How to write a play (not)

I have a creative writing deadline to meet and I can already hear it whooshing by. I’m meant to submit an entire short play for a competition in the next 24 hours and I have nothing. Nothing! Empty. No ideas. I stare at the blank screen. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, after a few tense seconds, nothing continues to happen. The excitement gets too much so I wander to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee.

Coffee! What a lifesaver. Apparently Beethoven had a daily ritual that every morning he personally counted out 60 coffee beans for his morning cup. What is it with creative types and weird rituals? Benjamin Franklin swore by ‘air baths’, which basically meant sitting around in your birthday suit every morning, whatever the weather. Freud’s wife used to put toothpase on his toothbrush every day to save him time. Murakami woke up at 4am and wrote for six hours. Six hours! Oh God.

I crawl back to my desk. The page is still resolutely blank. I’m meant to be creative dammit. I’m meant to be in the zone. Zen. Let the ideas flow. Instead my mind’s racing like a poodle doing a double-somersault through a hoop at Crufts whilst whistling Jerusalem. I clasp my head in despair and consider gouging my eyeballs out but just thinking about this feels exhausting so I reach for a hobnob instead.

Maybe I’m just no good. Am I no good? What is life?

Caught in the throws of an existential crisis, I give up. I decide to take a shower. I wash my hair bitterly and scrub off the scent of despair from my skin. I don’t care. I give up. Two fingers to you, deadline.

And that’s when the magic happens.

You know how they say love finds you when you least expect it? It’s bloody annoying isn’t it. There I am drowning in a shower of sorrow when suddenly this voice pops out of my subconscious into my head. It’s chavvy. Common. Fierce. And she’s having none of it. She’s called Kate and she’s like, ‘mate, you best get out that shower and onto that keyboard cos we ain’t got time to play.’ Suddenly I feel charged like a bolt of lightning. Utterly exhilarated. It’s like going from zero to one hundred in a second.

I jump out the shower and rush back to the screen. I start writing Kate’s voice. It’s loud and clear, like taking dictation. The rhythms work. It feels completely effortless as my fingers flow over the keyboard. What is she saying? Then I realise she’s speaking to someone else. A bloke. Are they mates? Are they in love? I call him Jack. What are they doing? Where are they? What if they’re in a hospital waiting for something? What if she has cancer?

Before I know it I have a short play on my hands. It’s a sort of anti-romantic comedy about chavs and cancer. It’s messy. It needs a bit of editing. But funnily enough, I think it works.

So I polish it up. I send it off. I make the deadline.

And guess what? It got performed.

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The Red Balloon was performed in November 2014 at Theatre 503 as part of their RWR Festival.