Whilst admittedly not being the most prolific of bloggers, I will be for the next few months somewhat less productive on the blogging front, albeit for a positive reason.
In January I was one of sixteen writers from the north-west region of England to be selected for a 9-month Writing Development Programme at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.
I began the writing programme in mid-February but was hoping to keep up my blogs. However, with my latest post being as far back as February 22nd; just over a week after the programme began, this has obviously been less realistic than I imagined.
The writing workload since starting the course has been heavy, and productive, but stimulating. Each of us are currently working on the first half of our individual plays, the first draft of which needs to be in by April 13th. Following submission, we will receive notes on our draft for future re-writes, and we will be asked to read and submit brief comments on eight of the drafts from other writers on the programme.
In addition, we will be required to read thirteen plays between now and November. At present we are on Tennessee Williams’s classic play A Streetcar Named Desire.
Our final drafts of our individual self-penned plays will need to be in sometime in September.
Each class meets on a fortnightly basis (photo of our first meeting above), and we have so far also attended a showcase of the writers from last years course, and a dress rehearsal of a full play.
It’s a testing but exciting schedule and I welcome the discipline required of it. With little experience of writing for the theatre, I recall just how much I wanted to be selected when I walked out my interview in January.
The Royal Court, which is both running and funding the course, is the only one of the four main theatres in Liverpool actively looking for new writers and is regularly approached by the BBC on the look out for new writing talent. And with Liverpool having such a rich history of writers, both for theatre and TV, any association with one of its writing institutions is thrilling.
For my part, I am just wishing to come out of the programme a better writer than when I started it. Which, if I put the effort in, has to be a given.
Inevitably, this will slow down my blogging output, but I will attempt to comment on the blogs that I follow. It’s always interesting to read blogs from those blogging friends from different parts of the world with different stories to tell and viewpoints to consider.
So, although the blogging world is unlikely to notice that my blog average of one blog a month has fallen even further, for now at least I have a good excuse!
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 
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