Two alternating Shakespeare plays, both directed by Sam Mendes at The Old Vic, brought out clear similarities of theme. Sadly, the productions emphasised darker aspects, at the expense of the lyrical and comic, to the detriment of both.

The Tempest is the more familiar to me. It's one of the 'late' plays, with a main character, the magician Prospero, apparently voicing Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre in his final speech beginning :

'This rough magic I here abjure...'


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2010 has been something of a mixed year for me. In January I developed an unexplained pain in my right elbow. By mid-July I could barely walk. After undergoing a number of tests, I was eventually diagnosed with a bone disorder and started treatment, a bad reaction to which resulted in my being bundled off to hospital in an ambulance!

Thankfully, the necessary adjustments were swiftly made and, despite falling and badly spraining my ankle when first venturing out to celebrate my returning mobility (eye-rollingly ironic, I know, but sadly grace and poise have never been among my strongest suits!), I am now on the road to recovery. It has, however, been a period of time that I am in no hurry to repeat, being mainly painful, depressing, exhausting and, whilst waiting for a diagnosis, at times rather frightening.


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Today's the third birthday of This Itch of Writing, and a good moment to thank everyone who's joined in over the years. I really didn't know, when I started this blog, whether I would find I had anything to say, or anything I wanted to say, let alone whether anyone would want to listen or respond. So it's been a delight to find that I have, and people do. Indeed, it hasn't just been fun: I've thrashed out ideas on here which ended up in my PhD, and your comments have enlarged not just my ideas about writing, but my knowledge of how other writers work, which has been invaluable for teaching. I've had wonderful and useful books recommended, and I've made great friendships and connections. I do know that the blog has rather outgrown the original categories, and one day when I've nothing better to do (or I'm desperately looking for displacement activity) I'll try to extend it. Meanwhile, I thought I'd celebrate by posting links to some of the pieces which have got the biggest response.

When it comes to posts about how you handle your creative self, one which seems to have struck a most resounding chord was on procrastinating: Cup of Tea? I'll Get Going in a Minute.

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"So now the dust has settled, and my story 'Calling', broadcast on Radio 4, has vanished into the ether (except for me, since I've got a lovely CD of all three Lost in the Lanes stories), and my writing brain's moved on to other projects. But there's no denying that even if I'm commissioned again, it's definitely one of the landmarks that will be visible for a long time, when I look back over my shoulder. So what does the landmark consist of? Some of these are my perceptions, some I gathered from friends who listened.

My work read by someone else gains as much as it loses. Coming as I do from a Drama background, I'm always thinking in terms of reading my work aloud, and I think it's a pity when writers don't read well because it always seems to sell the work short. On the other hand my PhD supervisor, the poet Maura Dooley, says that she thinks that even if a writer doesn't read well, there's an authenticity about a writer reading, which transcends technical limitations. Of course Philip Voss didn't read every inflection as I would, and to that extent you could argue that the story was less authentic to my work than if I'd read it. On the other hand, because Philip Voss's take on the meaning and shape of the work was his take, it created a different but still complete whole: the way he read it was formed by the internal logic that he found in the story. And there's another tradeoff of this difference.

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As the title of this post suggests, I have indeed made a start on the main stage of writing The Monochrome Landscape. According to Word I've written 2191 words so far, but Liquid Story Binder says 2185.

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I’m thinking about Rust.
Ron Rust.

D’you know him? Spawned from the pen of the brilliant Andrew Davies, Ron Rust is Creative Writer In Residence at Lowlands University (otherwise known as the pissant swamp). And Rust takes his job very seriously. His mission: to discourage as many students as possible from embarking on a career in Creative Writing, in order to narrow the field for himself.

Davies never explains exactly how Rust achieves this, but I think I know. Rust doesn’t leap out and bash students over the head with a rock. Nor does he set about their novels with a blow-torch. He’s much cleverer and more insidious than that:

He slowly and deliberately pours cold water over their ideas.


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Unfortunately, double the twins doesn't mean double the fun. The Comedy of Errors belongs to the same, tedious, word-play stage of the bard's development as Love's Labours Lost, in which I had the misfortune to play 'Costard, a clown' in a school performance. Since that painful time I've been aware that tastes in comic banter have changed a lot since an audience fell about at the idea that 'lying' could have two meanings.



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