half of the novel, in which the younger generation in some sense manage to resolve the intractable problems of the older set of characters, it still does less violence to the original than any of the others. On the other hand, Oberon is just petulant and irritating. It's actually very hard to find a Cathy who isn't irritating, and yet I only ever find the character in the novel fascinating, a brilliant portrait of selfish self destruction which seems absolutely true. Let's face it, this is a novel which is hugely resistant to dramatisation, and yet people seem to want to carry on trying.
The problem everyone encounters is the sheer, relentlessly violent sadism of Heathcliff. However you look at it, the novel is an exploration of cruelty as well as love, of nature red in tooth and claw. Olivier's portrayal spawned many thousands of romantic novels, with an equal number of tall, dark, handsomely brooding heroes. Olivier can brood romantically for England. But as far as I am aware, nobody - not even Olivier - has ever managed to capture the demonic nature of Heathcliff on screen. I don't think it's possible.
My latest novel, The Summer Visitor is, in a way, a homage to Wuthering Heights. The original is lodged so firmly in that part of my brain from which my creative inspiration comes that from time to time, I find myself returning to it. So The Summer Visitor is a story of a damaged soul, and an obsessive love in a rural setting. But I had to tread very carefully. Inspiration is fine. But imitations tend to be pale and invariably fall short of the incomparable original.

Resolutions 2010

Made fewer resolutions this year, but ones I might stand a chance of keeping. Mostly to do with writing. Focus. Stop prevaricating. Have a bit more confidence in myself - after all these years, all these plays, all these publications, and quite a lot of awards, I need to have the courage of my own experience. Is this a problem for women, I wonder? It shouldn't be, but maybe it is. Especially in Scotland where male writing is - with one or two notable exceptions - still taken more seriously than female writing. But I have a new agent for the new year and a good many interesting ideas, so - with a little invocation to the publishing angel (after all, it works for parking, so why not publishing?!) - here's hoping for better things in 2010 for all of us. I'm beginning with rehearsals for my new play, The Secret Commonwealth, starting on 18th January.