Back to Work

Posted by lukewrightpoet Category: Diary Entries

When I’m not writing and performing I work for New Writing Partnership as their Live Literature Co-ordinator. It’s a fantastic job. In short I get a pot of money to spend on projects that help develop other live literature artists and producers. I job share with a friend of mine called Laura Stimson and together we have written all our own projects. You can find out more at www.newwritinglive.org.

When your career consists of shouting about yourself on stage it’s important to keep everything in perespective. I’ve always been fairly self-obsessed and last year, when I realised that it was fairly likely I’d spend the rest of my life making a living from my writing, I thought it was important for me to do something different for a while before I disappeared up my own arse forever. I’ve worked one year of a two year contract here. Come next summer I’ll be definitely ready to strike out on my own again, but the experience has been invaluable.

I also enjoy the general normality of working in an office. Strangely, part of me enjoys having to get up in the morning, the dread on Sunday evenings and getting a proper lunchbreak. I’ve also found this feeling of normality puts me in a better frame of mind to write. The biggest snag being that I have no time to write! I still pretty much work full time as a writer/performer, so my weekends have been destroyed. Still, now I’m back from Edinburgh things are calming down and I’m not taking any more gigs this year. Well, not unless they’re very special.

Off to meet our mate Kate and her ten year old son Alex after work today. That’s another thing I like: going into town after work. It feels like the sort of thing a 26 year old should be doing. Working from home you feel cut off from the world, and that’s no good. Even if the world is a chain pizzeria and a whole lot of dickheads in suits letting off steam, I still want to feel part of it.

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