On Wednesday 19th December my friend and fellow writer Valerie Sirr tagged me in an on-line blogging chain called The Next Big Thing. It’s a series of questions about writers’ next projects. The idea is to draw attention to writers and their blogs and to lead readers to writers they might not have come across before.
My thanks to Valerie for thinking of me! You can check out Valerie’s blog to read about her Next Big Thing, a collection of flash fiction or short short stories which may be called ‘The Creases in John McCormack’s Shoes’ or ‘Swedish People’s Homes’. Many of these stories have been published already and you can read some online – there are links on Val’s blog post. Interestingly Valerie uses everyday conversations and low key events as the jumping off point for many of her stories.
My Next Big Thing:
I’ve spent most of last year working on a novel, but my current work-in-progress is a full length stage play.
What is the working title of your book?
The play is called Story.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I was doing a play writing workshop in Rua Red over two years ago with the writer and director Tracy Ryan when the first scene emerged. Two of the characters came from an older, failed short story, but the idea of writing about the craft of writing in a realistic working class framework became the basis of the play.
What genre does your book fall under?
Well it’s a stage play – would work in the Abbey or the upstairs room of a pub!
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
The older mother character could be Billie Whitelaw reprising her role in The Krays or maybe Sue Johnston. The main character is mid to late thirties – he’s the writer and alcoholic – could be played by Aiden Gillen maybe, if he let himself go a bit. He’s always too well turned out.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Man tries to improve his actual life by manipulating narrative and character and action in imagined life – with dubious results.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I began writing it straight after the workshop in May 2010. A 50 minute radio version of the play was shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award with RTE in 2011. I tend to work on a number of projects at the same time so it got left for a while. I completed a longer stage version earlier in 2012 and sent it out to a number of theatre companies and received some positive feedback, so in 2013 I hope to finish the play and address some of the shortcomings that remain.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
It’s realistic drama that has tightly written dialogue, but also contains some monologues by main character which warp time and space and reflect his own internal turmoil. Conor McPherson would influential, but family is also at the heart of the play so I could name O’Neill and Pinter among many other influences.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I suppose it was the workshop with Tracy that forced me to find a subject and made me cannibalize old characters – Declan in particular – in order to write a scene for the next class. I suppose because I had written about this guy in a story already I knew quite a bit about him: I knew Declan was intelligent, but a waster and a drunk, and I knew he had a kid who he had abandoned. That was a start. At the end of the course Tracy had actors read through our scenes, which was a great spur also to get the dialogue pitched right. And of course there was the support of the other writers on the course, people like Eileen Casey, Louise Phillips and Thom Moore.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I find going to the theatre extremely stimulating. I lived in London in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, so I was lucky enough to see a lot of quality drama at the National and many other theatres at that time. From time to time I tried my hand at drama with mixed success. In the nineties I had a half hour radio play shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award and in 2010 my one act stage play And the Word was Made Flesh was runner up in the From Page to Stage Playwriting competition run by Dublin Public Libraries. My first full length stage play, In the Dark, was longlisted for the Maguire International Playwriting Competition in 2010.
Hopefully I’ve learned a bit over the years and can make this play into something that people will want to see.
When and how will it be published?
Who knows, but I’d love to see a production or even a rehearsed reading at some point in the future!
I’d like to tag James Lawless, novelist, poet and great all-rounder for The Next Big Thing. Look out for his post on Wednesday 9th January 2013!
James Lawless, biography
James Lawless was born in Dublin and is the author of the well-received novels Peeling Oranges (2007), For Love of Anna (2009), The Avenue (2010), Finding Penelope (2012) and an acclaimed study of modern poetry Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world (2009) for which he received an arts’ bursary. Awards he has won include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry Competition, the Cecil Day Lewis Award, the Sunday Tribune/Hennessy and Willesden Herald award nominations, the WOW Award and a Biscuit International Prize for short stories. A collection of his poems Rus in Urbe was published in 2012. You can read more about the author at www.jameslawless.net
