Getting sentences to work...

"I got halfway down the first page and realised to my astonishment that this was a story for young people. And I felt liberated. It was an area where I could renew myself. There were moments when I was spellbound by what I was writing. I thought, if I can just gather it, control it, then maybe the spell will go out to the reader too...

"People say to me, you're so prolific, and I think, now I am! It's the payoff for all the time I spent getting sentences to work properly. Like anything, you develop a skill through hard work."

David Almond - interview in The Guardian Review

Everything is loss...

"Can you make laughter and seriousness so close that they are the same thing? There's nothing more wonderful than when the comedy's got horror in it, got blood in it. And the seriousness is at all times aware of its own preposterousness. What's it for, this seriousness? Everything is loss, is nothing, in the end."

Howard Jacobson - interview in The Guardian Review

Buy carrots and turnips...

"The more you give, the more you are. Think of Chekhov, with his patients and his crowds of dependent relatives, whose living room became such a public space that he had to put up no smoking signs. His advice to young writers was "travel third class". Ralph Waldo Emerson's was to 'buy carrots and turnips'.

"For centuries, writers have sung the virtues of staying connected to the routine and the mundane. Real creativity should feel like a game, not a career. Having to hang out the washing or get up and make breakfast helps you remember that your "work" is actually fun. And for it to stay fun, you have to be unafraid of failure. It's very powerful to be surrounded by people who love you for something other than your work, who are unaware of the daily, painful fluctuations of your reputation. I discovered recently that my youngest child thought I spent my days typing out more and more copies of my book Millions, so that everyone could have one.

"Writing is a peculiar balancing act between freedom and discipline. Writers are free to spend their days doing whatever they like; but if they don't write, then they are not writers."

Frank Cottrell Boyce - The parent trap: art after children in The Guardian

Lots of notes...

"It is a slow process of getting ideas. I work out very carefully what I am going to do before I write. I make lots of notes which are at least five times longer than the play itself. The actual business of writing always takes me by surprise and things that you thought were not going to be important turn out to be more important. I work everyday from ten in the morning until seven in the evening. But, on the last draft, I can work very long hours, sometimes typing throughout the day and night and I find it a great joy to do that although I don’t keep it up for a long while. After the first draft I will do five or six drafts before the play is complete."

Edward Bond - interview with Jim Mulligan

An unpopular subject...

"I don't get up every morning and say, 'Now, can I find some risks I have to take?' No. But, I don't think I've compromised either. I don't think I've ever said to myself, 'Gee, this is going to be an unpopular subject. Maybe I'd better not write it.' Or, 'Gee, maybe I'd better simplify here.' No. Nor do I do the reverse - try to make myself look better by making them more complicated. No. You write what's in your head.

"I don't rewrite. Well, not much. I think I probably do all the rewriting that I'm going to do before I'm aware that I'm writing the play because obviously, the creativity resists - resides - in the unconscious, right? Probably resists the unconscious, too - resides in the unconscious. My plays, I think, are pretty much determined before I become aware of them. I think they formulated there, and then they move into the conscious mind, and then onto the page. By the time I'm willing to commit a play to paper, I pretty much know - or can trust - the characters to write the play for me. So, I don't impose. I let them have their heads and say and do what they want, and it turns out to be a play.

"There is no such thing as 'the writer's life.' There is merely that time when you're sitting upstairs, or wherever you sit, and you're writing something. That's very special, and probably very individual for each person, too."

Edward Albee - Academy of Achievement interview (2005)

Afraid of what might happen...

"Much of our identity, as people and as writers, is made up of bits of old stuff that we cling to. We might not be convinced that they matter in our heart of hearts, but we're afraid of what might happen if we let them go. In theatre, it's time we let new writers be who they want to be, without forcing them to make artificial decisions about who they are and what they should write."

Dennis Kelly - interview with The Guardian (2008)

A bit like industrial management...

"I do a lot of careful construction, I do a lot of thinking about what I'm writing, most of that thinking is trying to imagine exactly what things will be like for this particular character in this particular situation, and also trying to imagine how things actually work, what will actually make someone do something, why would they do this rather than that. I, whether that's thinking or whether that's imagination I don't know, somewhere on the borders of the two perhaps.

"...I've sometimes thought that writing a story is a bit like industrial management, you, you've got something you want done, there's a plot you want, you want carried out by the characters and the characters have got ideas of their own, just like a workforce, and you have to negotiate with them, persuade them, bully them, bribe them, in order to come to some compromise arrangement where they, their interests are respected and your interests are respected.

"...it is one of the sobering lessons of being a professional writer, as with so many other things, that you cannot predict public taste at all. You really do not know how other people will, will react to anything until it's happened."

Michael Frayn - interview with Radio 3

Crap...

"If I see a drama on at 9 o'clock on ITV, I'd never tune into it because I know it's going to be crap. I've tuned in to so much fucking shite over the years. You could say that about 9 o'clock on BBC1 too."

Jimmy McGovern - Interview with The Guardian (2006)

Get a job...

"I think writing is a very selfish, obsessive game. I think writers have to be very single minded about their own stuff, and the whole concept of it being taught doesn’t actually really sit that comfortable with me, you know what I mean? I think a lot of these programs have emerged now and I don’t think you should let anybody under thirty on them. I think for older people they work, but for younger people I keep saying 'Just get a job,' or 'If you want to be a writer, get a job and have something to write about or do a course that’s going to give you some knowledge rather than writing skills,' like...

"People like Will Self and Chuck Palahniuk, they’re just writers, nobody has to tell them or show them how to do creative writing. They’ll just batter away at it until they find their creative voice, until they find something that works for them and then they’ll go off with it, you know...

"...it’s like Ray Bradbury said, 'In the writing game you jump off a cliff and then you construct your wings on the way down and you just hope you get a good working pair before you hit the ground.' And I think that’s the way it is, you’re just trying to see what works every time you’re doing it."

Irvine Welsh - intervew with Bookslut (2006)

Away to the grocers...

"I don't see any work by an artist as trying to encapsulate everything in a oner. You can relax and write a few plays, novels and stories, and eventually it's the body of work that adds up to what you do. I don't have any interest in putting everything in one play with a massive statement. If you want a message, away to the grocers, get your messages there.

"The problem in contemporary theatre is the influence of television. There is an interrupted rhythm because people write thinking there's going to be a break for adverts. Things aren't sustained, the idea of real time is gone and the whole drama from conversation is gone."

James Kelman - Scotland on Sunday interview

I find too much sex...

"I find the constant rudery depressing, and I find the shit and fart jokes endless. I find too much sex, I find these things not put in a particularly funny context. I always say farting isn’t funny in itself, but it’s funny in a wedding reception, or a dinner party or in church. I watched an episode of The League of Gentlemen but I watched one that was particularly revolting, with exploding dogs and everything. I couldn’t quite take it. People tell me if I’d watched any other episode I’d have loved it.

"Comedy is very difficult to read on the page. I think it’s very difficult to judge a script. I can’t believe there aren’t the writers around, I think there are. Sometimes the wrong decisions are made."

David Nobbs - interview with The Idler

Mediocrity has always been praised...

"I hope people write better plays. That's all I can hope. But I doubt if they will. Rubbish is always being produced through the ages, mediocrity has always been praised. That's simply what happens and most plays are only really liked in retrospect and hindsight.

"Formally, I'm trying to collapse a few boundaries as well. To carry on with making the form and content one. That's proving to be extremely difficult, and I'm not going to tell anybody how I'm doing it, so if any of you get there first I shall be furious."

Sarah Kane, interview by Dan Rebellato (1998)

Aware of this paradox...

"...writing remains private and theatre remains public. I'm always aware of this paradox that I am somebody who likes to do something private but is actually quite addicted to public exposure - the risk, perhaps ... When we're talking about risk in theatre, we're not talking about serious, life-threatening risks. We've got to keep this in perspective."

Martin Crimp, interview with The Guardian (2007)

Poetry and motions...

At the beginning of July I took part in the Joe Hakim, Mike Watts and Cilla Wykes' organised Write To Speak Larkin-fuelled writing experiment They F**k You Up. To say I was out of my comfort zone and was stupidly nervous is something of an understatement. It was a brown trouser day for sure. Although, pop a mic in my hand and I can generally get away with it. So, because many of you didn't bother turning up, here's one of the poems I performed that night:

Without other people...

"All writers are ecstatics, which is why we can be seduced by the siren calls of addiction or extremism. Sartre said that there are three kinds of writers: writers who write for God, writers who write for themselves, and writers who write for other people. I write for other people. The play doesn't reside in heaven, or in a library. As a dramatist, that's your instinct: without other people, the play doesn't exist."

Howard Brenton - A life in theatre (The Guardian)

Thinspiration...

A play. In the nice, tight confines of the studio at Hull Truck. A Humber Mouth Special Commission. Yes, I know, it's not the first. Send your letters of complaint re nepotism etc. The chance to work with two of my favourite creative types and, shucks, long-term collaborators. A capacity crowd. Again, not the first. Such a shame that it was a one off but, well, who knows what might happen?A piece of work covering the issue of 'eating disorders' although, really, just a story about a young woman coming to terms with everything. As for my workmates, what a pleasure to work with they are. Who knows what might happen to award-winning Rachel Helen Shaw, our performer and an awesome, awe-inspiring talent, next? And Lee Green, our director, who ain't so bad himself. The whole experience was, well, just that, an experience. It's given me back some of the confidence that has been chipped away of late due to...well...I better not say. If you did see Thinspiration, thank you very much. If you didn't, silly you, although I'm hoping you'll get the chance some other time. You could always download the script if you're interested.

Hanging about...

Day of the production. Lots of hanging about. Watch a run of the play at 11am. Rachel, I think, is amazing. It's in good shape. Nothing for me to do except act the class clown - a role I've spent my entire life perfecting. Lee and Rach have had to do all of the hard work; writing this thing was the easy bit and they've turned it into a piece of theatre. There's a certain irony when Rach eats a huge hot dog mid-afternoon. I settle for x2 little boxes of veggie sushi. Mr Green doesn't eat anything. Even when directing he's 'method'. I don't think my presence helps much so I skip off, during the lull before we can actually get in the space, to change out of one set of black clothes and into another. I pick up some insignificant, consumable gifts for the two people I'd like to continue to work with. Pre-show, several people tell me I look worried, stressed, a little bit confused. I wonder why that is?

And woosh. It's been, it's gone. Another transitory chapter amid the ephemeral nothingness that is life as a playwright. Not sure I will ever leave a mark. But I like the way it makes me feel. Sometimes.

Losing bits...

Busy chewing fingernails and generally running around for props. Scored a huge piece of carpet that now fills the car. Picked up a Chevelle mirror yesterday. Other stuff for dressing the set is now packed in a nice, tidy box. I've not actually seen a run of Thinspiration yet. Which, in addition to the general feeling that I've forgotten to do something massive, is another reason to chew fingernails.

What do you look for in a play?..

I do read other newspapers. Just that all that good stuff is in The Guardian.

What do you look for in a play?

"I want to be educated, surprised, moved, amused and deeply involved. It happens about one in every 100 times."

Portrait of the artist: Edward Albee, playwright

A kind of living...

"A thing that fascinated me was the way a talent might peak, then just disappear. I had heard writers say that it came upon them like a loss of nerve: they feel they're done for and that there's no point in it any more; they are out of step with the world and there is nothing to relight their creative fire. The owner (or custodian) of the talent is the first to know when it falters. Nowhere must that be truer than in a game like football where talent is directly linked to a physical fitness which can be held at a peak for only a few years. Thank God writing wasn't dependent in that way. A writer's talent ought to ripen, mature for as long as he/she is capable of getting the words down, or possesses the mind to sort them out for someone else to transcribe. Especially interesting that I should be called upon to formulate and examine all this when I was full of doubt about myself.

"No two writers can live together free from tension - one has learned to ride one's own disappointments; it is not easy to add someone else's to that precarious balance - but we know how to laugh."

Stan Barstow - In My Own Good Time