Statue to Statue
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
On Sunday we all drove down to Crowborough in Sussex to celebrate a family brithday. The town is best known for Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Shelock Holmes and a passionate believer in spiritualism. I've probably been to Crowborough about twenty times in the last five or six years but this was the first time I actually noticed the statue of Conan Doyle standing at the main crossroads in the town.
On Tuesday (yesterday) I had to be in London. As part of the work I'm doing at the moment with some training companies I needed to help brief eight actors on scenarios I have written for sales training courses, the first if which is tomorrow (Thursday). The rehearsal rooms in which we were meeting were near Euston Square so I caught the train up to London Bridge and then took the Jubilee Line north to Baker Street. Do you see where this is going? So, as I existed Baker Street station, what is the first thing I see? The statue, of course: the statue of Sherlock Holmes.
A tenuous connection to anything, I suppose, but it did render me susceptible to the insight I gained later in the day. And what was that insight? Hang on; it's coming.
There were eight actors in the room. They had all prepared well and easily took to the parts they were assigned. One of the greatest pleasures working with professional actors is the fresh energy they breathe so apparently effortlessly into prose that can seem dull and lifeless on the page. Here, then, were eight actors - all of a certain age, you might say - fully concentrating on the job at hand. This was not Shakespeare and this was not a read-through for a Hollywood script or a Broadway run. When these actors chose their profession none of them would have seen playing the part of a bumbling IT Manager in a sales training scenario as a sign they had made it as an actor. Yet this was acting. When I caried my dreams of writing with me when I was a boy and a young man I didn't foresee a time when I would be writing sales scenarios rather than crtically acclaimed novels. Yet it is writing.
As far as I could see, for the actors it meant something to be able to act, however 'minor' the material. This was my association moment, the clunk in my brain that had been set up by the earlier double dunk of the statues. I would rather be writing sales scenarios than not writing. I would rather be writing articles on copper testing for VDSL lines than not writing. I've been giving myself a hard time lately about the things I'm writing for a living. No more. It beats making the daily commute to an office full of miserable people doing things they don't want to do. Perhaps if I stop making value judgements about the things I'm writing and concentrate solely on doing the best possible job on each thing I write I shall be a lot happier and - maybe - I'll even get round to writing things just for myself at last.
On Tuesday (yesterday) I had to be in London. As part of the work I'm doing at the moment with some training companies I needed to help brief eight actors on scenarios I have written for sales training courses, the first if which is tomorrow (Thursday). The rehearsal rooms in which we were meeting were near Euston Square so I caught the train up to London Bridge and then took the Jubilee Line north to Baker Street. Do you see where this is going? So, as I existed Baker Street station, what is the first thing I see? The statue, of course: the statue of Sherlock Holmes.
A tenuous connection to anything, I suppose, but it did render me susceptible to the insight I gained later in the day. And what was that insight? Hang on; it's coming.
There were eight actors in the room. They had all prepared well and easily took to the parts they were assigned. One of the greatest pleasures working with professional actors is the fresh energy they breathe so apparently effortlessly into prose that can seem dull and lifeless on the page. Here, then, were eight actors - all of a certain age, you might say - fully concentrating on the job at hand. This was not Shakespeare and this was not a read-through for a Hollywood script or a Broadway run. When these actors chose their profession none of them would have seen playing the part of a bumbling IT Manager in a sales training scenario as a sign they had made it as an actor. Yet this was acting. When I caried my dreams of writing with me when I was a boy and a young man I didn't foresee a time when I would be writing sales scenarios rather than crtically acclaimed novels. Yet it is writing.
As far as I could see, for the actors it meant something to be able to act, however 'minor' the material. This was my association moment, the clunk in my brain that had been set up by the earlier double dunk of the statues. I would rather be writing sales scenarios than not writing. I would rather be writing articles on copper testing for VDSL lines than not writing. I've been giving myself a hard time lately about the things I'm writing for a living. No more. It beats making the daily commute to an office full of miserable people doing things they don't want to do. Perhaps if I stop making value judgements about the things I'm writing and concentrate solely on doing the best possible job on each thing I write I shall be a lot happier and - maybe - I'll even get round to writing things just for myself at last.
