Dad

            Hello again. I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while. On the writing front, for obvious reasons, there isn't much to report. My dad's on the mend, touch wood, but he's still in intensive care. He's awake but he can't speak, or move his arms to write, so it's virtually impossible for him to communicate. I want to write, to escape from everything, but I can't think of anything else.

            Tension is rising, too, amongst my family members. All sorts of pettiness, making a bad situation a hundred times worse. I went back to work, where my bosses were supportive, but then got sick myself, and had to take time off. I couldn't go to the hospital, in case I passed my illness onto my dad. I couldn't do very much at all, except sleep, read and watch dvds. Even then, I never managed to watch a whole film right through, from beginning to end. I watched three quarters of Dark Knight, before some other interruption came up. It drives you mad.

            I've been writing morning pages, as recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way. It's a very useful tool : first thing in the morning, you write down everything that's on your mind. I stopped doing them for a while. If I had a project on the go, I didn't seem to have time. But now they were a godsend. I poured my heart out, wrote down what I wanted to do. It clarified a lot.

            I want to enter the Drama Association of Wales's one-act play competition. Providing they are still in existence- they've had their funding cut recently- and providing they are still running the competition. If it's anything like the last competition, the closing date will be in January 2013. This will be for a one-act play between 20 and 50  minutes long, with a cast of between 2 and 5 (no monologues). I had a great time entering, this time, and DAW give good critiques. Their website is http://www.dramawales.org.uk/.

            Typically, because I can't/don't want to write anything else these days, I've been trying to come up with a horror story. A stage play with a flavour of an M.R. James ghost story, because I've gone absolutely potty about M.R. James. I was trying to come up with something along the lines of his A Warning To The Curious/ The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas/ The Tractate Middoth, where characters go in search of hidden treasure which turns out to be haunted. Except the plot eluded me. I wouldn't give up, but it became like the search for Eldorado. I was, ironically, chasing a phantasm. As I keep having to remind myself, I was making a shopping list for the perfect story idea, and rejecting anything else which didn't fit in with it. You can waste decades like that.

            Luckily, I readjusted my sights. It took me a lot of mental effort- I was sure a treasure hunt idea was just around the corner. But it's been worth it. I came up with an idea more along the lines of James's Number 13 instead, so I'll see how that goes. But it beats staring into space.

            I'm going to make character notes this time. Not exhaustively. Just so that I've got a sense of my characters as real people, rather than puppets who only exist for the plot. I've been watching episodes of Only Fools And Horses recently, and John Sullivan's wonderful characterization has made me envious. It wipes the floor with the characters of even the best horror story. Sullivan was writing about real life. It can make horror fiction seems a bit, well, tawdry by comparison. Even though Only Fools is a sitcom, somehow it transcends its form. Whereas horror stories, even the best ones, are black jokes to be told with straight faces.

            And I'm doing all this, thinking all this, whilst my dad is hooked up to tubes and machines. Is there something wrong with me? I'm having to do it semi-secretly, as though it's something shameful. My parents have always wished I'd grow out of writing, and even my wife is ambivalent about it. Maybe they're right, I don't know. I need to do this. I'd like to get money for it, win competitions, get published, be performed; but ultimately, it's me and the blank page. I don't know why, I'm simply drawn to it, time after time.

            The other day, I got to the hospital early, so I went to the cafe and sat down to write. My mother and sister walked in on me. I could have screamed. I only wanted a few minutes by myself...I haven't been to my writers class for three weeks now, and I'm missing them.