Workshop two.

With week one as a warm up, scene setting, scope stretching and general getting to know you, week two needed to be a little more focused on the jugular. I need an ending. Alan had some good observations on the first draft script which drove a truck through my limp compromise ending and I need to rewrite. Which is ok as I knew in my heart that it was a limp compromise and the workshops were likely always going to (hopefully) help fix it.

We began with a horrifying chat about actual examples of harassment and discrimination. Age came up which is good as I'm interested in the age at which - some feel - women cease to be seen. One day, as I stalked across Leith Links on my way home from work, a pack of men who can't have been much different in age to me, shouted bawdily after me: "great legs". Then, as I passed them, one chirpily added: "shame about your tits". It was ironically satisfying as I'd been in a work discussion about harassment on that very day. And here it was living and breathing on Leith Links. Anyway, the point is that I don't suppose these same fellows will be offering these wonderful compliments when I'm 75.

Exactly as Roxane Gay says in her wonderful collection of essays entitled Bad Feminist, take gender, add in race (so in this country, not white) and you have a calamitous cocktail of potential for what might only be curiosity but usually winds up insulting. Fancy judging a person's personality by their colour. The thought appalls me which is maybe very naive. But this happens.

Then I set a stupid impossible problem. "Write a play for me" I may as well have said. Instead I babbled on about creating a scene or situation in which a woman had to make an impossible decision, either outcome of which was positive but complicated. All tribute to the workshoppees - they launched into some impressive debates and improvisations. Hard not to be taken aback again by what a wonderfully talented group I have at my disposal for this short time. Choices came through strongly as a theme. Choices about biology (to abort or not), about morality, self-image (to reinvent to serve a purpose or not) and the lovely complicated dynamic between female best friends as soon as there are lovers involved too. Loneliness is a thing too, isn't it? For anyone, irrespective of gender. But there's a particular loneliness that comes from someone with the very most best of intentions saying "it's your body; it's your decision". Interesting stuff.

With trepidation, I doled out the first two rewritten pages of the script (that's poor Evelyn cut - and I liked / hated her). There weren't quite enough people which meant doubling and then I was too nervous and squirming to ask them to do it again so I snatched the pieces of paper back from them and babbled a bit. There is something undoubtedly strange about having an enormous extended family in your head for some months and then seeing them in life. However, in principle, as a start to the script, it seems to have some merit.

Then the challenge. The ending. I outlined the main storyline. And got some excellent feedback already. But how should it end? With sinking heart, I think the realisation is dawning on me that she probably should make the "wrong" decision - as that's the point, isn't it? But then I feel like I'm betraying womankind. Bring back the compromise, I say. We can have a half-inch semblance of freedom after all. That's how the world works. Isn't it?