A DEATH IN THE FAMILY: Uphill Battle

Today is NOT a good writing day, at least for A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I feel like I've been working on this play for a month and I already cut about 60% of what I added in because I decided it was stupid. So that's great. Good news--I cut the page count back. The rest is all bad news.

I hate hate hate hate the feeling that I am making an even bigger mess of a play that fell is a giant mess to begin with. In the end, I am sure it's actually okay, but the mystery might actually be an even BIGGER mess than it was before. I don't know what to do.

So I will work on the Top Secret Project. I have some books on the Top Secret Project, and I will work on researching that while Bill and Steven are playing games. I have to do some writing that might actually be productive today.

Honestly, I don't mean for it to sound like I'm getting down on myself for having a bad writing day. They happen, I really am trying to be zen about it. It's just hard because I really want to have the draft ready for when I get the call.

I used to not want to write about this sort of thing--the bad writing days, the mental illness, but I realized something. They are who I am--the good and the bad. So I have to take it all. Why not be honest about it?

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY: Have Faith

I am just trying to go with the flow on this play. I really am, and it's actually going all right. Yeah, I know, I'm surprised myself. I just printed out the most recent draft, and I came up with 16 4X6 legal pad pages of notes. Whatever had been bothering me, anything I was questioning, I wrote down.

Funny enough, some of the things I wrote down were things I had been working on for a very long time. Some of them are things I have been concerned about since the play started.

So now I am working on a new draft and I'm feeling both positive and worried. I don't know if any of these things will actually come to anything at all.

It's funny, because maybe now is when I am realizing that just because I wrote something before doesn't mean I will ever be able to write anything else again. Not that I'm not writing, but you know...

So I have a few things to work through--let's see how it goes this week. Onward and upward.

Tenative Hope: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

I've been having some lovely writing days in the last couple weeks. I have discovered that maybe writing every day is not the thing to do. I need to be gentle with myself and not beat myself up when I can't seem to focus enough to write. Right now, I just need to write when I feel like I can. Luckily, that's been a lot lately.

I am about to print out the newest draft of A DEATH IN THE FAMILY to continue work on it. I have added a new character, who is still growing on me, and I need to work on getting her into other scenes and actually doing things.

I am having a bit of progress on the mystery of the play, so we will see how that falls out.

And I have a new special Top Secret Project I am working on with a friend of mine. It's going to be a while before I can actually talk in detail about it, but I think that if it works well, we might have a thing that will be a thing. Vague enough? I just wanted to mention it because I am excited to get to work on this project. I feel like it has some really great potential. It's outside theatre, but still theatrical, so I will be able to use my skills I have honed as a playwright in a different field. So. Excited.

So I am tentatively hopeful. That's all I can ask for right now.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY: Keeping on, Keeping on

I am still plugging away. I had done some research and really dug into writing a mystery and the psychology behind people who are spies and go undercover, and I think I know exactly what needs to happen with the mystery in the play. Now I just need to see how it's supposed to unfold.

I added a character that I had been thinking about adding for a long time--she's very dumb, and has a tendency to say really inappropriate dumb things, and she takes things very literally, but she's so sweet, you can't get mad at her. She's like a puppy doing puppy things.

I am hesitate about added a character this late in the game--I am afraid she is going to come off looking like PLOT DEVICE. I haven't had a lot of time to develop her well, although I know her basic motives and what she wants, so that's half the battle, right?

I wish I could convince myself this is a good move. I just know it might not be. Who knows? I feel so tentative about everything with this play, I just don't know where to go next. So, despite my misgivings, I am heading into it and we will see how it falls out.

I do need to get back to working on the holocaust play if I am ever going to have it ready in time for submitting it to New Frontier.

And I have a huge list of other things to work on, but you know, my brain freaks out so it's hard to focus sometimes. I do try hard though, and I will continue to try.

I can't wait until the someday that my brain is normal again, because there never was a normal for my brain. There was only the more balanced out brain I had with Effexor. I just have to keep going.