Writing

The first proper work day of the new year, and, perhaps predictably, I have achieved less than on most of my "rest days" over Christmas. The prospect of work always drives me to seek something else to do. Today, I cleared the drive of leaves, trimmed the hedge, and went to Ilkley to retrieve a scarf that I had left at Betty's Tea Rooms when we were there two weeks ago.


I have been thinking about my personal relationship with Gilbert and his plays. I probably need to say something about myself first. I am forty-one years old, I live in Bradford, and I think of myself as a writer. I have always loved ideas, and words, and jokes, and plots. I have written plays which have been performed in Bradford and which people genuinely seem to like. I have not managed to sell any of them to a professional company, but I have hopes for the next one.


Ah, the next one. That's the point. I've written the first page, a week or two ago, but I'm stuck, and I need to push it forward. And fast. In my mind the play is a masterpiece. (Aren't they always, before they get written down?) I am perenially amazed and awed by the fact that Gilbert, at the height of his creativity, could rely on being able to write a full length play in two months. How did he have such a level of self-confidence? And how was he able to back up that self-confidence by actually writing brilliant plays like Tom Cobb or Engaged in those circumstances?


His style is fastidious to an amazing extent, his plots are works of art in themselves (though his first critics thought he had no talent for construction, oddly). Where he is at a disadvantage, especially today, is in the portrayal of psychologically convincing characters who change in the conventional dramatic manner. His characters are types--though they are often types of unusual and unfamiliar kinds.