Six must-read tips for more effective howling into the void.
Another day brings another rejection. A competition to get a radio play made. I didn't even make the long list. The piece I wrote - a carefully trimmed version of ,"Nice Guy", my popular and timely tirade against, well, horrible men - didn't find its mark. There was no actual rejection per se - they just published the long list and I wasn't on it. It was like not being picked for football again.
I'm averaging a rejection a week at the moment. Last week's was a Theatre Company who were at least polite if vague. They had asked me to send them something "really wild" so I contrived a concoction fizzing with conspiracy theory, nominative determinism, Stockholm syndrome and cannibalism. Something you could really get your teeth into. They weren't keen but they were pleasant about it. Which is, I suppose, something.
People are not obliged to like what I write. More usually they are obliged not to like what I write. I understand and accept that. This weekend we had a short play on in Belfast and my Facebook page has been ringing with the sound of hearty back-slapping and frothing with mutual love. Not for us - for everybody else. No one liked our piece - though there was a lot of laughter in the room on the night.
That piece, "The Desperate Hours" was about lots of things but mainly it was about not belonging. Personally I have never belonged. I have not always wanted to belong and there are an abundance of things that I would never want to belong to: the cubs, The People's Temple Agricultural Project, an army, any army. But there are things I would like to belong to too. I have never been a "regular" in a pub, despite, as mentioned elsewhere on this blog, having spent large tranches of my adult life propping up bars, like a rosy-cheeked flying buttress. I went to The White Hart in Basingstoke every weekend for the best part of a decade, which you wouldn't get for murder now, and at no point was I able to fling my trilby over the counter with a card saying "The Usual" tucked into the hat band.
And that's a reference even I'm struggling to remember. I've just checked: it was a Miller Lite advert from about 1989. Christ.
It wasn't really that sort of pub, to be honest. It was more of a student union bar for the inhabitants of Queen Mary's College up the road. The only two people that you would call regulars there were Dom, who used to get his bum out, and that bloke who looked like Kent Brockman in a grey leather jacket who used to hang around the toilets trying to look at willies. Its not an illustrious list if I'm honest. I don't really want to be bronze medalist on that podium.
I'm not very good at joining in. I'm not much fun. I don't like fancy-dress. Increasingly I am after silence and quiet. Also, I spent a good few years reviewing things: having to formulate opinions about things, having to sort between the wheat and the chaff. Those reviews had my face next to them. So I told the truth because I thought that was the job. If I sinned I sinned by omission: I never bull-dozed anyone - if I didn't like something I would accentuate the things I did like. There's no point in being a prick - I believe criticism should be constructive. But I won't lie. I won't tell you something is good if it isn't. Which is why I don't really do reviews any more. There's not much room for honest opinion, and no one wants to pay for it anyway. I get it. The arts scene in Belfast is small, underfunded to start with and receiving less funding all the time. Alleged political pragmatists have fairly successfully built a false equivalency between the arts and medical funding, despite the fact that a) the money comes from completely different pots, b) arts funding is abysmally slight compared to the rest of the UK to start with, c) art its proven to have a tremendous therapeutic effect anyway and d) THEY'RE MAKING A £120 MILLION POUND BREXIT PARTY!
And who do you think will be asked to do things for that Brexit party? The Arts people. For free.
Asked to fiddle while Rome burns while someone is applying paraffin to the hem of your toga.
So you've got all that to contend with why do you need some faceless hack telling you that you need to be better? Well you do. Sorry. If you're going to get better you do. My endless crie de coeur is give me notes. Because I'm probably going to agree with you. It is upsetting but if somebody tells you that something isn't working then they're probably right. If someone tells you exactly what the problem is and how to fix it then they're probably wrong. I'm paraphrasing someone there but they're spot on.
Was it Neil Gaiman? Oh God. Still, he's right...
I think artists need criticism. And that's why I can't lie. So if I don't like something I'll either tell you and you'll punch me or I'll say nothing and you'll be suspicious of me and keep your distance. You may also hate what I write which, as I say, is fair enough, though at least tell me. One recent criticism I had of my play The Quiet Woman was that as a middle-aged English white man I had no right to write a character who was a 20 year old Finnish girl. They were apparently fine with male characters. I don't necessarily agree with this; if I was only allowed to write middle-aged white men having chats with each other it might not be much fun for me: I could just go to a country pub in Hampshire with a Dictaphone and press play for an hour and half: hey presto! "The Bores of War" a new play by John Patrick Higgins. I understand the reasons for that point of view despite not actually agreeing with it. But at least its a point of view. Unfortunately I heard it third hand. In passing. On a toilet wall.*
Is there a point to this? Any of it? I was depressed and feeling worthless when I started writing this: the rejections are coming thick and fast, the plaudits thin and slow. But I feel better for writing. Writing is therapy. It makes you feel better to have just written something - even something like this. I suppose I'll type another day. And I'll do it alone. You have been warned.
*This last piece isn't true. I'm not cool enough to be graffiti.
I'm averaging a rejection a week at the moment. Last week's was a Theatre Company who were at least polite if vague. They had asked me to send them something "really wild" so I contrived a concoction fizzing with conspiracy theory, nominative determinism, Stockholm syndrome and cannibalism. Something you could really get your teeth into. They weren't keen but they were pleasant about it. Which is, I suppose, something.
People are not obliged to like what I write. More usually they are obliged not to like what I write. I understand and accept that. This weekend we had a short play on in Belfast and my Facebook page has been ringing with the sound of hearty back-slapping and frothing with mutual love. Not for us - for everybody else. No one liked our piece - though there was a lot of laughter in the room on the night.
That piece, "The Desperate Hours" was about lots of things but mainly it was about not belonging. Personally I have never belonged. I have not always wanted to belong and there are an abundance of things that I would never want to belong to: the cubs, The People's Temple Agricultural Project, an army, any army. But there are things I would like to belong to too. I have never been a "regular" in a pub, despite, as mentioned elsewhere on this blog, having spent large tranches of my adult life propping up bars, like a rosy-cheeked flying buttress. I went to The White Hart in Basingstoke every weekend for the best part of a decade, which you wouldn't get for murder now, and at no point was I able to fling my trilby over the counter with a card saying "The Usual" tucked into the hat band.
And that's a reference even I'm struggling to remember. I've just checked: it was a Miller Lite advert from about 1989. Christ.
It wasn't really that sort of pub, to be honest. It was more of a student union bar for the inhabitants of Queen Mary's College up the road. The only two people that you would call regulars there were Dom, who used to get his bum out, and that bloke who looked like Kent Brockman in a grey leather jacket who used to hang around the toilets trying to look at willies. Its not an illustrious list if I'm honest. I don't really want to be bronze medalist on that podium.
I'm not very good at joining in. I'm not much fun. I don't like fancy-dress. Increasingly I am after silence and quiet. Also, I spent a good few years reviewing things: having to formulate opinions about things, having to sort between the wheat and the chaff. Those reviews had my face next to them. So I told the truth because I thought that was the job. If I sinned I sinned by omission: I never bull-dozed anyone - if I didn't like something I would accentuate the things I did like. There's no point in being a prick - I believe criticism should be constructive. But I won't lie. I won't tell you something is good if it isn't. Which is why I don't really do reviews any more. There's not much room for honest opinion, and no one wants to pay for it anyway. I get it. The arts scene in Belfast is small, underfunded to start with and receiving less funding all the time. Alleged political pragmatists have fairly successfully built a false equivalency between the arts and medical funding, despite the fact that a) the money comes from completely different pots, b) arts funding is abysmally slight compared to the rest of the UK to start with, c) art its proven to have a tremendous therapeutic effect anyway and d) THEY'RE MAKING A £120 MILLION POUND BREXIT PARTY!
And who do you think will be asked to do things for that Brexit party? The Arts people. For free.
Asked to fiddle while Rome burns while someone is applying paraffin to the hem of your toga.
Was it Neil Gaiman? Oh God. Still, he's right...
I think artists need criticism. And that's why I can't lie. So if I don't like something I'll either tell you and you'll punch me or I'll say nothing and you'll be suspicious of me and keep your distance. You may also hate what I write which, as I say, is fair enough, though at least tell me. One recent criticism I had of my play The Quiet Woman was that as a middle-aged English white man I had no right to write a character who was a 20 year old Finnish girl. They were apparently fine with male characters. I don't necessarily agree with this; if I was only allowed to write middle-aged white men having chats with each other it might not be much fun for me: I could just go to a country pub in Hampshire with a Dictaphone and press play for an hour and half: hey presto! "The Bores of War" a new play by John Patrick Higgins. I understand the reasons for that point of view despite not actually agreeing with it. But at least its a point of view. Unfortunately I heard it third hand. In passing. On a toilet wall.*
Is there a point to this? Any of it? I was depressed and feeling worthless when I started writing this: the rejections are coming thick and fast, the plaudits thin and slow. But I feel better for writing. Writing is therapy. It makes you feel better to have just written something - even something like this. I suppose I'll type another day. And I'll do it alone. You have been warned.
*This last piece isn't true. I'm not cool enough to be graffiti.
Still love you John, your friend in Rome.
ReplyDeleteYou are the wind beneath my wings.
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