My Yesterday

What a yesterday.

I'd had this cunning plan about taking the dog for the morning constitutional. Settling down to a day of things (some involving writing), job applications, household chores and so forth.

Step 1 usually proceeds as follows: Leave house about 7:10am (the Teacher and the Boy will already have left by this point) take dog on nice big walk - mainly for my health. Meet the Daughter heading for the bus to college on the way back, about 8:00am. Into house for coffee, proper breakfast then start work.

This went well, met the Daughter, arrived at house. No keys. Hurry to try to catch the Daughter before bus arrives. Fail. Locked out of house. Most neighbours already gone to work. Find one who's still in and get a selection of tools: (a) hammer; (b) crowbar; (c) screwdriver; and (d) wallpaper stripper. This neighbour then leaves for work as well.

So there I am at the back of the house. The large set of windows are too big to tackle. The smaller window is one possibility, and there's the pane in the backdoor. Which is the smallest.

I try to take the window frame in the door apart to see if I can remove the pane intact. I make the edges of the glass pane accessible, using my motley tools, but it refuses to shift. I contemplate taking out the wood in the door panel - decide against it.

Frustration, a barking and confused dog, and a desire to go the loo force me to the decision I don't want to make. I grab my hat and the hammer. Place hat against glass and belt it with the hammer.

I gain access, carry the dog over the glass and call a glazier to fix it. Which happens four hours later.

I leave the dissection of the above story into its component dramatic parts as an exercise for the reader.

This morning proceeded according to plan, apart from the meeting of the Daughter on her way to college. This is because she didn't go to college. Instead she's off to that London for her audition at RADA, I sent her off a little while ago. She's done a fair amount of long distance train travel by herself so it's not too much of a worry. But she's never been to London by herself.

Not that I'm worried - for a start RADA is close enough to walk from Euston station. Not that you would walk anyway, but you could. And, as has been mentioned occassionally, but for the benefit of new readers (Hi Ellie!), her personal safety is not an issue she is competent at killing and maiming any potential attacker (2nd Dan Jujitsu - Jujitsu is the Samurai self-defence art from which both Karate and Judo are derived, the training involves disabling your opponent as fast as possible by any means; she's been training since she was 5, she fought off three attackers several years older than herself when she was 7).

I hope she does well, Bristol Old Vic very annoyingly said she was good but too young - she's of small stature and looks young but she's 18 (in two weeks) for heaven's sake! And also far more worldly wise than most people her age.

Sorry, rant over.

As I mentioned in my brief note last night I only managed 6 pages for ScriptFrenzy yesterday, though that's still ahead of the required average. Problem was there was a fair amount of action again which takes longer to write and occupies less space on the page.

But as I also said I wrote possibly the best scene I've ever written.

As we all know, as a writer, you do not put in camera instructions or anything that is "telling the director how to direct" - this, in some ways, is purely practical because the director will automatically not do that if you put it in.

But, with good use of language, you can create direction in the reader's mind's eye, and perhaps the director will do it because he imagines it the way you wrote it - but you're not telling him how to do it.

This is why I felt this particular scene is my best. Through the description of the scene I directed attention. It's not a long scene, it has only one line of dialogue, but I felt it directed the attention of the reader clearly and in such a way that the events in the scene had maximum emotional impact, and it is a hugely emotional scene with a major reveal for the audience and a different huge realisation for the protagonist - the thing everyone else had been telling her that she did not want to admit.

Which makes me think of Frankenstein's monster.

Lucy discussed themes recurring in your work I said I write about outsiders and trying to find a place in the world. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I write about Frankenstein's monster - in different ways, of course.) Maybe that's why I love "Rocky Horror" so much.

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What's on the turntable? "Speak to me/Breathe" by Pink Floyd from "Dark Side of the Moon". Perfection. If any band ever used the theme of alienation, it would be the Floyd.