Feature: The Diary of an Emerging Writer – April

Tom Derrington continues his diary about the life of a playwright

During the first two weeks in April, we took our three small kids to Portugal for a family ‘holiday’. Lovely… right?

16 April

Arrived home. A broken, defeated, shell of a man.

That was not a holiday. That was hell. Our one-year-old spent two weeks eating sand and trying his very best to fall face first into the swimming pool. The older two kids decided, very early on that the only thing they wanted to do on this holiday was to force daddy to stand, waist deep in the freezing cold ocean as they took turns clambering on, and then leaping off, my very badly sunburnt shoulders. We spent way too much money, dented the hire car and almost missed our flight home because we got lost trying to find the airport at 4am. Luckily the kids are too young to ever remember any of it. But I will.

God.

I will.

On the positive though, I did have a lovely bit of Mackerel on the last night. And even more importantly, I managed to take a complete break from writing plays or even thinking about writing plays. I didn’t open a word document once or make any notes of ideas. I also didn’t have the pressure of thinking …‘you should be writing’. And that was good for me, I think.

18 April

Received my first rejection of 2023. I had sent something off to the Finborough Theatre just before we left, (they have a rolling open-submissions policy). This was the second time I have sent something into the Finborough and on both occasions, I have had very prompt rejections. In fact, I think last time the rejection email had come back within two days of sending and I remember feeling a little bit pissed off by it– I’d spent months, pouring my heart out, writing something personal, only to have it rejected in a matter of hours – surely it wasn’t that bad, was it? Maybe read it again? Slower…at least sleep on it?

But actually, on reflection, I think this quick turnaround is really admirable of them. There was an interesting article in ‘The Stage’ this month about the shameful way in which writers are regularly being ‘ghosted’ by theatres. I’m sure it’s something most writers have experienced, I know I have. And even when we are not ghosted completely, we are often made to wait for several months before there is any kind of response at all. So to be honest, I would take a clear, quick rejection over a long agonising wait, any day of the week. So yeah. Big up Finborough!

20 April

I am quickly finding out how vital a producer is when it comes to making theatre. We don’t have one for Bounce and so we are all kind of stumbling our way through the marketing, social media, press releases, tech, contracts, budgets…basically absolutely everything that needs doing, that I didn’t think about, needed doing. Big up producers!

22 April

Today I managed to find an amazing lighting designer via Twitter. This time yesterday, I didn’t know any lighting designers. Jumped on Twitter, made some new connections and found Ed. He’s super cool and judging by his other work, very talented. So that’s the cast and crew all sorted. On to rehearsals. Big up @edfrearsonlx

28 April

Staying up late, watching videos about how to edit videos so we can put out some kind of promotional video.

29 April

Staying up late, googling press releases so I can put together a press release.

30 April

Staying up late making a list of press outlets to send press release to. I wanted to be a writer. I just wanted to write stuff down and watch it come to life on stage. I thought that’s how it all worked. I’m not sure it is…  

Well whatever, I’m trying to look at it like this – I might not get another chance to see one of my plays going on in a cool London theatre and so, fuck it, I’m going to do everything I can to promote the hell out of this show. If you are interested, please do follow me on Tiwtter (here) and Instagram (here)

And maybe book a ticket or two… Please?!

---

Tom’s play Bounce will be at Lion and Unicorn Theatre 6 – 10 June, Tickets available here.