Writer's Blog

I have known close friend, mentor and creative kindred spirit, Kenneth J. Emberly for 15 years.

When Kenneth first told me about The Visit - his own play lauded by Tennessee Williams, I was dumbfounded. It seems surreal to me that years later, our own theatre company Poor Tom is now going to present The Kindness of Strangers featuring Williams one act I Can't Imagine Tomorrow and a premiere of The Visit.

Emberly joked … “You came along and said enough of this bullsh**t, let’s put this on.”

Emberly, like Williams, is an EARLY riser, so we chatted at 8 a.m - an accursed hour for Coral FM to conduct any interview!!! Emberly called Tom and I at 7 a.m. chiming "Rise and Shine" in his best Amanda Wingfield. He had been up since 5 a.m! He mused a little more about Mr. Williams, while I asked him about his own creative process.

What playwrights shape your standards and attitudes?

Harold Pinter. I could keep reading him forever- his early work. I am not too much drawn to later Pinter because he gets very political and that’s fine but I am much more drawn to the intimate and the personal, which is one of the things I liked about Tennessee Williams.

Especially his early work. Later in life when people get on the bandwagon of social causes and issues and after we have all been alive for half a century. ..God, I’m getting old (a gruff laughs) ...It’s almost irresistible to become Bono or something – but I don’t recommend it – I think it would be great if people would just pull back from that – because there are preachers in their pulpits, there are politicians in their little offices and they’ve got their trip – If you want to be a preacher, be a preacher, if you want to be politician, be a politician, if you want to be an artist ( he says ARTIST in a menacing tone )... Obviously you are going to bring that in – but to make it a focus, it doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t think I’ll ever write a politically motivated kind of thing.

Is it hard to write, whether it's a short story or play? How do you write?

It’s a discipline. This has been said one hundred times. It’s work. You have all these flashing ideas and some things are a jolt of inspiration – for instance the story Still Life In Leather which was published alongside Williams (play The Red Devil Battery Sign in literary journal Prism International) was written in one morning literally, with one minor revision – and that was it. But that’s rare. When you have a moment like that, and it ends up being published and acclaimed, you think the Gods are smiling on you for some reason.

But generally it doesn’t happen that way. It’s this frustrating ordeal of going over it and over it and the more you write, and the longer you write, the harder it gets because you get more critical. You can outthink yourself and if you start to do that - you’ve lost your spark, you’ve lost your inspiration. I was trying to write a piece last spring and the ideas to me were great ideas – I liked it but when I looked at what I was doing it was over thought and …. it was garbage. I’ve thrown thousands of sheets of paper away and speaking of paper, I prefer to write with a pen. I am not crazy about computer technology. It’s very nice to scroll and all that stuff but it doesn’t have that feel. I am there with the paper that people are going to read. I don’t think anybody is going to get all that much from reading off of screens. It’s not that pleasant and you can’t take it to the bathroom. Well, I guess you can with a lap top, if you must.

Hmm.. It’s more of a generational thing and a lifestyle mindset. (Hell, I write mostly online!)

As we are dealing with Mr. Williams here, he had an absolute rigorous policy. He would be up at five in the morning and he would sit at that desk and he would write for about four hours whether it was crap or not and (Ernest) Hemingway was the same. And stay hungry. Don’t have breakfast. Don’t get comfy. Stay on edge and discipline yourself and do it. Regardless of what he did the night before –whether he even went to bed – Williams would be at his desk and he would be working.

Tennessee Williams once said that life is one long nervous breakdown .. You agree?

(Laughing) Yes, I would have to in a lot of ways. That’s a very colourful expression and it would be from Mister Williams, wouldn’t it? He did have his share of those breakdowns. I share his loathing for psychiatric intervention and so forth, because in many ways, if all the people were locked up that probably the authorities think should be, there wouldn’t be many people walking around, and aside from the odd raving psychopath, we need our instability to find stability. That’s how you govern yourself and balance. You go, okay, that’s going to kill me. One more day of this and I am done.