Manic March

Another month has flown by in the blink of an eye!  This one jam packed with performances and stage appearances.  Venues include The Waddington Street Centre in Durham, Little Theatre Club at Middlesbrough, Stockton Library, ARC Stockton, Blu Bar in Middlesbrough, Trent House in Newcastle and tomorrow night I will be doing 2 x 10 minute sets at The Studio in Hartlepool.  I didn't mean to do this many performances/readings in one month and feel a tad tired, not only due to the travelling and socialising and fitting everything else in around these events, but also the amount of energy drained out of me from the high stress levels of actualy getting up in front of audiences.

I have more performances booked in for April but nowhere near as many as this month, thankfully!  One of them will be at Take Ten in Newcastle, where I performed in January and was asked to go back, so I'm looking forward to going there and trying out some new material.

I've realised that I need to find the right balance between applying for funding and opportunities and working on said opportunities, performances and readings and writing for submissions and competitions.  Easier said than done but with a little diary management, it can be achieved!

Here I am performing at Take Ten in Newcastle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRFwbP50PLs&feature=share&noredirect=1

The other biggy for this month was my very first workshop as a proper paid professional writer!  The workshop was an intro to writing for theatre and took place at Middlesbrough central library.  It went very well indeed and there were 4 adults in attendance (considering how gorgeous the weather was outside that afternoon, this was a very good number!).

And....I finally got around to making my business cards.  They're pretty basic but smart and do their job nicely!

The Shake the Dust project is coming along.  I've now attended 4 sessions in the school I've been allocated.  The next 6 sessions will be held after Easter then the regional poetry slam will take place at ARC, Stockton.

So, just to sum up, everything is starting to fall into place just nicely.  I will continue to keep a watch out for opportunities and, as previously mentioned, I do have a few performances booked in but in April I hope to concentrate more on writing material to send for submissions and competitions.  I recently had word back from the James Kirkup Prize, informing me that I had been selected as a runner up in their competition that I entered.  My poem 'Transporter' will be published in an anthology with other runners up.  Yeay!!