Getting my head around too many hats

I’ve been struggling to find subjects to blog about here for some time now and have come to a realisation that this blog doesn’t sit well with the work I am currently doing as a result it needs to change. Strangely I have been making the mistake with it that inexperienced writers so often make in their scriptwriting. I have been trying to force my voice into the subjects I think I should be writing about to suit the audience and market as opposed to just writing about what I want to write about.

In the years since I began this blog I have developed, thankfully, into a very different writer and indeed person.
I have set up and run a very successful writing group and launched a theatre production company. As a writer I am still treading the pathway described when I began the blog working on my scripts for TV, theatre, film and radio but also I have become increasingly interested in developing my writing practice for theatre along more collaborative and innovative digital platform based aspirations. My work is increasingly not just about developing myself as a writer but developing other writers and developing projects that allow my work and others to be produced.

The other thing I have realised is that the separation I created between the different aspects of my work, the needs to earn money through digital marketing and freelance project work, the running of the writing group and the running of the theatre company is less applicable as the strands merge and impact on what I’m writing, what I’m doing and where my interests lie.

You know that moment when you introduce yourself to people? I have three or four of those introductions in my head and draw on the most appropriate one according to the room. But in economically challenged world of fast changing technology where a unique voice is ever more important I need to recognise that my diversity is a positive aspect.

I can see that in projects like EarCandy for the writing group all those diverse aspects of me are required. I am not a writer on one blog, a producer on another and a digital marketing person somewhere else. I need to stop changing hats and recognise that I need a hat that suits all.

This week I have been preparing a tender for a digital marketing film project, writing a short radio play, designing a digital marketing course for creatives and submitting a funding application for a collaborative text/choreography project. I run two facebook pages, three blogs and two twitter accounts and I’m about to launch another blog, another twitter account and another facebook page.

But what’s important is that here on these pages I’m not trying to force myself into being the writer me but that I use this blog to just be me. I am very aware that though I talk to other creatives about the importance of making sure you’re on-line presence reflects your creative practice and your personality, I’ve not really been practicing what I preach, nag and cajole other people into doing.

And so a refreshed website and blog is needed here, I need to stop separating out the strands and let them merge. I am Sandra Bendelow and I’m a writer and producer. I run the Aberystwyth Arts Centre’s Writing for Performance Group for whom I’ve produced three showcases of work and the next project for the group EarCandy is an audio drama project from a web based platform which will include stories using social media as a platform. I launched a production company Scriptography Productions in November 2012 and produced a new play by Catrin Fflur Huws, To Kill a Machine, about Alan Turing which was presented at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Sherman Cymru Foyer and was also presented as part of a science cafe event at Swansea University. As a writer I work in all mediums, and through all those mediums my work is about gritty realism, narrative drive, physicality and the extraordinary. I am especially interested in interdisciplinary platforms including digital mediums. I also run a small company offering digital marketing services and courses for creatives and I am extremely passionate about social media both for marketing and creative output.

And though I will be blogging elsewhere about the Writing Group, about Scriptography and about my digital creatives work - here on this blog I’ll be sharing thoughts about it all including those moments when juggling becomes jibbering.