Packing is a Good Thing

With a move back to Iowa on the Horizon, I've been doing a LOT of packing recently. And organizing. It's been quite a job for a person with pack-ratty tendencies, and if there's anything I've learned from watching 'Hoarders', other than I want to clean the whole house every time I watch it, is that you can't get rid of a bunch of junk that took you a long time to accumulate over a period of time. Once you get overwhelmed, you have to stop.

It's a lot like rewriting in a lot of ways. Your work accumulates all this excess junk and you have to dejunk it. Sometimes it's hard because you come across stuff from college and birthday cards and a great monologue that just don't really belong anymore. And you have to pick and choose what stays and what goes. Sometimes all the cards will go in the recycling bin (literally) and the monologue will too (figuratively). But the stuff from college begins to get collected into a box to keep--sometimes you have to keep it to weed it out later. And you have to know when to stop and when to go again.

Aside from that, it made me update and prune my submissions book. I have elaborate ways of doing everything--making a submissions book is not exempt. I keep all the submissions I am going to make or have made, in a program called Debrief, and then I keep a running list in Excel of what I have already in my physical notebook and Debrief, and then there's the physical notebook of loose leaf pages with check lists for each theatre. It has taken a LONG time to get it together, and I went through all the months so far but stopped at November--there were a lot of theatres that still had their information up from last year, with a promise of new information in coming months. My primary concern is that I get everything from now until the end of August done as much as I can before June.

Yep, I'm a bit crazy, but that's me.

Writing is coming along...strangely. I have officially recycled (literally) the second draft of 'Mine' and printed out the 3rd draft, which is residing in my writing bag, still in backwards order, with all my notes from the second draft. There's still a lot to do, and I frequently think I want to work on it (and I do think about it frequently) but I don't work on it. No reason--just not ready I think.

On the upcoming workshops front--all my stuff is in for Valdez except my final edits. I just need to take a day, get my computer, go to Panera, and work until I'm done. Then email it back to Dawson. I got the contract for Reston and need to mail that back by the end of the week.

So things are coming along...part of me is sad to leave Arkansas. I love the weather here, and I know that I am going to be cursing everything and anything starting about November, but I am going to be so happy to be back to my family and the land of my heart--and to be married!

Enough personal stuff--time to write, or at least think about 'Mine'.

Loving my Play to Death

'Mine' is coming along slowly but surely. I am mostly okay with that. I really love this play, so I am enjoying working on it. I have two characters whose stories I must redo (they don't really work and/or don't really have a story at all) and at least one character who doesn't really have a change happen to her by the end, but for the most part right now I am focusing on the transition from Spanish to Classical Latin and working on the backstory to the world that this play is in. There's a lot going on in the play, and I am hoping it's not too much. And I am still thinking of adding in a chorus at some point. Not in this draft, but maybe eventually.

I am trying to not love this play to death. I am concerned about my objectivity regarding the play. I am editing along just fine, cutting and burning as I go along, so maybe I don't need to be that concerned about it, but I think it's a good idea to think about it at least, and keep it in the back of my mind to keep me on track with this play.

This year is going to be a strange one. Moving, getting married, going to see two of my plays get put up as readings, getting a new job...it doesn't leave a lot of time to submit, but I am trying to get my submission guide in shape and submit to as many as I can because that's the only way I am going to keep going in the business for now.

I am wondering if I should still be shopping the two scripts around to places at this point. I mean, I am assuming there are going to be massive re-writes in both of these plays' futures, and I am really looking forward to making both plays even better, and I could always submit again later with the new drafts, but I don't know if there is protocol to this sort of thing. This is just such new territory for me that I don't know what I am doing!

For now, I will work on 'Mine' and my 'Wizards of Waverly Place' script for the Disney/ABC Fellowship and see what happens.

What a Headache...

...that I had on Sunday. Vomity migraine = calling in sick to day job. That stunk, but when you can't see straight, it's hard to work in a kitchen.

I think that this migraine and it's aftershocks were probably brought on by a combination of stress and allergies. The allergies are easier to control than the stress, with drugs and all.

I think I need to learn to say no.

I have so much going on in my personal and theatre professional life that adding anything else to it at this point might just kill me. I dropped Script Frenzy before it even started and I actually bailed on National PlayREwriting Month. I feel terrible, especially about NaPlREWriMo, but it was a necessary evil. As I plan my move, my two theatre related trips, my wedding and still write and submit, all while working as much as I can, I need to focus my energies on these things. I don't think there's anything left for anything else.

So I guess in some ways this is a general apology to everyone and no one. I don't like to shirk my responsibilities, but I have some things I need to really focus on right now.

Now that I got that personal confession out of the way, let's talk about writing.

I have been continuing to edit 'Mine'. I think I said it before, but I really love this play. I don't often say that about my own work, but I am happy with the gist of the play so far. It needs a lot of work, and there's a few characters that need fleshing out, but generally I am happy with it. Does that mean I can be objective? I sure hope so because I was slashing and burning parts of the play yesterday while doing character work. I do feel, however, that it might be time for me to put the play aside soon to let it sit until Alaska.