To Blog or not to Blog...

That’s the question….

Blogging is a medium completely alien to me. The reason I write plays (well one), bits of TV (that have never actually felt the sweet touch of an actor) and Monologues (…that aren’t bad actually, but they’re only 2-3 minutes) Is because I can make them up. I can create characters and make up scenarios. It’s what I’ve been doing since I discovered my love of Barbie’s. I had an entire vanity case of them, I saved every bit of pocket money to buy them and asked for them every Christmas and birthday, and yes, I would say I played with Barbie’s way beyond the age I should have. Mainly because my plots became so addictive that they would often result in spin-offs and double bill episodes on Sundays. At one point, I’m proud to say, we had 15 Barbie’s in one house for Ken’s 30^th, which was a challenge but we got through it.  Unfortunately dark times were just around the corner for the couple, in the form of adolescence, and also because in 2000 (episode 6, season 12) Barbie was to discover that Ken had been having an affair with Dentist Barbie that lived on the estate opposite, and she knew in that closing scene that things were never going to be the same. So you see readers, I have been destined for the entertainment world for a long time, but writing a blog, about a subject I can choose, about ‘what’s going on with me’ is all, well 1. A bit daunting 2. Full of unimaginable pressures and 3. Just a little bit difficult to be honest.

See, even now you can probably tell I’m an amateur, I’ve rambled on about Barbie’s for half a blog. I’m sure Diablo Cody never did that (I.E. The immense coolness behind Juno) Diablo started as blogger, writing about her time as a secretary in Belarus, and then as a stripper in her debut memoir. From this, some incredibly smart producer was like ‘she’d be a great screenwriter’ BOOM – Juno = Academy Award. She is one of my inspirations as a writer, She writes so wonderfully weird and yet it’s completely real at the same time.

To me, Blogging is very much like novel writing isn’t it? Something I have tried and failed (not properly like, I once thought: ‘Maybe I should…like..write something about….no, nah) Before even starting I’ve become completely daunted by the sheer SCALE of writing a friggin’ book, there’s no breaks! No interval, no action sequences, no emotionally charged pauses; That’s scary man! Then I start thinking of ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’ by my second writing inspiration, Harper Lee. This was and remains to be the best book I have ever read, and not many people I think can say that about a novel that was cleverly disguised and shoved at us brandishing the label ‘GCSE  ENG LIT TEXT’. I think of how wonderful it was and how easy it was to see what she was seeing, and I cower at the challenge ahead. I still have my GCSE copy, full of scribbling’s and highlighted blocks of genius, all dog eared and fancy free. The amount of times I came out of class to be greeted by my peers singing huge exclamations of  ‘Lord of the Flies make’s me wanna die’ and ‘It would be cooler if there were mice as well as men’ made me sad face.

Maybe it was the syllabus, maybe it was the teachers, maybe it was the inhumane raking through every word for meaning and symbolism that ruined Steinbeck, Golding, Shakespeare, Miller, Shelley, Priestly for us GCSE-ers, to name but an incredible few. Luckily, I had one of the best English teachers ever, who not only managed to make getting an A at English GCSE a soak in the bath, but she also managed to… hone…something in all of us, which would ultimately make us better people. A well read person, is a…much...better person. Get a load of that paragraph concluder.

My last and most prominent writing inspiration is my life, If it wasn’t for the things that people in my life say everyday I’d have nothing at all to write about ever; my auntie talking about a new style of pegs which are apparently groundbreaking, my brother trying to argue the reasons why I can’t eat three Pepperami’s in one go, or the slags falling down the stairs in Halo. The best inspiration is in conversations you hear everyday, start with the truth and then make it watchable.

I was supposed to blog about something intelligent and theatre-esqu. But lets take this one as a test blog, a ‘heat’ if you will (those awful things you had to do to determine who would race in sports day, ergh…maybe I could get another blog out of my hate for sports day?) But, I promise next time to write about something other than Barbie’s, Juno, GCSE’s and pegs, honest to blog.

KAT