I looked back at how many words I had written for my novel last week and came to about 5,200; so that, to me, is great; I put the increase of output down to this blog.
When you do things on a regular basis you get better at it; even though I might be writing a load of shit in both places – the blog and the novel – I am getting better at it.
It was the same starting a season in the theatre; the more you worked the easier it became to learn the lines.
As you will probably know when working in the repertory system in the UK you do a new play every two weeks, or every three weeks or however amount of weeks the particular theatre advocates.
One of the theatres I worked at, in rep, was the Royal Theatre in Northampton and that theatre would put a new play on every two weeks.
What would happen is you would start the job on Monday morning and rehearse for the two weeks before putting the first play on; in the evenings we learned our lines and by the end of the second week of rehearsals we would, more or less, know the them and then after a technical rehearsal and a dress rehearsal we would perform the play to the press and public on the Tuesday evening.
Then the next morning we would start the next play.
We would rehearse during the day and do the other play at night; so when did we learn our lines?
The rehearsal day would start at around 10.00 am or at least 12 hours after the previous night's performance closed; so if the play came down at 10:30 the night before we were not allowed to start the following day till 10:30 am.
We would break for lunch at around 1:00, finish rehearsals at around 4:30 – 5:00 then have to be back at the theatre at 6:55 for the 7:30 show – we learned our lines during the tea breaks, lunch time, the time between the end of rehearsals and the evening show and maybe after the evening show and my point is he more we had to learn the easier it became. That job lasted for eleven months – I had a month off to do 5 episodes of the British TV soap 'General Hospital' – and by the end of it you felt you'd been through something.
I did that to a lesser extent at other theatres and, even though we were adequately paid, it was good training; and it's the same with writing: the more you do it the better you become.
With regards to the blog people read it all over the world and I get the benefit and the pleasure of writing it; I don't have many followers and only a few comments but I can see by the stat counter where the readers live. Some of the hits come from posts I have written months ago and many hundreds of people have read the post about Bill Sparkman who killed himself some time ago in Kentucky and a few weeks ago I had many many hits when I wrote about proportional representation and the British General Election.
Someone asked me if I know what I'm going to write about beforehand and the answer is no; I sit down to write and it kind of comes to me once I start.
So thank you everybody out there in the world – people are reading from Russia to the USA – I tried to copy the map of visitors but it won't copy properly so I leave you with a picture up there of John Wooden who was a very famous basketball coach who died over the weekend aged 99; he had a great saying 'if you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail' - or words to that effect.
When you do things on a regular basis you get better at it; even though I might be writing a load of shit in both places – the blog and the novel – I am getting better at it.
It was the same starting a season in the theatre; the more you worked the easier it became to learn the lines.
As you will probably know when working in the repertory system in the UK you do a new play every two weeks, or every three weeks or however amount of weeks the particular theatre advocates.
One of the theatres I worked at, in rep, was the Royal Theatre in Northampton and that theatre would put a new play on every two weeks.
What would happen is you would start the job on Monday morning and rehearse for the two weeks before putting the first play on; in the evenings we learned our lines and by the end of the second week of rehearsals we would, more or less, know the them and then after a technical rehearsal and a dress rehearsal we would perform the play to the press and public on the Tuesday evening.
Then the next morning we would start the next play.
We would rehearse during the day and do the other play at night; so when did we learn our lines?
The rehearsal day would start at around 10.00 am or at least 12 hours after the previous night's performance closed; so if the play came down at 10:30 the night before we were not allowed to start the following day till 10:30 am.
We would break for lunch at around 1:00, finish rehearsals at around 4:30 – 5:00 then have to be back at the theatre at 6:55 for the 7:30 show – we learned our lines during the tea breaks, lunch time, the time between the end of rehearsals and the evening show and maybe after the evening show and my point is he more we had to learn the easier it became. That job lasted for eleven months – I had a month off to do 5 episodes of the British TV soap 'General Hospital' – and by the end of it you felt you'd been through something.
I did that to a lesser extent at other theatres and, even though we were adequately paid, it was good training; and it's the same with writing: the more you do it the better you become.
With regards to the blog people read it all over the world and I get the benefit and the pleasure of writing it; I don't have many followers and only a few comments but I can see by the stat counter where the readers live. Some of the hits come from posts I have written months ago and many hundreds of people have read the post about Bill Sparkman who killed himself some time ago in Kentucky and a few weeks ago I had many many hits when I wrote about proportional representation and the British General Election.
Someone asked me if I know what I'm going to write about beforehand and the answer is no; I sit down to write and it kind of comes to me once I start.
So thank you everybody out there in the world – people are reading from Russia to the USA – I tried to copy the map of visitors but it won't copy properly so I leave you with a picture up there of John Wooden who was a very famous basketball coach who died over the weekend aged 99; he had a great saying 'if you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail' - or words to that effect.
Hi Chris, another great blog. You talk of it becoming easier to write the more you write etc II think you are right, the words in your latest blog seem to flow across the page. You talk about the pressures of Reportary Theatre, I don't think your spell as an ex-wag really prepared you! And just to make you blush....your blog has inspired me to right up some notes on my life, thanks mate
ReplyDeleteI'm blushing Dave - but you write well. I told your son.
ReplyDeleteYep. Really enjoyed that one Chris. See you again for bfast one day in L.A. Cheers! -N
ReplyDeleteYes Nic that would be good - thanks for the comment.
ReplyDelete