Motivation vs Laziness

I've had a couple of extremely productive days this week and we're only on Wednesday!

Yesterday I had the unenviable task of filing my self-assessment tax return, and wading through my countless receipts I found that most of my expenses were food-related, and I barely made any money at all. Hoorah for the acting industry!

One thing that kept me going throughout it all was the constant pinging of my phone as emails rolled in (well, my Back To The Future ringtone, but let's not get picky) as progress was made on getting my production of Peter Pan licensed. One more step and I'm good to go! Apart from auditions, casting, rehearsing, making costumes etc, but that's no biggie!

This morning I headed over to Milton Keynes with my fabulous friends Sam and John to watch my final panto of the season, another version of Peter Pan. Judge me all you like, but I've got to get my ideas from somewhere! I have lost count of how many versions of it I have researched and seen, as well as countless spin-offs and spoofs (I may have purchased another box set of a series I found tonight called 'Neverland', oops) so unfortunately I was saturated with it so much I didn't take much away from it, apart from feeling brilliant from chuckling away and joining in with the audience participation and falling in love with the actor playing Captain Hook(!)

Panto done, and we headed back, myself and John stopping on the way for a proper business lunch. I know, get us. We finally had the chance to sit down and decide what on earth we were going to do with our sequel play.

A few months back we had decided on a plan, and I'd come up with a title, 'Second Star To The Right', but that was all we had. So, full of food and with a beautiful backdrop we set to work. A couple of hours later, we had the whole story mapped out, scenes planned, and picked which scenes we wanted to write.

I had given us a deadline of having the script completed by 31st January which seemed quite a short time frame, but I thought it was achievable. Although when I mentioned this morning that I'd decided to extend our deadline by two weeks, I was shouted at and told no, we would have it done by 31st! I'm telling you, that boy can get mean! I need it though!

I had told the students that will be performing the play that I would have at least one scene for them to work on in our next lesson on Monday, and casually asked John how many scenes he thought we could have ready for them for the lesson. If I had been sitting on a chair rather than a squidgy bench I would have fallen on the floor when he replied "all of them."

ALL OF THEM?!? We were on Wednesday afternoon, that gives us less than a week to construct a whole play from scratch. This time I'm not able to flick through the book and take lines from here and there and follow the story in the book. Oh no, I actually have to use my brain this time.

I was terrified. Naturally I've accepted the challenge, and I fully intend to have something for all of my scenes by 4pm on Monday afternoon, but that didn't stop the butterflies from invading my stomach.

I know what I'm like. I can be the laziest person in the world. I can have a vitally important to-do list and still find time to watch a marathon of my favourite TV programmes before even attempting item number one. But this time, I'm going to do it.

And do you know what? I've already completed my first draft of Act 1, Scene 1. Boom! If I can set a deadline and have other people be happy with it, I'm happy to accept their deadlines too. I wanted us to write this play as I wanted to challenge us further. It's all very well picking up a script and giving it to the cast and directing it, but to see something through from start to finish that is entirely ours is something that I really wanted to do, and right now I'm feeling really excited about it.

Naturally I'll be pulling all-nighters, and life will be put on hold, but I know we can create something brilliant, and hopefully everyone will enjoy our new Neverland adventure!

So with the words, "Get writing some scripts, bitch" ringing in my ears, I bid you a fond farewell and head to bed. (It's almost 2am as I finish this post!) Three scenes to write tomorrow. I think it's going to be a long day!

Oh, and as promised...

Natalie's Nugget of Info: For lunch we ate square shaped burgers. Surely I'm not the only person to think that's weird.

Bye,

Nxxx