Looking Ahead

As I may have mentioned before, I like the idea of sitting down at a blank screen with no idea of what I'm going to write just to see what comes out. To this end I discovered a rather delicious piece of online software called Ilys, which absolutely personifies this way of writing. You set your word target, click on go, and are presented with a blank screen which doesn't actually allow you to see what you've written, but only shows the input letter by letter. The program won't reveal your writing until you reach your prearranged word target. 

It's a bit like setting out into a New Year, not really knowing what's ahead, and just carrying on until you feel you have got there. I remember many New Year's I've started without work booked into the diary. Now I can't think of anything more terrifying. To try to summon up all the resolve needed to cope with New Year resolutions and the feeling of a new beginning, and yet nothing is actually booked in. That's why I think it's important to always have a project of one's own one is working on. I talked about it in my column in "The Stage" this week - the necessity for young actors to always have a creative project in mind. 

This week one of our finalists from last year's Alan Bates award emailed me to see if his project proposal for the Tristan Bates Theatre had been accepted. (I have to say, as yet. I don't know) but it was good to know that he had a project on the go. Another finalist of recent years is currently making a short film. One is making a documentary. All worthwhile enterprises, and just like typing into a blank screen, who knows what will be revealed at the end when the target is reached? 

I'm just coming to the end of the editing process on my second book "The Working Actor" which at the moment is scheduled for publication in April of this year. It's been a long process, probably much longer than writing my first book. I conducted all the research wrote the whole book in 2014. I started editing it this August, so by the time we reach publication the whole process would have taken two years. Although it seemed like a bit of a slog without heading into the last two chapters, the distance it's given me from the original writing is a good thing.  it's allowed me to step back and see things better perspective. While you can admire the brushstrokes and the pigment of a painting when really close up to it, you need to step back to see the whole picture trying the story.  Not something I'm always good doing, but I'd like to think that even in the process of ageing, I can cope with the challenge.  This week I fired off two emails which would most probably have benefited from stepping back and seeing the whole picture before replying.  they achieved what I wanted them to do, but I'm sure there were much better ways of doing stop perhaps that's good advice for the New Year too.  if the diary is empty, and you're beginning to panic a little bit about what's going to come along,  just take a step back and you'll see that the year consists of 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days.... and that is a whole lot of opportunities.