10 days?

10 days, indeed. Cor, I remember when we all cruising along on 13 days...

So, I've not been keeping this up, have I? Hmm. What's happened? Well, I don't think my little play won that thing in Cambridge. Either that or they're really relaxed about getting back to people... No, no, I'm not deluding myself, I was just happy to take part... and that.

This week has been the first since rehearsals started that I've begun working on new stuff. It's been more than a full time job these passed few weeks. A superb more-than-a-full-time-job, but still it's left me with little time to ask the question 'what next'.

But I did think it. We've got to the point now where we simply can't do anymore re-writing. You could spend a lifetime ironing out every extraneous word, but at some point you have to say no more and let the actors get it learnt. And learn it they do. Tonight, I'm doing draft 5 on Movie Magic (very good writing tool by the way, much better than First Draft, in my uneducated opinion). This should be the last time we waste anymore tree life on Donal and the others. However, it does mean that I can now think about what will constitute the next forest's worth of paper.

I think this is a problem a lot of writers, and theatre companies, suffer (not the tree thing, that's a whole other problem) You work so hard and constantly on one thing that it's difficult to plan ahead. I've had nothing but these three characters in my head for a month now... longer, and finally, now we're nearly there, I can let them belong to someone else. My, what a horribly crap line that last one was, but sort of unsubtly accurate.

My next thing is going to consist of one person, no props, and NO STAGE DIRECTIONS. (Actually, there's a play on at 24:7 The Last Chair which seems to take this tact... it looks very, very good.)

Everything play-wise is going well still. Oh, there's the odd row, the odd cross word (though, surprisingly, no crosswords), but nothing like you'd be led to expect.

And I think that's it for today.