How’s it gone so far? I was actually up and around by about 10am which is obviously not early at all, but since I hadn’t got to bed til around 4, I’m thinking I’m doing pretty well. This is supposed to be a fairly relaxed kind of day off, but even so I’ve been finding reasons to scribble lots of lists in my brand new diary (come on, who are we kidding, I bought it back in October, and that was directly after I bought an academic style September to July type diary just a few weeks earlier, yes I have a problem no I’m not prepared to do anything about it and it looks like I already have a few busy weeks ahead.
Under the delusion that time will always be like this and that stuff like the day job won’t slam into my daily routine any time soon, I’ve started another blog in which I’ll be talking about amateur theatre – or am-dram. It’s an area where I arguably learned a lot about how to be a director, as well as a writer and actor. There are lots of books already about the mechanics of am-dram theatre (how to hire a space, paying for performance rights, that kind of thing), but there’s relatively few – in my experience – about the process of actually being in an am-dram group: the rehearsals, the casting, and so on. There’s tons of stuff out there for budding professional actors, and even those on the fringe circuit, but the am-dram sector is a valid section too, and I want to be able to start a conversation about all of those things for the creatives who are doing all of this in a two hour rehearsal in the evening for six weeks before doing a short, five day performance run.
The writer’s blog is also clicking over nicely: as it continues, I’ll be speaking somewhat less about writing on this blog, and more over there (I’m dimly aware that different audiences come to me from different locations to read different things, so it seems slightly more logical to divide that up into different blogs, although most every business instinct in me is screaming at me to conflate it all in one, albeit messy and unfocussed blog right here. We shall see). The writing is quite full on at the moment: I’ve got a collection of short stories to finish by March – along with the realisation that at least two of those stories aren’t nearly as far along as I thought they might be, another couple of stories to pitch, something else which is under edits at the moment (it’s about thirty thousand words shorter than I would ideally have liked it to be, and I suspect the notes will tell me that it actually has to be a lot shorter than even what I’ve submitted), a couple of plays that are undergoing a rewrite, and a few stories for audio. I’m busy, is what I’m saying.
In that spirit, I’ve made the resolution that when I’m not writing – in other words, when I’m watching a film, or reading, or watching TV, I’m going to try very hard not to read stuff / watch stuff I already have done, throughout 2020. This may not be a challenge for you, I know that there are many people who never go back – but this will require a bit of concentration from me. For instance, I probably -re-read about three Stephen Kings a year (in November alone, I raced through the old classics of Salems’ Lot and The Shining, marvelling once again at the mechanics and skills of the writer. It’s one of the reasons I go back so often: I always learn something new).
Today, I’ve already finished my first ‘new’ read of 2020: Vox, by Christina Dalcher, which I managed to rattle through in a couple of days. I’m not sure what I’m going to read next: either a Nora Ephron or a Ben Rhodes, which are two of the things on my bedside reading list (haha I kid, like I have a bedside reading list, singular). Similarly, I’m not sure what film I’m going to see next. Despite my resolution, I’m sorely tempted to catch Knives Out again, but I may swap it for Little Women. I’ve been catching up on detectorists, which I somehow managed to miss the first time round, but tonight is largely going to be about the return of Doctor Who as well as Dracula.These are both new series, so they get past the gates of my self-imposed new rules.
As ever, thanks for reading down this far. If you’d like to support a struggling writer/director/whatever the hell I think I am, please consider chucking the price of a coffee in this direction. Thanks!
This is Andrew Allen 