The Word Cloud

First up; no news on The Infernal Comedy, but it would be a bit much to expect anything less than a week in.

So, if you remember, I am working on two other projects, both of which I have found the time to work on in between earning a living in the Next stockroom and watching the tennis.

It's interesting to look back on some of my summer blogs on The Infernal Comedy from last year, I remember it as a very pleasant and enjoyable process, but with the blogs to remind me I can now recall that actually it was like getting blood from a stone. There were problems which seemed insoluble which I puzzled over for days on end. And it's good to be reminded of that because The Infernal Comedy turned out just how I wanted and I am now going through similar hell with both my new projects.

The sitcom (formerly known as 'My Sister', now in nameless limbo) I spent an afternoon on and achieved a big fat nothing. The ten minute version works so well and is such a great idea for a pilot that I don't want to lose it, but expanding it is proving far trickier than I thought. I'm in danger of forcing it and I absolutely don't want to do that. i want to keep it out of traditional sitcom territory by making it fluid and almost entirely character based. Harder than it sounds.

I've had a bit more luck over a weekend of working on my musical but it's still troubling me. Partly the problem is that it is based on real events and they don't always pay attention to dramatic necessaity or the point I'm trying to make. I find myself writing lines of dialogue to make the point and that's never good, if the audience need to hear one specific line to get the meaning of the whole show then the rest of it has gone astray somewhere.

But that's what the planning stages are for. i guess I'm feeling a little impatient. At this stage of  The Infernal Comedy my time was my own to spend long days contemplating the problems. Now I have a job and my time is restricted, I have a writing partner for the musical who wants to know what i'm doing and the sitcom I meant to start ages ago. It all combines to make me rush and I don't write well that way, I force things. I have to be ready to accept that this will take a while to get right.