Feeling Writery

Have I ever had a moment where I felt this writery before? I’m not sure that I have.

Sure, there’s been moments where I’ve managed to feel like an actual writer, as opposed to a person who works full time and who writes when they can. I’ve always had too much respect for the professional writer to call myself one. Although you can do that if you want, I won’t mind. I’m a writer, I know I am, but while I spend the majority of my week doing other things, I’ll never be able to shout it out with much confidence.

But this Sunday morning, I feel quite writery.

It’s a nice feeling.

Why so, Ken? Why do you feel writery now as opposed to some other random time? 

Well, thank you for your question, Ken, you can sit down again now. It ain’t rocket science. It’s just simply that there are quite a lot of writery things going on right now and that tends to make me feel writery. You follow?

Take the upcoming two week period. We’re in rehearsal with three of my plays. We covered that last week. Yesterday, I spent a lovely three hours with my good friend Paul Soye, both of us with our metaphorical Fighting Words caps on, working with a bunch of talented teens on their upcoming plays. From there, straight into a rehearsal for Two for a Tenor with Donna, Vivienne, Eamon, and Brendan, where I had the rare experience of laughing until I cried. Today, at one, we have a rehearsal of ‘Conception, Pregnancy, and Bert, with the three busiest actors in that play, Katie, Matthew, and Charlie. On Friday I was on the radio talking about the plays. Me… on the radio. Who’d have thunk it? This week there will be three separate rehearsal sessions, four if we can make Saturday work. It’s not easy, there’s a cast of fourteen across all three plays and everybody has their own lives and responsibilities to constantly corral.

Incidentially, if you'd like to come see the plays, pre-booking is highly recommended and you can do it here

Then, as if all that weren’t enough, the wonderful Wild Atlantic Words week is about to kick off here in Castlebar. On Wednesday, I get to present the Poem and a Pint evening, which is one of my favourite moments of any given year and then, to round off the working week, there’s this. I get to introduce my good friend Sally Rooney for her in-person reading from ‘Intermezzo’ in the Festival Dome. I’ve never previously been involved in an event which was booked out in forty seconds. It's quite something. I’m understandably very excited about this, and there have been many happy moments spent over the last few months where I mulled over what on Earth I might say. I think I’ve got it largely figured out now so that’s a bit of a relief.

So, hey, I think, overall, it’s forgivable if I feel a bit writerly.

I hope, when it’s all over, in a few weeks’ time, the memory of all this fun and excitement will stay with me and drive me on to complete my next writing thing. So that I can perhaps get to experience some more of this very good stuff in the coming years.

Thanks to everyone who continues to put their faith in me to deliver on these enviable responsibilities.

I’m not sure how I’ll do. I never really am. I can only promise that I will try my very best.

And that I will love the trying.

2 comments:

Fin said...

40 seconds! That explains it :)

Jim Murdoch said...

Now see here this is me feeling jealous again. I'm pleased for you, dead pleased, but there's still a wee bit of jealousy. I mean we have a theatre in Cumbernauld apparently, not that I've any idea where it is and there might even be a lively wee literary scene on the go but we've been here four years in November and I've not been farther than the doctor's to the north, Asda to the east, the bottle bank to the south and the train station to the west. I exaggerate for effect but you get my drift. Most weeks I don't farther than my back gate. The big world is just too… big. So I live my life vicariously through the likes of you. You didn't happen to tape that radio show, did you? Or is it available as a podcast?