In the Zone & Remembering Sue Townsend And Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Despite a busy month of work activities and some untoward  personal events I will not go into here…I have got 'into the zone' that is the immersion, I experience when writing, After all the research the notes ,  its then time to just write and go with the flow - see where it all goes.  I rather like the way you can be surprised, when your loose plan of things, takes an interesting turn or some deep insight suddenly becomes apparent about a character or an situation.  It  is therefore important to be open and be flexible, to be ready to change things as the situation demands. This can be  fun, also when a characters voice comes thorough loud and clear, there is s feeling of exhilaration as you try to capture that voice.  Of course the narrative is the  journey and the plot the route so to speak . So being free to vary both - the plot and journey is key.  i often ask questions as to how things may work out and then ask myself why ?

The challenge of this piece of writing, stems very much from its subject matter and premise.
i feel it is important to stretch myself in characterisation, situations and the narrative  - to leave my comfort zone. However there some similarities with my previous piece, insofar as I remain committed to tackling marginalized voices and issues. The protagonist, first surfaced in my previous choreopoem and their story  it seemed to me needed to be told. So this the second narrative, in what I plan will be a trilogy i.e. Solitaire's  narrative in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva, being the first in the series. 

 Gabriela Garcia Marquez:  the father of magic realism and Sue Townsend: a stunning writer from my home city.  Both of them sadly passed way this month. Two very different writers, but both held in very high esteem by me. Their  great writing  and fascinating lives, will continue to be  source of  great inspiration to me to continue on my own journey as  writer. 

Its Official A New Commission for New Choreopoem !! Love the Life You Live…Live the Life You Love by Carol Leeming -

I am absolutely delighted to confirm I have been commissioned to write a new choreopoem for an exciting writing project from the Centre for New Writing Leicester University  - Affective Digital Histories  see further details here:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/creativewriting/centre/creative-writing-commission

I particularly look forward to the research aspect as well as the writing, for this new choreopeom project e.g. to be working with  academic  colleagues, local history of Leicester and accessing local archive materials.

This choreopoem will be very different journey in writing it, to the previous one, i.e.The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva. As the starting point and title for this choreopoem is a parrellism, from a Jamaican proverb, one that was also used by a personal cultural hero of mine : Bob Marley. Different in themes and the fact it has more than one Leicester based character etc provides a sharp contrast to the previous work. However one of the characters, does have a tenuous link with the previous choreopoem character Solitaire. For those who know the previous story of this character, they will have to see the  completed work to find out in what way... This time round though, the narrative is very focused around, very specific buildings/places and historical periods in Leicester. I hope it will be as successful, as compelling and of keen interest. As indeed Solitaire's story was in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva as performed at Curve Theatre 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad.