It's not, I don't actually have a middle name. Apparently my parents were torn between two names when I was born, but did they give me other one as a middle name? No.
My name isn't the topic of this post, but it seems my ranting is quite apt, as my procrastination has been at an all-time high over the last few days.
When I last left you, it was Wednesday night, and I'd just had a business lunch (that still makes me laugh) and had come up with a storyline for our new play, 'Second Star To the Right', a sequel to the fabulous story of Peter Pan.
Things actually started off quite well. I sat down to my laptop on Wednesday evening and managed to write the whole of the first scene, and once I read it back, I was actually really happy with it. I think the square burger that I had consumed for lunch was still making me happy.
Thursday arrived, and I had to go and do some work in the real world, cleaning people's houses. I know what you're thinking. Glamorous. I know. Thankfully I was only working in the morning, so I had the afternoon and evening to write some more. Now, my usual spot for when I'm working at home is my bed. I wake up in it, go and have some breakfast, sometimes I might get dressed, but then I crawl back into bed and open whatever device I'm using and work from the warm cosy haven. Today, I had a plan. I had been into town a couple of days before and had noticed a folding table in a shop that I was browsing in. At the time I couldn't justify buying it, but subconsciously I knew what would happen if I continued to write from my bed, and so I made the purchase.
After posting an obligatory tweet complete with picture to show off my new furniture, I began to work once more. Again I was delighted with myself when I managed to write another whole scene and enjoyed what I had written looking back on it. I seemed to be on a roll!
Of course, by the time I'd started on my third scene, my concentration levels had waned, and I began to find distractions in the form of social media, television programmes, and general sitting and staring into space. The table had served me well for a few short hours, but my mind had begun to wander, and surely enough I found myself doing things that I called 'work' but really weren't. Such as creating a list of how long I was going to give myself to write each scene, coming up with mini-deadlines, and bribes for what I would get once I'd finished each scene.
This clearly used up more precious writing time, and inevitably, my third scene did not get completed that night. Even the news that my writing partner had written 'most of Act 2 scenes' didn't spur me on, and I retired to the safety of my bed, throwing a scowl at my computer.
Friday brought with it another full day of toilet cleaning, followed by two hours of drama teaching and three hours of dance, leaving me with only the evening for script work. I was thoroughly exhausted, sitting in front of a computer makes me tired at the best of times, but with working as well, my mind wasn't on the task. The weather was miserable, and by the time I'd got home and was ready to write, it was 9.30pm, and the wind was howling so loudly I was starting to think I might end up in Oz before the night was out.
I had also had lot of new people join my drama classes that night, and panic had begun to set in over how many I would have in the cast for 'Peter Pan', as the number of students exceeded the number of roles available. Tiredness won, and after three lines had been written, I gave in and hoped I could claw back the scenes by Monday, as I was now far behind schedule on my list that I had written instead of the script...
I woke up around 10am on Saturday and dragged myself downstairs to start the celebrations of my mother's 60th birthday. I had been so busy that I hadn't finished, or indeed started her birthday present, much to my brother's anguish, but we cobbled something together (that sounds terrible- we've actually got her a lovely gift, I just hadn't prepared it!), had a family breakfast which included birthday cake (a new course that I have labelled 'breakfast dessert'), and then I retreated back upstairs and began to toil away once more.
I was on a mission. I still had the majority of my scenes to write, and knowing that people were expecting something from me on Monday, I set to it. We had mentioned thunder sound effects when constructing the story, and I logged into Spotify and searched for thundery music (another distraction!). I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find some thunder and storm sound effects which proved quite useful to listen to as I was writing. I don't know why I find storms therapeutic, but it seemed to do the trick, and I found myself much less distracted, and my writing was flowing. My goldfish seemed to find the whole thing quite distressing and kept trying to get my attention. I relented a few times, and fed them far too much, but they left me alone after a while.
As well as I was doing, I did come up against a few hurdles during the day. We had come up with ideas for the story so quickly that my handwriting was horrendous, and I had no idea what half of my notes meant. I spent a good ten minutes trying to decipher the word 'taunting', which I probably could have guessed from the rest of the sentence anyway, but the scrawl just wouldn't reveal itself to me, and I was starting to get angry.
I gave up quite late in the day, and by the time I finished, I only had two scenes left to write, which was only one more than was left on my schedule.
Sunday brought with it more distractions in the form of going out for lunch again for mum's birthday, with several people coming back to the house afterwards so I had to be polite(!)
I made an excuse to disappear after a while and sat down at my lovely table for the final push. I was still extremely tired, and my scenes decreased in length and detail as I just wanted to push through and get finished, but as it was only a first draft, I was happy to get anything finished.
7.30pm arrived, and it was done. 8 scenes in four days and 90 minutes, on and off due to other things. I know it's only half of a play, but I was quite pleased with what I had done. I printed off the pages and felt a sense of accomplishment. Which was immediately replaced with a sense of fear.
I actually had to present it to the class in less than 24 hours. My class of teenagers who tell it exactly like it is. What if they hated it, what if it sounded good in my head, but everyone else thought it was the biggest pile of rubbish ever written? I tried to forget about it and watched some trashy television to take my mind off it. What was done was done, four days of work couldn't be re-written in twenty hours. This was it.
And tonight came the moment of truth. I was incredibly nervous. Not only were the cast trying it out for the first time, my writing partner, John, would hear it too. Yes, we had constructed the story together, but we didn't know what each other had written and we could hate it.
We split the class up into small groups and gave them scenes to read and work on, to see what it sounded like and whether it was going to work, and the results were good! I liked what John had done, and he seemed to like what I had written too. It looked like we were on the same page, and things were going to work out just fine.
We still have 19 days to complete the final script, and with more new members coming in, we may have to write some more characters(!) but the basic story is there and I'm really happy.
It was a huge risk deciding to write a sequel, especially as I have never written an original play before, but I think we're onto a winner. Watch this space...
Natalie's Nugget: My folding table cost me £7.99, and my chair is incredibly uncomfortable.
Until the next chapter...
Nxxx
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