I first started a theatre company with a group of like-minded friends when I was at Melbourne Uni. Like-minded, in this context, means “pissed off”.

We were pissed off because we had all auditioned for theatre shows or attempted in some way to be involved in theatre during our first year of university and, despite each of being shockingly gifted, nobody was interested in us.

I remember turning up to an audition, being asked whether I went to one of the residential colleges and if I knew “Bigsie”, and then when I said I was unacquainted with Bigsie’s work, I was told I probably wouldn’t get in since they were “mostly casting our friends”.

That show, which I saw later in the year, was about as good as you’d expect it to be. There was an in-joke involving the sheer hilarity of a man wearing a dress that lasted for approximately two hours and the man next to me wolf whistled every time a particular girl arrived on stage, due to the fact that she was wearing what appeared to be a postage stamp.

This triggered my asking at Melbourne Uni what it took to start a theatre company. We started one, we advertised auditions for everyone, regardless of race colour and creed, and we had 260 people turn up.

Since that day, I have had a rather different view of auditions. Here are five things I’ve learned:

1. The people who are auditioning you already like you when you walk in the door. Seeing actors work is invariably a privilege.

2. The people who are auditioning you have a headache. If they repeat themselves, forgive them.

3. Some people can act their pants off but not be right for a role.

4. If you can’t commit to a show, it is absolutely CRUCIAL that you tell the people holding the auditions BEFORE they work day after agonising day thinking through every possibly combination of performers. There should be legislation in relation to this vital issue and I plan to start a lobby group.

5. 100 does not go into three. I’m sure I was right about the cronyism of the play I auditioned for in first year, but I think upon mature reflection it was a teensy bit dramatic to scowl at the director every time I saw him in the union building. Although he did wear a pretentious hat and call everybody “babe”.

Otherwise, if you have a question, ask it. If you want to do something a different way, give it a burl. If you see the people who auditioned you after the auditions, please be nice to them, even if they are wearing pretentious hats. Or torn old tracksuit pants and T shirts they’ve had since year seven. As the case may be.

Nobody tends to care as much about these things as I do, but these are the things I’ve learned. Headaches, tracksuit pants, and the mathematics of auditions. All good things to know.

So here’s something that doesn’t happen every day and I’m thankful for that, I truly am:

- The event you’re organising for your part-time job has a guest list of four hundred peeps.

- There is one coffee machine.

- There is no electricity with which to power the coffee machine to feed the peeps.

- There is a film crew shooting a reality TV show in one of the cafes in the laneway.

- There is a rumour there is a health inspector on the loose.

- It is seven o’clock in the morning. See that scenario? That right there is my life.

How jealous are you guys?

By the way: that means two deadlines down, one to go. My cup of tea is even lovelier than usual.

When I first started working for a production company (I was a glorified secretary at the time) I was taught about the central tension in all production companies between development and production. You’re either developing a project (writing it, in my case) or producing it (filming it, directing it for stage etc). I was told production is always better. The aim is to constantly be in production. Why? Because developing projects means you’re poor and you’re boring.

WHO WANTS TO BE POOR AND BORING?

Sure, being ONE of those things might be okay, but BOTH? But it’s true. If you spend your whole time developing stuff (for little or no money) then everyone gets sick of hearing what you’re going to do, and how little money you have to do it. Or, to bring it back to me (always) if you spend your whole time writing, people think you’re biding time in between your “real” projects (ie the stuff they see on stage/screen) and they think it’s very boring of you to go home and write your imaginary thing that doesn’t exist yet.

The mistake some people make is to tip the balance too far the other way and go into production with a not very good idea they haven’t thought about at all which means that they’re exciting, well-paid, and memorably shithouse. This of course says a lot about how arts funding works, but old Pandora should be left out of this for the moment.

THE POINT IS (yes please) that when I’m working on development, rather than production, I am THE most boring woman on earth. I don’t see anyone, I don’t go anywhere, I just sit in a room and write and then once a week I have a production meeting with Rits and Stew WHO ARE MY ONLY FRIENDS. I have a coffee from the same place each day and sometimes, AS A TREAT, I buy flavoured mineral water. FLAVOURED MINERAL WATER. TREAT. If I ever go anywhere, I’m late because I was in the middle of something. I am always “nearly finished”. I am always “coming in a tic”. Stew, whose job title at Standing There Productions (production coordinator) has never fully encompassed what he does, has gone ahead and suggested a title for himself: Head Waiter.

It is the devastating accuracy of the title that wounds me so.

I’m sorry, friends and family. I will totally make up for it when we’re in production. You watch me go.

*gets mystery illness*

I hate to repeat myself but you WOULDN'T BELIEVE how many deadlines I've got.

Cop this:

- Organising a VIP breakfast for 400 people in the street on Wednesday next week. The caterers dropped out today.

- Writing a comedy festival script, auditions coming up very shortly

- Writing a script due on 31 Jan

- Writing a prose thing I was supposed to do "in January" which I am hoping meant "in February", and by February I am hoping they meant, kind of, March.

I promise I'll write something here that isn't about how I have no time and no money and too much to do. One day, I will write about sky and frisbees and swims and people riding bikes with bottles of wine and breadsticks in their handbaskets again.

Just not now.

Apparently, humans are social animals. Without social interaction, we become dysfunctional and can't survive. We go loopy and do crazy things like thinking we’re from planet Zorb and worshipping the god of an inanimate object such as a pedal bin, piece of rope, can opener or smiliar. Apparently this is true, which I know because I saw it in a documentary.

I also know it is true because lately I have been working weekends.

On Sunday, I made myself take an hour off to go and meet my friends who were at a BBQ for my mate Lawrence who is going to live in Sydney.

I went to the party and I couldn't do it right. I couldn't do small talk, I couldn't do large talk, I couldn't even do medium-sized talk (normally my specialty). I couldn't TALK without getting confused and realising I wasn't saying what I set out to say. I do believe at one stage I was speaking in tongues.

No wonder those people in the library are so insane.

Argem de minno frizzle mop. Don't you think?

Yesterday, I wrote out the Standing There Productions timeline for 2008.

It took me two hours.

I’m going to go and do some work now. I may be some time.

Please collect the mail and help yourself to what’s in the fridge…

L.

My study habits, such as they are, were established over a decade ago in year twelve, altered slightly at university to incorporate a cafe that served beer and nachos and contained like-minded procastinators and a pool table, and honed in recent years on account of the age-old adage of self-employment (taught to me originally by my year ten maths teacher) that "the only person you're letting down is yourself".

The two things I now require in order to write are:

1. No distractions.

2. Inspiration to work.

The former is a source of constant frustration on account of my zero tolerance policy for libraries not being (as yet) universal law. Sure, it may be difficult to police a zero tolerance gaffa-tape-over-the-mouth policy across the board without running into trouble with civil libertarians and so forth but SURELY IT IS WORTH IT SO SOMEONE... ANYONE... CAN GET SOME WORK DONE.

Anyway, at the moment, I have to trick myself.

The library has internet. I have to make myself go outside to the cafe and have a cup of tea while I write things without the internet. Never has so much work been done as when I'm having a "break" from my work.

Looks like the internet might be the next thing to go. Right after the beers and the nachos.