Tag: dundee

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Ready to Play.

Having been flat on my back with illness last week, I missed the chance to go to a play on 25 June called Shape of a Girl at the Little Theatre in Dundee. It tells the story of a Canadian girl who was bullied and subsequently found dead. I’d been invited by a friend, playwright Mark McGowan, who is involved with Dundee Dramatic Society.

By last Friday of that week, I was feeling much better, and Mark invited me on a backstage tour of the theatre used by the society. It really is a little place: more like a large house than a venue. The auditorium seats just 100 people, and I saw the actors holding an intense rehearsal session there for a show that opens in August. Backstage is upstairs in the attic space, accessed by wooden staircases at the sides of the stage, yet it houses a green room, costume store, sewing room, and a coffee bar.

As Mark persuaded members of the company to sign up for his latest production, I spoke with one of the actors. The theatre group has lasted around 90 years, and we discussed how it has managed to remain in its own niche against comparable venues in the city, and the potential threat from a cinema that is due to open across the road.

I also flipped through an index of plays, each with a summary of the plot and required number of actors. Between the ages of twelve and 14, I had a brief acting career through the National Youth Music Theatre. It now strikes me just how difficult it must have been to find a suitable script so we all had a part. Similarly, Dundee Dramatic Society are volunteers, so there is little control over the age and gender of the players.

I’ve only once tried my hand at playwrighting, and I enjoyed the process. The group that runs National Novel Writing Month used to run a similar event in April called Script Frenzy where participants were challenged to produce a 100-page script during the month. Many of my local SF group chose to produce screenplays, but I elected to write for the stage as it needs only two actors.

I haven’t redrafted the script since it was written. But I’m confident I’ll one day return to it, tighten up the dialogue, iron out any plot holes, and see it performed.

 

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Three Candles, Four Ws.

I admitted in my first entry that I have only been writing for fiction three years. Today marks that third year.

On 29th October 2010, I joined National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on a whim. A lot of online friends seemed to be doing it. Until then, I had written only non-fiction blog entries, so I can’t explain why I’d already had a book idea kicking around for months before this.

I didn’t initially tell anyone what I was doing,except for the active NaNoWriMo chapter I discovered in Dundee. At their meetings, and any moments I could grab, I bashed out my first novel Chris The Girl, set in the year 2525 when only women exist, and reproduce by the use of technology. I reached 50,042 words; just over the punishing target. I’ve successfully tackled it every year since, and will be starting again in a few days’ time.

Then in March 2011, I heard of a new local writing group. At school, I was forever being marked down for not writing long enough pieces, but after a few weeks, I started to think, “Chuffing Nora. I’m finding this easy.” I don’t know what changed in that ten-year gap but perhaps it was because our focus here was how to make the story flow, not on refining the grammar or making it fit an exam question.

Now I’ve written dozens of stories, and had a couple of them published, my first being with The Fiction Desk, while I haven’t really talked about my second, with FourW. My story The Almost Man will be published in their latest anthology. If you live in Australia, you can go along to one of their launch dates:

Wagga Wagga on Saturday 23rd November 2013 at Wagga Wagga City Library commencing at 2.00pm.

Melbourne on Sunday 24th November 2013 at the Robata Bar in St. Kilda commencing at 2.30 pm.

Sydney on Saturday 30th November 2013 at Gleebooks, Glebe Road, Glebe commencing at 3.30pm.

The one good element of starting late is that I’m not embarrassed by my earlier attempts. There are many people who go through their teenage notebooks and cringe at the clumsy metaphors or purple verse, whereas the worst I experience is spotting rough corners that could do with tidying up.

On the other hand, I’m very competitive and find it difficult to accept that I haven’t written nearly as much as I might have by this age. And that means I’ll forever be playing catch-up.