Dramatecture

Winding Down the Year

2011-12-22T17:27:00.000-06:00

I think I might have fixed the terrible problem with A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I have been working on this play for about 5 months now, and I am feeling like I am ready to be done with this round of editing. I know it can still be tighter and work better in a lot of sections, but I feel like it might ready to send out again. I already have a couple theatres and things lined up to send it to before the end of the year.

As I have been looking through the submission opportunities, I am noticing that I don't have much in the way of new work to send out--or even older work that is in better shape to send out. This year was a bit of a blur for me (new job, three huge trips, married, new house, new state) so perhaps 2012 will be my year for new works.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Holiday of choice and I will see you all next year!

Deus Ex Machina needed

2011-12-17T07:15:00.000-06:00

So, I have been working on A DEATH IN THE FAMILY for what feels like forever. If I am going to submit it to Last Frontier, I need to get the darn thing done SOON. So I have been working on it feverishly. Last night I realized that something very important in the script that a large portion of it hangs on doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

This resulted in a small freak out at Panera last night. Bill suggested NINJAS. I guess Ninjas are the new Deus Ex Machina.

I actually think that I might have fixed it. I will have to go back and look. So far, of everyone who has read it, NO ONE caught it. I don't know if anyone would catch it (they will now, now that they know what to look for). So I wonder how much trouble I should take to fix this. It bothers me, so I will fix it.

Ninjas are tempting.

But Ninjas are lazy writing.

So I will continue to work through things on the play. Being involved with the last show at the community theatre really helped me put some things in perspective with A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, specifically, when it comes to cutting things. The show was a good idea in theory, not so much in execution. The actors were great, but there were some parts of the play that just didn't work. There were some really overwritten and over thought jokes that would work better if they weren't so labored over. Sometimes the funniest stuff, at least for me, just comes out of no where and is spontaneous. So working on the light board for the show really assisted my writing, for which I am very glad.

Ninjas. I wish they weren't lazy writing and they actually made sense in the play!

Naplwrimo

2011-11-20T12:48:00.000-06:00

This is the first time I've done NaPlWriMo where I just have been SO disconnected. I'm not writing anything new this year. I tried, but all that is happening is me rewriting A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. It's not like I'm not working, it's just I'm so disconnected. It's strange. And I did beat myself up over it but now I guess I'm beyond it. I think it's because I'm working on something--just not anything new.

It's just strange. I don't know what happened.

Things are chugging along on A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I am down to the family dynamics of the play, and this is the part that is going to take a while. So what do I do? Get roped into doing lights for a show locally. *shrug* I'm working on something, anything.

It's also different now being a home owner. There's stuff to do EVERY DAY. and EVERY WEEKEND. Like, I am sick with a sinus infection this weekend, so I am getting behind on not just my writing but my housework as well. Again, I'm working on it.

Winter is getting here too--we've already had our first snowfall (it was pretty and didn't last the day) and the temp is starting to drop into the 20s at night. Whooo! Welcome back to the midwest. :)

Breakthrough: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

2011-10-27T05:42:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, you get breakthroughs with plays that are so freaking OBVIOUS you just DON'T understand how you didn't see if before. I won't go into the details, but I made some connections the other night, and suddenly things started making more sense.

It's funny, because of the two plays I had read this summer, A DEATH IN THE FAMILY is the one I didn't think I would be trying to complete a better draft of. TIME CHANGES is still sitting in a pile somewhere, but A DEATH IN THE FAMILY has already gone through one new draft, and an even NEWER draft is brewing currently (*knock wood*). I need to get this draft finished in the next four days, and somehow get together my play for National Playwriting Month AND learn to write a murder mystery for dinner theatre.

Ahhhh, this all makes me so happy!

Waiting on November

2011-10-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

There's nine days before National Playwriting Month (www.naplwrimo.org) begins, and just like every year, I have about ten plays I want to write all at the same time. Why this can't happen another time of the year, I don't know, but here we are, knee-deep in ideas, and at least the same amount of plays I am trying to rewrite.

I would like to be at Last Frontier again next year, and I am having trouble figuring out what to work on for that. The play I am going to work on (at this moment anyway) for NaPlWriMo is AUGUSTEND, but I might actually construct a play based on a crazy 48 hour period that happened to me last weekend. Good God, was that last weekend? It seems like a lifetime ago.

At any rate, I am once again finding myself changing my mind. I don't know exactly what to write starting 9 days from now, but I am sure I will come up with something at some point. I might actually work on 'Highway to Hades' or 'Mine' and send that for Last Frontier. I just hope that if I go, the Alaska lovelies I met there will be able to return, or it will be a sad time (well, maybe not sad, just not as happy!). I was thinking about Alaska today when I was thinking about how to find a writer's group locally or create my own. I miss having a group like that, and I hope I can find one locally sometime soon.

So the edits on A DEATH IN THE FAMILY are getting a bit out of control. I keep getting all these wild ideas that would require the play to be longer, and the ideas are shiny and fun, but I don't know if they have any place in this play. I don't think longer is bad, but I don't think it should be longer just because I'm amused. Hell, it's already longer than it probably needs to be because I am amused. There was one idea that unites the family in the play in a very good way, that I think would work really well if i could pull it off--and I think I will attempt that. Tomorrow though. My brain is sundowning right now and watching the third season of BREAKING BAD is NOT helping.

Getting ready for November

2011-10-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

Things are settling down around these parts--fall is here, and I am so excited to be in a real Midwestern fall. It's exciting to go out for a walk and have GINORMOUS piles of beautiful leaves to crunch around in. I don't recall having that same experience in Arkansas the last four years--mainly because you didn't walk anywhere in that less than pedestrian friendly town I lived in--so I am delighted to be able to experience fall for real. Now, remind me I said that when winter hits and I am whining because I don't have my winter legs anymore!

The real excitement for me is that November is almost here and that means National Playwriting Month is almost here! I am sure that most of you know what this critter is about--I've been doing it for the last four years and moderating for the last three--but in case you are stumbling upon this because you found my site through the National Playwriting Month website--here's the nutshell version of this whole shindig.

Similar in fashion to National Novel Writing Month, NaPlWriMo consists of writing a new play from November 1, at 12:01 a.m. to November 30, 12:59 p.m. (in your time zone). The goal is at least 75 pages in that time. It is a fun, crazy time and I look forward to doing it again this year. I have been getting ready by making the forums for this year on the site, putting out some adverts on different websites and getting together my quotes for my countdowns and my daily updates. It's funny, every year I think I will not be able to find new quotes--and there are some fun stand bys I always use because they express truths about the writing life that I have yet to find more eloquently expressed--but somehow I always manage to find some new material. I guess it's like ideas--I am always afraid I might not find a new one and then they keep coming. I love that.

Besides NaPlWriMo, I've made some massive changes to A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. The feedback I got from Reston has helped immensely. I had cut about 5 pages from the play so far, and I am sure I will get that bad boy under 100 pages before too long. I have a lot of character work to do and plot work to do and all that good stuff, but things are definitely coming together.

May the Farce be With Me

2011-08-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

After my reading at http://restonplayers.org/ in Reston, VA, I had a lot of good things to think about for A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I am working on learning more about farce and how to recraft this play as a farce.

For someone with a theatre degree, I know very little about theatre. I only within the first year of beginning my degree actually started reading plays and information about theatre every day--and that was in 2002. Life has certainly gotten away from me, so that steady stream of theatre and plays kind of slowed down. And I have to often start over again.

I used to feel embarrassed about this--but in some ways, it's good to start at the beginning every time you have to start working on a play or a piece of art. I mean, think about it this way--every time you start writing, you don't have ANYTHING to go on. You are starting from scratch. You are beginning again. Sure, a background helps to give you confidence--confidence can help, especially if you are facing a blank page that doesn't seem to want to give way to your thoughts. But really, you are starting over again--learning to write THIS work.

So starting the research from scratch is not a bad thing. It's a refresher and a new introduction to work you already knew.

So that's where I am right now with A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I am waiting to hear back if the play will be brought back to Reston for a second round of readings next year. I sure hope it is--I would love to see where the farce takes it.

2011-08-19T18:47:00.000-05:00

The summer of insanity is over. I have been to Alaska and back, I have been to a river and been married, I have been to D.C. and back. We moved to Iowa and I have a new job with hours that are more humane, and now I am working toward getting involved in theatre locally, but my writing has stalled out.

It's always a mystery when things like this happen. I mean, I have some ideas of why my writing is not going, but they are personal and it's not needed to go into them on the blog (I am still married, and things are fine, so no worries on that front!).

So, let's talk about local theatre.

http://www.osterregent.org/ is the home of Cedar Falls Community Theatre. I am hoping I am going to be doing costuming work with them. They do pretty traditional theatre fare (currently they are about to post their casting for ARSENIC AND OLD LACE). The group seems very nice so far, so we will see how things pan out. It will be really nice to be working in a theatre again--I've really missed it.

http://www.uni.edu/theatre/swt/ is the home of University of Northern Iowa's theatre department's productions. From the 'about' page:

Currently, Strayer-Wood Theatre is thrilled to announce “Renewal: Emerging Beyond Struggles.” In our next two seasons, we’re committed to producing theatre that addresses political issues. Beyond hatred and war, beyond government control, beyond tyranny… we’ll explore the human connections that allow us to discover the strength of individuals, relationships, and communities. How can the arts inspire conversation on our community’s most pressing political issues? Connect with us. See live theatre. Let’s find out.

Sounds good to me! They are doing MAD CITY by Caryl Churchill, which thrills me to no end, and in the spring, they are going to be doing BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL, which makes me incredibly happy. All the shows look really great and I am very excited to see all of them. Again, I am hoping to work in costumes and perhaps ushering--whatever is going to get me back into the theatre.

I have some starts in mind about doing a playwriting group at UNI--something that I might look more into next year--I don't know what they have going on there, so I want to hang around a bit before I jump straight in.

Actually, a big part of why I am having trouble writing could be because I am having trouble finding a place to write. Usually, Panera is my go to place. I would go there in the morning, having their version of a bagel, drink tons of coffee and write for like 3 hours. Sometimes I would go after work if I could as well. There is a Panera here, and really, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not the place I should be writing. It doesn't have the right vibe--Cedar Falls doesn't have a ton of food options and I think Panera is the go to place. And it's small--very small--and the staff feels overwhelmed. I have given it several tries--but i give. I am going to give some other local places some love--Cup of Joe and The Lampost are on my list for next week, and a trip to the public library is on the list as well. I just need a writing home away from home--I think that might make the difference.

And I have Returned to the land of normal sun

2011-06-19T23:15:00.000-05:00

It is going to take me some time to really tease out what going to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference has meant for me personally and professionally. I have made some AMAZING new friends, laughed more than I thought possible, saw more amazing plays than I ever thought I could in one week, had a wonderful reading with generous amazing actors and commentary from the panel and attendees. Really, I feel slightly unworthy by this--but at the same time I am SO GRATEFUL for this chance. What a great way to exit my day job and enter into my two months of insanity.

And on top of that, Alaska is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been. Mountains and ocean and glaciers and bears that wouldn't appear and hug any of us, and such clean fresh air, and holy crap, the water is really that blue!

So, now I have new friends I hope I can work with in the future and we all want to meet in Valdez again next year--I hope I can.

Alaska

2011-06-11T06:51:00.002-05:00

Today, I leave for Alaska and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. I will be back in a week or so, the 19th. I hope I have lots of tales to tell on my adventures north and to my first theatre conference!

Few and Far Between

2011-05-30T07:49:00.000-05:00

I figured that I should make another post this month. It's been a long month of things coming together in my other life. We bought a house, are working on moving back to Iowa (packing FOREVER!) and getting me ready to go to Alaska for the Last Frontier Theatre Conference and getting our wedding together and then going to another reading in Reston, VA, in July (July 30 to be exact).

Needless to say, there hasn't been much time for writing, let along blog updating.

It's been a strange couple days. I had a good friend from way back in the day pass away from a traumatic brain injury yesterday. It was coming, we all knew it, and his amazingly strong wife, Sarah, chronicled it all in her blog here, from when he suffered the brain injury way back in November to his series of strokes that eventually led him to hospice and yesterday. There are no words in any language that can come close to describing what Sarah has gone through, but she's done a damn good job on her blog relating the situation. If I could be half the wife she is/was and convey half of the emotion she does/did, then I would be satisfied. Curtis was a very special person and my heart goes out to them, especially his two year old, Clara.

So there was that. That was something, let me tell you.

Then I started working on a new project. I don't yet want to reveal what it is--mostly because I don't know WHAT it is yet. I do know it involves a LOT of living celebrities, and part of me is worried about writing these people as characters in the play. What if I get sued? I am trying to just relax about it, and realize that the celebrities are in the main characters fantasy world, so hopefully if they say and do things they wouldn't do in real life, I won't get my butt sued.

And that's the last time I am going to officially worry about that until I get a draft of the play done (secretly I will worry, but you know...worrywart!).

What else? I have pulled the plug on submitting theatre related items until I get moved. I just can't do it all anymore, so I am going to take a small break and focus on what I am working on and what I already have out there. My writing time is few and far between, so I have to use my time carefully.

2011-05-01T11:10:00.000-05:00

http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

Hollins Playwright's lab posted this on facebook and I am going to be printing out each of the black and white pictures and will put it in my new office when I get to Iowa. Great things for artists of all stripes.

It is looking like the ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship was a go this morning, but after reading the rules more specifically, it turns out I have to have two letters of recommendation from industry professionals.

D'oh, stupid sexy Flanders.

I am a very lucky writer, I have many friends who can help me, but I am not sure if it will happen this time. So we will see.

Going back to the above link, there's this image:

That's my mantra for this, if I am able to attempt it. I just need to get the letters and then be confident!

It's amazing how that's better said than done.

Packing is a Good Thing

2011-04-25T08:26:00.000-05:00

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

2011-04-16T08:50:00.000-05:00

'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...

2011-04-07T08:23:00.000-05:00

...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.

When it Rains...

2011-03-20T10:48:00.000-05:00

This summer is going to be off the hook crazy.

Let's get the personal stuff out of the way first--I am moving back to Iowa in July. My Future Husband got a job in Cedar Falls, and away we go! We are also going to be getting married in July. It is going to be a civil ceremony in a beautiful site by the Rock River in Moline, Illinois, where my father and I used to go and spend time together. We are planning on just having family there and a few close friends. This has to happen before July 30.

Why you may ask? We are planning on spending a few days in D.C. because I have a reading of 'A Death in the Family' at the theatre nearby, on July 30. More details to follow on that when I get them.

So let's see what we got going on now....

Alaska in June, move, get married in July, reading also in July, and sometime I will have to find a day job and start my new life in Iowa.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier about this. The only exception is that the play that was supposed to be in a reading in April has been postponed. I am still having issues with it. The problem is not that I don't care--it's that I have a character who is little more than a place holder for another character who should be in the play and I cannot for the life of me figure out who that character is holding a place for. It's annoying and I can't get this guy to reveal ANYTHING. What a pain...

But things are GREAT otherwise. I am working on more submissions and revisions because it's important that I ride in on this momentum.

Becoming a Night Owl to Give a Hoot

2011-02-20T04:34:00.000-06:00

It's 4:30 in the morning, and I don't have to be to work until 6:30 and I've been up for an hour.

There's too many exciting things going on in my life to be sleeping through it!

Some of them I can't talk about (yet). But I think I can talk about this one:

http://www.pwscc.edu/conference/plays.shtml

If you scroll down, you will find me all the way near the bottom, with my state erroneously put as Arizona (note to self--email them regarding that), but I am completely planning on being in Alaska for a week in June! Even more exciting is that I actually don't have to struggle with work because it just so happens that the week was free. June is usually a hard month to get time off, but I guess it was meant to be.

So that is wonderful. I am very excited to to the Last Frontier Conference and to visit Alaska. I have never been there, so this will be quite the experience.

AND, finally, a year and a half later, something good has happened with my work, without my direct doing (other than sending a play to them!). 'Time Changes' is probably my most polished of my unpublished, unproduced work, so this is great. I am really looking forward to this!

And, after my last post, and a pep talk from my dramaturg buddy, Robert, I might have had a breakthrough with 'Saving Ryan's Pumpkins'. I wasn't sure I was ever going to care about the play, but the characters are developing more quickly now--thank the gods too, because April is coming right up here!

And in the next couple weeks, I have another announcement as well. This is a personal one, rather than a playwriting one, but I know it will change my writing (again) for the better!

Giving a Hoot

2011-02-17T07:15:00.000-06:00

So the good news is, I have a reading in April.

The bad news is, I could give a rat's about the play itself.

I tried to choose another play, but I couldn't find one that fit the parameters. So I am stuck with the one I think is a yawn-fest and that I don't care about.

I don't know how I got to this point with this play. I started out thinking it was pretty great, but I just can't stand it now. I suppose this happens to writers at some point, but this has never happened to me. I have never written a play that I didn't care about on some level.

Luckily, I have a couple weeks where I can revise it, and get moving on it. But it's hard to motivate myself with it. Right now, I think it's the adults in the play that I am having a hard time with. The kids--yah, I think I got them figured out. The adults are a snorefest and I can't see how anyone will care.

And I don't want to bore my audience. This would be bad. I kind of feel like this is going to be the first reading that a lot of people who attend will go to, and I don't want them to think that all readings are this terrible. I mean, if I can't care about the play, how can I expect the audience to?

I better get back to work on this thing--one way or another, I have a reading--I need to make it count.

I want to be the living example of this, on and off stage

2011-02-15T08:14:00.002-06:00

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. "
~ Cadet Maxim

Holding Pattern

2011-02-14T08:35:00.000-06:00

Being in a holding pattern, waiting to find out where we are going to end up in six months, is a bit of an emotion and energy suck. This year, I am going to do it differently.

Thankfully, I have a lot of projects and things to do, so I am going to keep busy and try to not think about things.

I have done some work with National PlayREwriting month. I think that we are going to be doing it a lot more loosely than we do November's run. I am going to be editing a play for a reading I have in April over the next couple days I have off, and I am going to take pictures and document my rewriting process. It's very Adrian Monk-like, so I think it would be funny to take pictures and describe it.

Other than that, I am not sure what I am going to do. Perhaps I need to find more quotes and suggestions about rewriting, but I am not sure. I've never done this before, and while I don't want to do it wrong, I don't see how I can, because I haven't done it before! I just want to give the NaPlWriMo people a place to come and talk about the process and get some rewriting done. And I have been itching to work on 'Mine' so this is good.

As far as my reading goes at the library, I have decided to change the play we were going to do and then I changed back. I don't know why, but I am having a hard time finding myself caring about 'Smashing Ryan's Pumpkins'. I think it's a cute play, but I don't know. I'm ambivalent about it. I don't think that's a good place to be, but I think rewriting it and doing a reading of it will confirm if I should continue with it or just ditch it for now. I wish I could do 'A Death in the Family'. I want to see that play up and on its feet so badly. But I will have to wait.

And then there's Script Frenzy. I am very excited to work on 'Human Girl'. After we visited the abandoned elementary school in Transylvania, LA, on the way to NOLA, I felt as though I finally found the setting for the play. I hope that it comes out this time. It's been YEARS since I started work on this play and I think that devoting a month of work to it might just coax it out of its shell.

And I think I have my idea for my 'Wizards of Waverly Place' script. Funny enough, I am going to be scrapping almost all of 'Szyzgy' in order to have it work out. That's fine--I think that it will work well for 'Wizards' if I change it for them. So that's good. Things aren't due until June I don't think, so we will see. I am creating a show bible and taking notes on things I notice instead of writing down the plot and such. It helps free me and watch the show for what I need to watch it for: understanding the characters and their motivations and getting their vocal patterns down.

Lots of work to do and always in the background is this holding pattern. I am surprised that I am keeping as busy as I have been--last year I was not nearly as productive. So we will see.

Some Much to Do, So Little Time

2011-02-06T09:03:00.000-06:00

January was filled with not a lot of work for me to do. I was doing a lot of crocheting, cleaning and dreaming of new jobs for my fiance (not creating them for him--ha! I wish!--but thinking of ones that he's interviewing for--could use some good karma in our direction!). But February. Oh, February, my old short friend, you always sneak up on me and the next thing I know, I have a million things to do!

Like what?

ABC/Disney Fellowship--still watching Wizards of Waverly Place and doing some reading from their suggested reading list. Luckily, I have a couple of the books, and a sweet Groupon hook-up, my B&N memberships and coupon assisted me in scoring Story for a mere $13 new. Awesome. Also, I don't think I need to have the script ready until June, so I got some time.
A reading. Of what, I'm not sure. It's going to be at the Faulkner County Library in April for National Library Week, but the play I originally wanted to do was too long for the presentation. So I need to either choose a different play or do selections from the play. Gotta figure that out soon.
Another library thing in April--doing write-ins for Script Frenzy. I was thinking that maybe doing a write-in once a week for any kind of writer who wants to come would be good. This will probably be Wednesdays in April. Again, gotta figure that out soon.
April = Script Frenzy = Human Girl.
March = National Play REWriting Month. I have to set up the forums and get that all ready. I'm really excited to dig back into 'Mine' and get it all straightened up. I got it printed out right now, and it's sitting on the shelf behind me, taunting me.

As usual, I ended up with some kind of blockage right here at the beginning of the year. Some of it is personal life upheaval and being in a holding pattern, but some of it is also just the beginning of the year. It seems to happen ever year--I just need to crochet and update my submissions notebook and do some reading of other stuff. I made it through, although during it, it seems like I might never write again and that I have to jump off a building.

Yeah, well, I'm still here.

Brain Reset

2011-01-19T07:37:00.000-06:00

A lot of really good things happened yesterday after I got that rejection for Syzygy. Some of them I can't talk about right at the moment, mostly because they aren't writing related, but I just had to say, the differences in the first post of this year, and the last post of last year is startling.

I watched two episodes of The Wizards of Waverly Place yesterday, the first two episodes of season 1. Of course, season 1 is always going to have that shiny new show smell and be a little tentative. I think I enjoyed the second episode better--the characters felt more relaxed and natural. I have completely fallen in love with the parents on the show and can see a real chemistry with them and they have some really fun quirks that I enjoyed. The older brother feels more developed and the younger brother seems there for comic relief. The daughter could be more developed, but I think that will come with time. I could definitely see how I could make Syzygy work as a spec script.

The thing is, part of me feels insulted that THIS is what my writing might come down to. I guess in a way it feels like being a great actress stuck on a frakking soap opera. But this is no reason to end a career.

So the Disney shows are squeaky clean, and I am good with that. I actually like this show because it's a bit more daring than Disney might do. I think Harry Potter carries the wonderful blame for that, although Disney does have a witch reputation (Bedknobs and Broomsticks being one of my favorite movies of all time, and now I want to go watch it!). I like the fact that while the characters, at least this early in the show, seem very 2D, the girls are not portrayed as sex objects, and while they are stereotypical, I think it's a good show for the tween set. There's plenty of things to laugh at and I think that while I mostly write serious stuff, I think I could fit myself in with this show well.

It's just funny because I NEVER would have thought in a million years that I would be writing these sentences, let alone adding The Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana to my Netflix queue. But I could totally get behind writing on a show like this.

I am just so thankful that someone got a fire lit under my butt. Things were looking frakking dire there for a moment.

Three Rejections and Two Responses

2011-01-18T14:58:00.006-06:00

So far this year, I have been rejected from three theatres. The last one was this morning, and at first, I was bummed. I went in the living room and told the fiance, and I said also that I was getting to the point where I didn't want to look at my email anymore because of the rejections. Then I looked at the email, and realized this one was different.

I got not one, but two responses from readers of the plays for the competition.

This is a rare thing, I have heard, and, in my experience, this is the first time I have gotten this kind of in depth analysis of something I have written.

Both responses didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. This play is desperate for character development and there's a lot of stereotyping, and not always in a good way. Then I was told several things I wasn't aware of.

I really struggled with the dialogue and at the end found it too Disney for my taste. I think that this play would make a perfect episode of the Wizards of Waverly Place.

The same responder also suggested I get a copyright on the play and send it to The Wizards of Waverly Place.

I might just do that.

Here's the funny part--I've never watched any of those Disney tween shows, or at least that's what I am assuming this Wizards of Waverly Place is. Crazy. Part of me feels like I should be insulted, but these shows are popular for a reason. I never expected such in depth analysis from a rejection.

It does give me hope that I might be able to get my writing out there yet. It might just be in a different way.

Human Girl and Script Frenzy

2010-12-15T06:47:00.004-06:00

There's been a play, 'Human Girl', that I've been trying to work on for years. I just looked at my file for this play on my external hard drive, and the only files are from 2005. Ten years. And this play keeps coming back and coming back. There's got to be a reason for it.

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica, and I was hoping that in some way, it wouldn't help me with this play. Just like I hoped that District 9 wouldn't make me feel like I shouldn't write this play. Neither of these things happened, luckily.

I discovered a Yahoo! slideshow of urban decay the other day. Urban decay fascinates me--it's so beautiful. The above image is one of the inspirational images I found while searching for urban decay online--unfortunately I didn't save the info for where it came from, but I will NOT claim this image as my work--it's only for inspiration. And I love the fact that there's all this chaos, things falling apart and then there's this couch thing facing an open sky. Gorgeous.

Then I had a thought about 'Human Girl' and something fell together--again. I think, again, maybe it's time to work on this play. But there's a problem--

Script Frenzy isn't until April, and I'm trying to save it until then.

I decided to do Script Frenzy for a couple reasons this year--finally digging on a draft of 'Human Girl' and to see what they do that we could use to differentiate us from them as national playwriting month. Apparently there's a lot of overlap. I don't know because I haven't done it, so I am going to do it this year.

I am quite hopeful for 'Human Girl'--actually getting a draft out will be such an accomplishment. It would mean a lot to me to get it out--'Human Girl' stems from a time in my life that has passed and that is a big theme in this play, so it will be nice to visit a time in my life that has passed while getting a play that's been in my brain for 5 years. Not as long as 'King of Children' but you know. Ideas are ready when they are ready.

Bothered

2010-12-02T13:33:00.002-06:00

I was invited to an event on facebook today that has me deeply bothered. It's actually, I guess, in the end, NOT that big of a deal, and I have other things to worry about like planning my wedding and National PlayREWRITING Month and such, but, this has stuck with me all day, and it's actually been something that has bothered me for a while, so I guess I will just get it off my chest.

What do you do when you are dealing with a theatre reviewer who doesn't seem to just NOT get it, but is actually a terrible writer and should be canned by the paper she works for? Furthermore, what do you do when your theatre friends openly make fun of her on the internets and then invite you to a holiday party specifically to make MORE fun of the reviewer?

I won't mention names, but some of you may know who I am talking about. She writes these reviews that basically read like 3rd grade book reports. I am not being mean--it's the truth of the matter. And as long as I was involved in theatre and local writing in my hometown, she was there. And she has gotten worse over the years and now it's just laughable how terrible her writing is, but because she's been with the local writing scene for SO LONG, no one is going to can her. Honestly, if I could post a sample here, you would understand. But really, suffice to say, 3rd grade book report might actually be a generous description.

Now, I will openly admit to rolling my eyes when I read one of her reviews and I get a good giggle out of them, and I sometimes will find myself enraged because when I was still around, I couldn't get the local writing community to EVER let me write a theatre review, even though I know what I'm talking about and would write one that people wouldn't snicker at at least. So I have definitely participated in the being annoyed at this particular writer thing, but what I was invited to today kind of took it to a whole new level.

Actually, there's been a steady increase to this whole new level. As my friends would post reviews of the shows they were involved with, and inevitably this woman's writing would come into play, more and more of my friends would become more and more loose about what they would say about her openly on the internet. Some of it has been downright embarrassingly mean.

But creating a holiday party dedicated SOLELY to making fun of this writer, and actually digging up her works to have read at the party (and this goes into her own theatre writing too not just her journalistic endeavors), with the sole purpose of making fun of her, well, I am a bit nauseated by the whole thing.

Part of me is like, I don't want to burn bridges. Whether or not I like someone in the business, and whether or not I think that person is talented or full of crap, I don't think that sort of thing really needs to be on the internet. It's like with naked pictures--they will be there forever. SOMEONE will be able to find them. And I kind of feel like it's infantile and petty to advertise it. I mean, I know theatre, in general, is a gossipy bunch; they like to say mean things and back stab. I've been there, hell, I'll admit to doing it myself. We are all only human. But I guess what I'm saying is, for God's sake, keep it in the Green Room and off the internet, where it could come back to haunt you one of these days.

When I was at Iowa, my first contacts with theatre and writing for the stage was through No Shame Theatre. I loved it. I was obsessed with it. I knew the politics of this particular group and how to stay in the 'in' group at the time. I was still young and just starting out, and it's hard to not get sucked into a peer pressure situation.

There was a guy who would do pieces there sometimes. I won't mention his name, but he had a name that was a famous person's name--and really, he wasn't as cool as his name would indicate. He was young and troubled--he once told one of the members of the No Shame board after asking this person to read one of his scripts to not say anything bad about it, or he would hold it inside for three days and explode.

This, to me, did not denote stability.

But some of the people I was involved in No Shame with would encourage him to be there and write, and perform, not because they were being encouraging and inclusive, but because they wanted to have a good laugh on the part of this troubled young man. I would have no part of it, mostly because I kept envisioning what would happen when he realized that everyone there was just making fun of him all along, and it had to do with him showing up with a gun and killing us all.

I feel like it's a very similar situation, and I refuse to participate. Funny part? Yeah, I'm posting this on the internet. I don't know why I wanted to post it here, but it feels good to get it out of my system.

I think the part that bothers me the most is that no one is keeping this on the downlow. To me, it seems like if you are going to make fun of someone who can review your shows, regardless of how badly they are reviewed, you shouldn't burn that bridge. Because if I were an editor of a paper or involved with putting together shows or something, I might think twice if I saw something like this. Maybe it doesn't matter as much when you're in a small town and everyone knows everyone, but I feel like your rep in theatre will follow you everywhere.

Am I wrong? Maybe I should just go back to wedding planning.

Almost to the end of NaPlWriMo 2010

2010-11-27T08:45:00.003-06:00

This has been my third year as a participant of naplwrimo and my second as forums moderator. It's been a strange year. Not bad, of course, because any month where you give yourself a chance to write a whole play is great. This year was just a lot different from the last two.

First, the play I am writing. I didn't really know until a couple weeks before exactly what I was going to work on. I changed my mind about four times before I finally settled on Mine. I was completely enthralled by the Chilean miner story that happened a month ago or so, and one particular story I read about the families and people living in Camp Hope really made me start thinking. And the story just sort of fell together. I was resisting the urge to work again with something Latin or Ancient Greek as far as the structure and such went, since Highway to Hades was so hard on me the first year I did NaPlWriMo, but the more I worked on the play, the more obvious it became that this is where the play wanted to go. I am now on page 71, and I am four days and four pages from the end of the month. I am trying to figure out how to get to the 75th page without padding the play. Doing some research this morning may have really helped, so we will see what happens.

And moderating this year has been very different. The creator of NaPlWriMo, Dorothy, had to step back this year because of graduate school, and a lovely lady named Elizabeth has taken over her role. There were a few things that we weren't up to speed on, but that's okay. There's bound to be a few bumps in a changeover of power, so to say. The thing that has been bothering me a bit this year is how frakking quiet the boards have been this year. During the countdown to November last year, I got a TON of responses, but this year, it was like pulling teeth. And we did pick up with a lot of conversation at the beginning of the month, but things have gotten super quiet and it's kind of hard to deal with in a way. It's more fun when there's a lot of people involved and conversational. I just have to know that every year is not going to be the same, even when a lot of the same people are involved. Life does happen. It's just hard when you feel like you're talking to yourself and when you feel that maybe you said something wrong and everyone hates you. The fiance told me that he feels like this sometimes when he is online teaching and has to do forum responses and hardly anyone talks--it's just part of the game, nothing you did, nothing you can do, you know?

As far the future of NaPlWriMo, I am very excited for a few things that we have thought of. Next year I would like to do more virtual write-ins. We did one this year, and even though there weren't a lot of people, it was fun. Maybe weekly virtual write-ins and then mini ones during the last week. We will see.

In 2011, I believe we are going to do a National Play REWRITING Month, hopefully to get the writers to come back to their work in a couple months to revisit the work and try to shape it up. I like this idea but I have NO IDEA how to make it work. I know my own rewriting process, but I don't have a clue about how to lead a rewriting group. I guess in the end it's not that much different from leading a playwriting group, but still. It's just new so I'm a little like, uh, what am I doing and why do I feel qualified?

I decided I am going to do Script Frenzy in April in order to try and figure out how to make us different from them, which is something Elizabeth had mentioned before. It will be a good challenge for me, but it's mostly for research. It would figure if I finally wrote the play I had always wanted to write through Script Frenzy. :)

National Playwriting Month 2010

2010-10-16T16:52:00.002-05:00

http://www.naplwrimo.org/node/453

This is the second day of my 26 day countdown to National Playwriting Month 2010. I am moderating again this year, and I thought I was going to work on two different plays, and now I have settled, for the moment, on a play entitled 'Mine'. I will write more about it when I sit down tomorrow and really hammer the details out and sketch an outline for the characters. I am really excited about this year, and please, if you know someone who you think might be interested in joining us this year, forward this to them. Link to my page and Naplwrimo.org. This project is very near and dear to my heart. I started it the first year I moved here, and it's really helped sustain me here as far as writing goes. It would mean a lot to me if the word got spread.

National Playwriting Month isn't just about writing a play in 30 days. The real deeper meaning is underneath it. It's about giving yourself a gift to be a writer. In a world where we get pulled away from writing and are distracted by other responsibilities, those of us who are and claim to be writers can find ourselves NOT being true to our nature. And the gift of driving yourself insane writing a play in 30 days is the best gift you can give yourself as a writer.

Full Moon

2010-09-23T18:41:00.002-05:00

I've been feeling all bleh and blocky with my writing, and then I realized it was the autumn equinox.

A lot of people find the full moon to be the time of intense creativity, but for me, it signals a huge upheaval. Stuff just don't want to stick. I keep tossing the spaghetti of my thoughts to the wall and it doesn't stick.

I can't even do figure of speech right.

But then I came along this on my twitter feed, from my newly subscribed to twitter page, advice to writers:

Sometimes writer's block means you haven't yet figured out what to say, not a problem with how to say it. (via @susanorlean) about 7 hours ago via Tweetie for Mac

Yeah, that's probably it.

Time Changes

2010-09-19T08:33:00.003-05:00

I am working on getting a lot of submissions out for the rest of the year due to www.naplwrimo.org starting up strong next month for me. It's funny to think a month long project starts the month before, but hey, that's how it works. I have lost count of how many packages I have put together at this point, but I think I got about 7 going out tomorrow, thanks to the fiance going to the post office. It's telling when the postal workers are starting to get to know me by first name.

One of the plays I am submitting now is called 'Time Changes'. I don't think I've talked much about this play on here. It's been in a 'finished' state for a while now, since before I started the blog. But I've been thinking about this play a lot recently because I am submitting it, and I'm realizing it's a problem play. The synopsis is as follows:

There is no 'Peace in the Valley' for DEBBIE WALKER, the organist and music director for New Faith Church. Her family is growing apart as her husband, HOLLIS, becomes more and more obsessed with saving his father’s--and now his--church, and as her 16 year old daughter, ELLIOT becomes more sullen, angry and rebellious as Hollis forbids her from seeing her boyfriend, TRAVIS, and his ‘devil’s music and ways’.

A difficult and painful choice from her past comes back to haunt her as she discovers she and HOLLIS have one week to turn things around for the church before it might be closed down.

When an opportunity to save New Faith rises out of the crisis of her secrets being revealed, DEBBIE must decide what to do. She thought that time would bury the past, but she's come to realize that time changes everything--hearts, memories and lives.

Funny enough, this play started out inspired by '1985' by A Simple Plan. Then my experiences growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian household where my love for hair metal was discouraged in varied and sundry ways by my mother as 'devil music' wrapped up in it, and then I had this play.

I think this play is going to have a hard time finding a world premiere because it's too religious possibly for mainstream theatres, but it contains too much swearing and bad stuff for churches. It straddled this line that I think is going to be a hard one for theatres and churches to deal with. Frankly, I don't think I wrote a 'Christian' play. I just wrote the play I was given. It has Christian themes to it, but I don't think it's mutually exclusive.

Someone remind me of this when I keep getting rejections.

The possibility of the 'it's too Christian/it's too secular' argument is one that has been bothering me for a while. It hasn't come up directly yet, and maybe I'm borrowing trouble and the reason the play hasn't been produced yet is because it actually sucks, but it's something to be thought of. I just continue to think about it, and wonder if this is really something I should be concerned with.

Any other playwrights out there have similar issues? Chris Leyva, I'm looking at you!

Steamrollin'

2010-09-12T09:14:00.002-05:00

After August, two things happen for me.

1. Things get a little stagnant. No reason why exactly, but everything seems to stall out. It's like summer is hanging on and then it's September and it should start getting cooler, because HELLO, the leaves are starting to fall in the backyard, but it's still almost 100 degrees. Southern weather is weird. And then I start getting a longing for wearing sweaters and skirts with tights and hot chocolate, but the weather isn't cooperating with my cravings, so I just have to wait. And waiting is hard.

2. Things start steamrolling toward the end of the year. The last four months of the year always take me by surprise with everything I have to do. This is true for most people but foremost in my mind are two things that usually are, submissions and National Playwriting Month, but this year, I have an additionally poorly scheduled trip home.

I am trying to get my submissions done for the rest of the year if I can. I have a lot of snail mail packages but some of them are email packages and I am going to try and get all of them taken care of in the next month. There will be more submissions, but after work, my Excel class, planning for NaPlWriMo and having a home life somewhat, all submissions for me sort of stop from the middle of October to the end of November.

I will be forums moderator for NaPlWriMo again this year and I am very excited about it and my own project for it. I haven't gotten with Elizabeth, the new person running NaPlWriMo, about what to do with the site yet, so I haven't posted my information about my project, but I can here, so here it is.

"30 Days of Wright"--in the spirit of Suzan-Lori Parks 365 Days/365 Plays, I am going to write a new scene or short play everything day for the 30 days of November. This is going to be an extra challenge considering that I will be on vacation for ten days of the month, but i am going to do what I can with it. I am going to do at least the page minimum for the month and everything will be brand new. I'm a Rebel Rhino, yeah, but I am hoping that this will work out to give me some new beginnings for myself to use in the future. I started a similar project a couple years ago, and it definitely gave me a lot of work with and think about.

So if I'm quiet the rest of the year, you now know why.

Augustend

2010-08-19T08:21:00.002-05:00

Things have been slow going as far as my writing goes. I have a couple things I'm working on because I need to do some submission work with them, but for the most part, I'm doing the busy work of making packages, writing letters, wrangling synopses, etc.

We decided to get rid of cable about two weeks ago and rely on Netflix and the internets for television. Honestly, it's like cable never even left--we still watch the same stuff--The Simpsons, Law and Order--but the main difference has been that we are able to get whole seasons of shows and really plow through them.

Which leads me to Breaking Bad. We've watched all the Breaking Bad we can until season 3 comes out on DVD, which is God knows when. I try not to talk about television on here--I don't know why--they are scripts, they are sometimes well written, sometimes not, but for some reason, I always feel like television is somehow beneath acknowledgment--you know, the boob tube, brain drainer, etc. But I have seen some pretty amazing television in the last six months or so, with some pretty amazing character development, incredible writing, tight construction and some of the best acting I've ever seen.

Breaking Bad is not a show for everyone. It's gritty and it depicts serious drug abuse, violence and death. One thing I love about it is that it's real. Walter White is an every day dude--a high school chemistry teacher, about to turn 50, managed to have a baby on the way with his wife, Skylar, has a son with Cerebral Palsy already who is a student at the high school he works at, and he's pretty straight laced--and then--BOOM--inoperable lung cancer, which will cost lots of money to treat. The next thing you know, he's making and dealing meth to secure his family's financial future. And the next thing you know, all sorts of insanity is going on and they are going places in this show that just make you scream and kind of freak out and it's super intense. And then there's Bryan Cranston--seriously the best actor. I watched him on Malcolm in the Middle and he was pretty amazing on there, but there was something about him that just said that there was more depth to him as an actor than he was given on that show. And he gets it in Walter White. I fall a little more in love with him as an actor every time I see him on the show.

But what I really want to talk about is the character development and writing and plotting. The characters have been extremely well thought out--everyone has his or her own way of speaking, a point of view and secrets. And the secrets are fun and surprising, and real. Love it. The writing is tight--great lines, real real real scenarios, amazing. And the plotting is tight. SUPER TIGHT. I am not certain I have ever seen anything so tightly and beautifully plotted that wasn't a movie. And the way it's filmed is gorgeous. New Mexico is a gorgeous state and they exploit that at every turn.

Breaking Bad has given me a lot to think about as a writer. There's these wonderful ten minute or so extras on the DVD called 'Inside Breaking Bad', which give an perspective of the episode that is pretty great. I would give a lot of things to just be a fly on the wall in the writer's room during a season--I feel like I could learn so much.

The cliff hanger of the second season is hardcore--they did an amazing job of showing tidbits from the last episode of the season throughout the second season. Lots of red herrings but in the end, it all snuck up and made sense.

That is what I want to do with my writing--complete characters, great dialogue and tight plotting. I have a long way to go, but I think I at least have an idea of what to aspire for.

Garage Sale

2010-08-10T07:51:00.002-05:00

We're having a garage sale this weekend to get rid of some unwanted items. Our apartment has been a complete disaster due to getting ready for this thing. There's Heroclix all over the living room, boxes of random clothes in the garage, and tons of boxes with loads of priced crap just ready and waiting to go clutter someone else's house.

And the major thing I am getting rid of is my computer from college.

It's a Dell and it was probably the bottom of the line when I got it, but it was the best I could afford at the time. And since I didn't game or anything, it didn't have to be the best thing ever. About a year ago, the internet card pooped the bed, and I inherited Bill's old laptop--my first ever. Yesterday and today I was spending time going through the computer to get rid of stuff on it--outdated programs, any personal information, my docs, and my writing.

Most of the stuff I had moved to my external portable harddrive when Ollie first decided it didn't like the internets anymore. But there were these discs I had to go through.

This computer has a floppy disc drive--not the ginormous ones, but the little hard discs that were just starting to go out of vogue when I was still at Iowa. I thought that maybe I would toss in the ones I clean off as a total package kind of thing for the computer--along with the awesome printer/scanner/copier that I can't use anymore either because it doesn't have drivers for the current version of Windows I am running.

Going through those discs was like looking at a photo album--but instead of pictures (well, there were some) it was mostly short stories and a lot of No Shame pieces that never made it to the stage, as well as all my exercises for Playwriting 1 and 2. I was VERY excited to get all these things onto Lorby, my portable harddrive. Now I could upload the very first No Shame piece I wrote way back in my first year at Iowa. It was presumed lost to the annuls of time, and it was probably better that way, but I will upload it anyway. I found several other plays and bits and pieces of things and I was struck by one thing.

This is a girl who is rough, but she's got a heart and a pen, and that, in the end, is what matters. I grouse about money for graduate school and about being impatient about my writing, but when I look back at the sheer volume of stuff I was writing at the time, it's mind-boggling. Not all of it was good--a lot of it was quite bad. But I am glad I got to see it. A lot of it has been deleted now--especially the stuff that I wrote for my fiction classes, but it was wonderful to see myself in a portrait of writerly progression. I can look back and see where I came from and realize I have come a long long way in a short amount of time. This is still something to be proud of, and build on.

Ollie is pretty much ready to go I think. Honestly, I won't miss the clunky heavy monitor and the tower, I do much prefer the laptop, Bad Horse, I am writing this on. But it was a wonderful, precious thing to see where my roots came from--and continue to grow.

....tries again...

2010-07-29T16:52:00.003-05:00

I am still in that weird Sisyphean place with my writing, where I am making progress, but every time I get to the top, well, you know what happens.

I am so impatient. I want to get somewhere else with my writing and I don't know how to get there. I have a reading I am working on for myself at the library in a month, and I haven't quite gotten that bad boy together. But other than that, I have nothing else going on, except writing, and more writing, and trying to get someplace to take one of my plays.

I feel stupid sometimes for complaining about this--of all the silly things to complain about--not getting over that hump. I just want to go there, you know? Ugh, pity party of 1!

I like the LOLcat I put on this point--LOLcats are funny, first of all, and I like that the kitteh is trying again. And that's what I will do, I will just try again. And I will be so happy the day I get that rock over the top of the hill.

'Sand and Water' back on the back burner

2010-07-24T08:12:00.000-05:00

There's still a LOT left to do with 'Sand and Water' but I think I need to pop it back on the stove and let it simmer a bit. I am so not wanting to do this--I can see where I want the play to be and where I think the play wants to go, but there's a big chasm between what it is now and where I see it going. And this is going to require a lot of character work that just needs to simmer. I am impatient about being impatient.

But that's okay, because now I am going to work on the first of my Jonathan Coulton inspired works, 'Blue Sunny Day'.

Laurel Snyder: Be a Critic of Critics

2010-07-23T07:06:00.003-05:00

I don't often do this, and maybe I should do this more, but today I was looking at the amazing poet/children's writer/awesome mom, Laurel Snyder's, blog, and this is what I found:

http://laurelsnyder.com/2010/07/20/be-a-critic-of-critics/

She's says pretty much everything I've ever thought about trusting one's self and voice and listening to critics. This was a BIG issue when I was in college. When I was in the Undergrad Fiction Workshop, I was not very popular with my fellow workshoppers because I was fairly brutal when it came to my criticism of their work. I came from the position of, well, we were all chosen to be here, so why not tear some stories up and help each other make them better? It wasn't personal--but it became personal with some of the other people in the workshop, so I was basically told to back off. That made me a bit more of an egg-shell-stepper when it came to the Undergrad Playwright's Workshop.

Now, out in the real world, I would pretty much give ANYTHING to have any kind of criticism--at least it would mean that someone is reading my work. But I continue to plug on, and when I edit, I try to give it an outsider's eye as much as possible. Being both attached and detached from the work is pretty hard, but somehow I am making it work.

Sand and Water, Draft 2, 'finished'

2010-07-20T08:28:00.004-05:00

'Finished'. It's never finished.

But I have gone through each of the 7 scenes I currently have for 'Sand and Water' and made some excellent changes and cuts and have a LOT of work to do coming up. I have one particularly difficult scene that I am NOT sure how I am going to write. But I have a good feeling about this play--it's different from anything I've written, and I sincerely hope I get it running along good soon so I can actually submit it next year. 'Sand and Water' 2011!

I am simply amazed at how well this new editing process has worked. What a wonderful new thing to stick in my tool belt. I am humbled at how quickly things have tumbled out since I made my confession of what was wrong. Funny enough, while I wish I had done it sooner, it wouldn't have worked sooner than it did. There's always regrets, because we all are only human, but I feel like the universe has granted me the grace to be accepting of that truth.

In the end though, the regrets are still there, I just have to let it dissolve like solid stone in the song that has given this play it's name--'Sand and Water' by Beth Nielsen Chapman.

I first heard this song on the episode of 'E.R.' of the same name. It was the second episode of the seventh season. I believe it must have been when I was living with Casey, Michael and Jason in college. TNT would should two episodes of 'E.R.' every weekday in the morning and I would be able to watch them before going to my first class three days a week. It's a beautiful song, and it stuck with me all this time. I tried to use it as inspiration before, but it just wouldn't work. Not until this play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G6lIpWQXhw

this is a youtube video featuring Beth Nielsen Chapman performing live with different water footage as the video. The quality is kind of eh but at least it's not a 'Charmed' montage.

All alone I didn't like the feeling
All alone I sat and cried
All alone I had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water, and a million years gone by

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I heal this heart of sorrow
All alone I raise this child
Flesh and bone, he's just
Bursting towards tomorrow
And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by

lyrics by Beth Nielsen Chapman "Sand and Water"
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/nielsen-chapman-beth/sand-and-water-14861.html

The First Step to Recovery

2010-07-17T05:26:00.003-05:00

Apparently admitting the problem with my writing a few days ago has had success so far. I've managed to edit 12 and a half pages of the 24 pages I have so far--half way there!

It's a funny thing about half way there--there's a lot that isn't in this play yet that needs to be. I have italicized notes all over the current draft about bits and pieces that need to be put into the play and a giant one is coming. I don't know how much it will add to the play right now, or even if I will finish it right now, but things are definitely coming together better.

I combined a shorter scene with a longer scene in such a way that it flows together better. I am much happier with the edits so far with this play than i have been in a long time. Pretty soon I get to write about the seductive beauty of implosion--I'm really looking forward to that.

In Progress

2010-07-13T08:18:00.002-05:00

I am beginning to think a bit differently about the editing process.

I used to just think that the editing process was exactly the same for every play I've ever edited. Sometimes I would have to bust out some extra tools--particularly The Dramatic Writer's Companion by Will Dunne http://books.google.com/books?id=tBECSuzm-VEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+dramatic+writer%27s+companion&source=bl&ots=ruBPSKWS-B&sig=PuJ2ZqeL-lnonh-ul4BHqstpXLI&hl=en&ei=Wmg8TICnDcKAlAfLl5ChAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false. This book is quickly becoming a staple I take with me when I edit, along with several pens of different colors, highlighters, sticky notes, a couple notebooks and the draft I am working on.

I already realize that the writing process is not a guarantee. Just because I wrote a play before doesn't mean I will be able to do it. It's starting over every time. You just need to trust the characters and yourself to take you where you need to go. And now I'm starting to realize that the editing process may be just as unique.

Using a beat-by-beat technique for each scene and then promptly entering the edits is very important to the process of writing 'Sand and Water'. There's a lot of ground to cover in this play--there's research on Frank Lloyd Wright, his last design that was never built, at least until this play existed where it's built in the stage world, aplastic anemia, confidence tricks, and building implosion--not to mention the personal stories of each of the four characters. There's a lot that still needs to be crammed into the play, but in such a way that it doesn't hinder the story. There's a lot of editing that still needs to happen. I am assuming that there will be at least three more drafts of this play before it's ready to be sent out. This draft will be significant though. There will probably be one more draft that really works with the structure of the play and then I will work on tightening things.

Of course, now that I committed this to writing that will soon be published on the Internets, I am sure something will happen to ruin it, but I'm not backing down.

It's been three long months of nothing. It's time for some time of something.

winning the war

2010-07-12T06:54:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I actually edited an entire scene from 'Sand and Water'--this after pretty much false starts and farting around for three months. I don't know if it means that the lull is over or not, but I am going to keep running with it--you never know when it's going to just up and dry up.

And it was hard. HARD. I sat at Panera, laptop open in case I needed to look stuff up during the course of my work, with the notebook and a hard draft in front of me, and several pens in different colors and I did something I hadn't done since I took Directing I in college--I broke a scene down into beats. I identified what each character wanted and if I had trouble deciphering it, or if everything that was written could be subtext, I corrected it. And I think it made a huge difference. And I put the edits in right after I was done with the scene, rather than waiting until I got done with all the scenes. And that is my least favorite part of editing, so I'm glad I did it that way. I don't think this is going to get any easier for this play--'Sand and Water' is a heavy, dense sucker--but I think it's going to help. And it gives me something to add to my editing toolbelt.

I know this entry makes it sound like I don't like editing, but I have come to grow rather fond of it. It's great fun to lop off parts of the play that just aren't working and making it better, stronger. That's not sarcasm--I truly enjoy it. I don't like having to cut characters or lines, especially if they were well put together--sometimes I save them in a file for other things in case something comes up in a future play and it needs just that certain something. But otherwise, I like editing. The streamlining--it's very enjoyable. And it allows me to get in better touch with how I'm writing this play, because, as we all know, writing one play doesn't mean you will know how to write another--but it's helpful to have ideas of how to approach it.

Enjoy the Silence

2010-07-11T03:31:00.002-05:00

It's been almost three months since I last posted.

I've been blocked, mostly by my own doing, for the last three months. I've had bursts of writing here and there, bubbles of editing, some new ideas, a bit of scribbling, but for the most part I've been not writing.

I'm trying to think of this as a good thing.

My friend, Sarah, had this to say on the topic in gchat the other day:

I'm really glad I could help
my friend taught me something really valuable a couple years ago...he says he doesn't think of notwriting periods as blocks, but as gestations
that something is forming
5:05 PM and I think things generally come like that, in cycles. if you're not writing you're reading, you're watching things, you're conversing with people, and your subconscious is soaking it all in

And I think she's right, and thereby, her friend is right.

Ordinarily, I usually get WAY down on myself for not writing. I make myself crazy, beating myself up for not writing, but in reality, I probably need a break. I am feeling burnt out when it comes to writing.

I am, however, going to take a good few hours today (later, after I go back to bed and get back up) to write at Panera. For some reason, Panera is usually good to me as a writer. Let's hope that remains true!

Part of the block is this whole getting into Hollins thing, then not being able to afford it, and then trying to figure out, with all the OTHER personal life crap going on, how I will afford it next year, and the odds are looking not in my favor.

Part of me almost wishes I hadn't let myself so easily get talked into applying, that way I wouldn't have gotten in and wouldn't have to deal with the fact that I am good enough to get in, but can't afford it. Hollins is not a cheap school. Todd Ristau, the director of the program, pulled a lot of strings to get me in, and get me a scholarship, but as a wife-to-be, I now have a family to think of, even if it's only a family of three cats and a fiance. The point is, real life has gotten in the way, and as much as I try to keep real life off this thing, keep it positive and uplifting, I can't in this case.

Hence the silence.

So I am going to try and enjoy the silence. It's hard for me, but I have crocheting to keep me creative while things are working in my brain. Everything will come out in due time, and I feel like there's something HUGE in there just trying to get out, that I've reached a plateau of some kind and I can see where I want to go from there, but I just can't figure out how to get there.

So I will write when it's time to do so. I will keep with the false starts and the winding hallways that lead nowhere, or at least seem to lead nowhere right now. I will find the way to the next level, it's just going to be frustrating until then.

English is so Imprecise

2010-05-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

I never thought I would write this about chocolate (because if you know me, I'm a Chocoholic of the First Order), but I feel indifferent, no, disinterested, no, false, no...see, English is so imprecise. There's got to be a word for what I feel in some other language, like schadenfreude in German. Maybe I need to make one up.

At any rate, 'Chocolate Cake' has evoked feelings in me that I've experienced about my work before, but the stronger versions of these feelings usually make me put the play down for a month or so and come back when I've had the space and time to work on others things, and let that one simmer on the back burner.

But this play--it feels like I'm going through the motions, sort of. Like there's no real emotion in it. Like I don't care, but do. Like maybe if I keep working on it, I will break through to it. So that's what I'm doing--keeping up on it until I know for a fact it's time to give it a break. I'll know when it is, and it's not now. Maybe when I complete all the scenes.

The characters are evolving fine, the plot is falling into place, with the exception of a few things here and there.

Actually, I'm not sure the problem is even the play itself--I think it's something else entirely. It stems from getting into graduate school and then not being able to come up with the money to pay for it--and student loans are out of the question. So you know, there's that. I feel like my work needs another step up at this point--like I'm writing in a vacuum. I know there's a cure for it. I need to just present my own work, and I am working on that. The only way my work is going to improve is to see it up on its feet, and if I can't find a theatre who will help me out, I just need to do the work myself. And I have no one to blame but myself for not getting this going sooner. There's no time like the present.

So I think my feelings of strange indifference for this play isn't about the play in general, but about my career as a playwright, which feels stalled out right now. I am doing the right things--I join the right organizations, I send my work out, I get my work rejected, I write, I write, I write--but it's been five years since I left UIowa, and I guess I expected that since I was going at such a high rate of speed as far as writing and getting published and all that that I would be much further than I am right now.

So, obviously I just need to get off my duff and do what I need to do. It's that simple.

(dis)alignments

2010-05-15T20:01:00.002-05:00

There must be something strange in the stars the last few days for me and technology and the current play I am working on entitled 'Chocolate Cake'.

I managed to lose edits I had already put in and then had Final Draft freak out when I tried to over-write the file of the current edit with a new edit. To be safe, I went ahead and saved it to two different drives and then emailed a copy to myself.

Short answer: technology hates me.

It's a bummer, because this play is sort of coming together too. Losing those edits was an annoying thing that happens, but I fixed it and now I can move beyond it.

I have another play that I am working on, called 'Blue Sunny Day'. This, along with the project I am going to work on at some point this summer with my fiance, Bill, is the first of my unofficial Jonathan Coulton project.

I am also writing a column for www.getyourgoodnews.com about fan fiction. I have an extensive history with fan fiction, and while I am slightly embarrassed by some of what I used to write, it really sculpted me as the writer I am today. There's nothing wrong with cutting your writing teeth so to speak on writing stories about My Little Ponies and rock bands you loved and 'The X Files' (which, really, is the only real fan fiction I ever wrote, although I have a killer idea for a sequel to 'Dr. Horrible's Sing a Long Blog', which will remain in the back of my mind until I am able to find someone to help me write songs). The point is, we all start somewhere, and some of us have fan fiction skeletons in our respective closets.

Anyway, this is the closest I get to fan fiction these days, writing plays based on songs. It's actually something I've done for quite a while. 'Sexy Messiah' is based on a Stuart Davis song, about the next coming of Christ as a teenage girl; 'Man out of Time' was based loosely on the Elvis Costello song of the same name, 'Human Girl' will, someday, be written and is based on another Stuart Davis song. Stuart has been a big influence on me as a writer, but Jonathan Coulton is coming in a close second.

Stuart and Jonathan have a lot in common--brilliant song writing, amazing presentation of stories. Love them both.

My musing is this: how much of a work I write based on or influenced by say something by Stuart Davis or Jonathan Coulton is mine and one of theirs? What are the legal ramifications?

Also, how did I get from 'Chocolate Cake' to a discussion of the legality of my writing about a song someone else wrote?

Bill was right, I am good at holding about 50 conversations in my brain at once.

something's always wrong

2010-05-08T20:40:00.002-05:00

The title is true, but isn't true. I am writing. It has been tough, but I am sticking it out. And things are coming through. There's the moments of tingly excitement that come with a breakthrough and a piece falls into place, but somehow, it rings false.

And then I start to wonder things like...
Who has the wrong name?
Who isn't supposed to be in this play?
Should this character NOT be a gay man of the cloth?
Should this character have mother and God issues that are unresolved?
And what's the deal with atheism? Like, I don't have a problem with it, but how can I make this play less of an issue play and more of an actual play? I don't want it to be coming down on the side of atheism is bad or believing in God is bad, because that is not an opinion I need to concern myself with in this play. Or is it?

This is the kind of neurotic behavior and thought pattern I get into with plays. I get energy from a controversial subject, with setting the characters loose with their own issues going up against each others' wants, needs and desires, and then when they run off in contrary to me directions, I kind of freak.

Somehow, I can't seem to keep in mind that I am NOT really in control of the people of my play. They come to me, in whatever shape they are in, if they are drawn off of someone I know, a character trait, an idea, a comment I overheard someone make in the cafeteria, or something said directly to me in a small cubicle in the Scientology building on Hollywood Boulevard about how my father would have been alive still if he had had Scientology, somehow, something creates the character. And then as that character develops, they become like teenagers and go off in their own directions and become writers, drug addicts, alcoholics, doctors, lawyers, mothers, teachers, as well as any other number of things their parents did or didn't want them to become. At any rate, they become their own people. And losing this control is terrifying, because I don't know where the play is going to end up after that.

And that's okay. I've been writing and dealing with character issues like this since I was at least 12 years old. It's been over two decades' one would think I would stop having 'The Fear'. It doesn't ever go away.

And the Scientology story is best saved for another time. But it happened between my junior and senior year of high school, and it just NOW figured out a way into my play.

Everything and everyone is in danger of being in a play. You have been forewarned.

The Writing Life

2010-04-18T19:30:00.002-05:00

I got word tonight that the first column I wrote for The Writing Life will be posted tomorrow. Please check out the site!

http://www.getyourgoodnews.com/toni.html

Meta-Grafi

2010-04-05T09:03:00.002-05:00

I was asked in I think November to write a column for http://www.getyourgoodnews.com/. In another life, I was a journalist. I have a AA in journalism, and I was really into it for a long time. The reasons I am not a journalist anymore are best saved for another post, but suffice to say, fiction writing was calling me much louder than journalism. And then playwriting called me much louder than fiction.

But this is not about that, this is about a column I am working on.

I don't know what it's going to be called. This has been bothering me. I am one of those writers who have a hard time moving forward without a character with the correct name or a play with the right name. These things might change, but I've had characters who would literally not say or do anything until I called them by their correct name.

I was thinking 'Drunk on Writing' from a Ray Bradbury quote. It just didn't sit perfectly, so I just left it that until today. Yesterday, at work, I had my notebook for the site on the desk at work, and my co-supervisor, Dennis, asked me what that was about. And I told him I was going to do a column about writing. He said, 'you're writing about writing?'. And then it hit me, 'meta-writing'! LOVE IT.

I realized that 'meta' is from Greek, so I looked up what 'writing' is in Greek: Grafi. Meta-Grafi.

I realize it might not be the title, but I like the idea that I am writing about writing and exposing the underpinnings. Or under-pennings. That might work too. We will see. In the end, it will probably be up to my editor.

Speaking of whom, when I was still a journalist, he was my editor. Sean Leary was the entertainment editor of The Rock Island Argus/Daily Dispatch, and I wrote for him for years. I started in high school writing album reviews and when Sean came on board, I started writing full length stories about music and such. Eventually I wrote a column about local music called 'Q.C. Underground' and then I was an intern for the summer before my last year at Black Hawk College in 1999. Sean and I always had a really good working relationship, and after he left The Argus, he started http://www.getyourgoodnews.com/ and he asked me to write a column. So here I am.

I finished my first draft this morning and I am going to edit it down about 400 words (I always wrote VERY long) and send it off to Sean. I have about 25 ideas written down in a list in my notebook. I am very excited about this new venture. It will be good to get back to writing regularly with a deadline (even though I blew the first one by MONTHS--sorry about that if you're reading this, Sean!), which is what I miss the most about journalism. Deadlines usually keep me on track really well, so that will be good.

And writing about writing more than just on here will be great. I will post my columns as they go up on the site.

For now, if you would, visit http://www.getyourgoodnews.com/ and give Sean some love. My stuff will be up there very soon.

wrestling with that angel, subtext

2010-03-31T08:52:00.003-05:00

Yep, it's an ongoing problem. At the risk of repeating myself, I looked back at other entries I have written about subtext, and everything I was going to say has already been covered.

Except this one.

In 'Sand and Water' a pattern emerged that has emerged before in my work, and rather than think it's a bad pattern, something occurred to me.

In the first drafts (maybe up to 12--I've gone there before), I can write whatever I want. Very few people see it, if any. Mostly they are for my eyes only, and a select few I can trust to give me a good opinion. And good opinion doesn't mean saying 'I liked it'. The few I have read my early draft work give me good constructive points on things--and they usually echo what I think myself.

In these early drafts, I noticed the subtext bobbing right to the top, and the characters say it right out loud. Before a few moments ago, I would get annoyed with myself and think, why, why, WHY can't I just bury that crap? I think maybe I need to realize I have to know myself for sure what the subtext is, and then I can bury it. So after my first first first draft, I spend my time grabbing the subtext and figuring out how to bury it. And this comes from knowing my characters well. And mostly I've used The Dramatic Writer's Companion by Will Dunne to accomplish my knowledge of my characters. I used it for the first time a few months ago, and it was super helpful. Some of the stuff I never read again after I wrote it down, but it was fine that way. I had written it out and gotten a better handle on my characters.

So yeah, I still wrestle with subtext. It's generally a pain in the ass, but it's one of those pains in the ass that are good and help you shape your work. So I'll continue to work on burying this subtext and continue to work. Something good is coming out of it--even if it's slowly.

Sand and Water

2010-03-30T09:42:00.003-05:00

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/angela_dufresne_donahue.htm

Oh, thank God that exam is over. I am back on the horse, baby!

I'm working on 'Some Gave All' also, but 'Sand and Water' is demanding my attention as well. I have spent a long time gathering information: about the Donahue Triptych, an unbuilt house by Frank Lloyd Wright, building ships in a bottle, aplastic anemia and Frank Lloyd Wright's life.

The painting above, I found during my research. Artist Angela Dufresne painted this. And I just love it. the original building was to be in a desert in Arizona or New Mexico, on top of a plowed down set of three mountains (if I recall correctly, Wright said that he was going to put the tops back on the mountain with the house).

What I love about Dufresne's painting is that it relocates the house to the seaside, which works well for this play. Two of the characters, a husband named Andrew and a wife named Julia, came from the ocean and the desert respectively, so it was a great find.

So I'm working on characters and adding in new dialogue and am working on getting the outline of the play together, the subtext and all that good crap for the play. I love working with a play with only four characters. It's an interesting group of people. It's pretty crazy.

But after getting the certified dietary management stuff taken care of, it's great to be back writing after a month long hiatus.

Too Busy to Come Up With an Insightful Title

2010-03-21T07:38:00.002-05:00

So yeah. that picture over there--that's pretty much how things have been going for me in the last couple months. I don't often bring personal things happening into my life onto my play writing blog, but sometimes it has to happen or it will go MONTHS before I update.

My fiance, Bill, is doing a job search and we've thought we knew where we were going at least once, but we are still looking. I don't even want to say on here what is going on, but I will post once we have a better idea of where we are going. Suffice to say, the options over the last few months have looked like that picture. I shouldn't complain--it's been interesting but stressful. Things are good though.

I haven't had much of a chance to get writing done since a couple things have happened.

1. I got accepted to Hollins' playwriting MFA program. I am very excited for this. I have known all along I wanted to go to graduate school, and this program is a great choice for me. Iowa Alum, the summer onlys and location are wonderful. So wish me broken legs and stuff on that.

2. I have an exam I am taking for my other life's job. I am a certified dietary manager (pending certification). This means I have been certified to take the test and after that, providing I pass, I will be a certified dietary manager. This is good because it opens my options for jobs and money up better than anything I've done for my other life so far. I take the exam this coming Saturday so after that we are back on the wagon, friends!

I have been working on several plays, and most of them are in the research stage at the moment: 'Some Gave All', 'Better', and 'Blue Sunny Day'. I am going to pull out 'Sand and Water' and 'Grace Kelly' at some point soon, but I really want to work on 'Some Gave All'. That's the one that's really calling to me.

http://hawaii.gov/hawaiiaviation/aviation-photos/1940-1949/misc-photos-1940s

well, it was bound to happen

2010-02-21T07:36:00.002-06:00

I don't think I've talked much about feeling stuck on here. I've tried to keep this blog upbeat and positive, but sometimes it's unavoidable to deal with the opposites.

You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
because everything alive has its two sides;
word is one wing of the silence,
fire has its cold half

Pablo Neruda
XLIV
100 Hundred Love Sonnets

So yeah. I've been sending out packages left and right and I've gotten about seven rejection letters this week alone. Several of them have been extremely personal--stressing that it wasn't the play, it just didn't fit with them, and that I should submit again. Those are nice. Heck, any kind of response I get back is nice, but those are the ones that keep me going.

So when you're wondering if you got into graduate school (that was the big secret project--Hollins this coming summer), and you're getting reject letters left and right and you're struggling with several plays, one of which has you researching dead and missing soldiers, you start to question your purpose in life.

But, even thought I am feeling down about writing in general at the moment, I knew I will make it through. I have a thousand times before, and I will this time. I'll just get back to writing and plow through and I will eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Even when I think things are the worst, I still wouldn't give this up for anyone or anything (although there was times in my past where I tried to). It's sustained me and kept me going. All I need to do is give my writing the same consideration.

New Year, New Look, New Play, Same Issues

2010-02-17T12:25:00.002-06:00

I know it's nearly the end of February, but I wanted to start fresh now.

I think I've written about this play on here before, but I've started doing more research on 'Some Gave All'.

Before I get into that, I have to say--I don't understand how the plays I end up writing come to me. I was watching 'The Sixth Sense' the other day when I was cleaning up the apartment and I realized a parallel between Cole and me. Cole doesn't understand why the dead people are coming to him, and, with Malcolm's help, he finds out that they need his help. Similarly, I don't understand why the plays come to me and I don't have a Malcolm to let me know. Funny enough, there are 'dead' people who appear to me in a way--'Some Gave All' and 'Squall Lines' both have dead people in them who come back to life in some way. Part of me thinks that maybe these people have something they need to say, but then I remember that they are not real--they are characters--but what if they aren't? Yeah, these are things I think about when trying to figure out why I get the ideas I get. I try to just roll with them most of the time, but sometimes, something will come up and make me start wondering.

Anyway, back to 'Some Gave All'. I can't remember how this play came together exactly--which is strange because usually I can remember exactly how it all came together. I recall being at work and talking to Sheree about how I wanted to write a play about the current conflict in Iraq and how I wanted it to be anti-war. And then this play fell out and I have no idea how it links back to that original idea--of course, I haven't finished the play yet--I have a scant few scenes I have written as part of my personal '365 plays' project and that's it.

But now I'm learning more about POWs in the first Gulf War conflict and about Desert Storm and Desert Shield and about Iraqi and Middle Eastern fairy tales and Biblical Stories (Old Testament--like Abraham and Isaac--and about the current conflicts, and family and love and marriage, and a dead Iraqi girl who is a guide for a son looking for his father--and it's nuts. And sad. And beautiful. And I can't wait to see what falls out of it. I'm just going to let the idea guide me and I'll figure it out from there.

I know, I know

2010-01-28T09:12:00.003-06:00

It's been almost a month and I haven't made a single post. There's a reason for that, but I can't publicly say it at the moment. I can say that I had a final in a class I was taking and I'm helping a couple friends with recommendation letters, but I am writing and working on the top secret project. As soon as I can post about it, I will.

I hope 2010 is treating you all well. It's certainly been an interesting ride so far.

time flew

2010-01-10T08:04:00.002-06:00

The rest of 2009 and the first two weeks of 2010 have gotten away from me, as usual. I also have some things I can't post about here yet, but there's some exciting stuff happening for me this year. Posting will definitely occur when I can do it.

But for now, for a fellowship I am applying to, I have to write a statement of purpose--with no other guidelines.

This is not easy. I never had to write an essay to get into college or anything, so this is all new to me. I know how to be verbose--if you know me in person, you know that I can talk A LOT. And don't get me started on things I love--you and I could be here all day.

But a statement of purpose for my playwriting? Suddenly, I'm frozen up. I've spent two weeks writing things down in a notebook, trying to get a feel for what I should write. And all of it is ringing wrong. I'm afraid it's going to be too long, but I can always cut stuff. I am going to be using some things I have written in here, so I need to go through my archives. And I already realize I need to blog more...

But I am working on some things though. I got a couple new projects coming down the pike and I am currently editing 'Suburbia', which apparently I haven't picked up in two years...but it's fine. It's time now to edit it.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year!

One day left of NaPlWriMo

2009-11-29T09:17:00.003-06:00

And I have officially not made it.

I finished my play, but it's only 40 pages long--35 pages short of winning.

But, I still feel like I won.

Sure, NaPlWriMo says it's all about crossing the finish line--but I think the important finish line is not necessarily the 75 page finish line--there's something BIGGER at stake, if you can believe it.

What's important is that we created a community for such a solitary practice. We committed ourselves to working on a play and attempting to finish it. We gave ourselves the space for our practice--and that is something.

So I still feel like a winner, even though I don't get the nifty badge this year.

Up next, working on the edits for 'Sand and Water', submissions for different plays in December and January and finding someone to write a letter of recommendation for me for a workshop that's due by December 31. This is harder than one would think.

time flies!

2009-11-22T08:08:00.003-06:00

November has just flown by!

I am finished with my play for NaPlWriMo, but it's not a winner. 40 pages is not long enough, but that's okay. I still feel pretty good about it, because it's done.

So now I'm working on other plays and submissions and I was seriously chomping at the bit for it. I don't know what it is, but the only being able to really work on one play for a month makes me want to just work work work on other projects. Very strange, but it's good for focus. I'm still in NaPlWriMo as the moderator and cheerleader.

I started up a site meter right before NaPlWriMo, and I have seen people on here from ALL OVER THE PLACE! Who are you guys? Are you NaPlWriMo people? Random people? How did you find me? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Countdown Day 5: Tools of the Trade

2009-10-26T17:43:00.001-05:00

I've been a writer of some stripe since I could pick up a pencil and string words together. Perhaps before that: I recall distinctly being quite young, like 6 or so, and creating a picture book, only a couple pages long, called 'Cats at Work', mostly illustrating what my mother and father do at work all day. Cats in ties and cats in dresses vaccuuming. That was my first book.

Since then, I've become something of a kleptomaniac when it comes to nice pens. I'm not talking nice pens, like they cost $50 and have refills and fancy holders and such (although I do have a very nice wooden pen set given to me on the occasion of my bachelor's degree by my wonderful friend, Minda, and her amazing husband, Bill, two of the best friends a girl could ever ask for). I'm talking pens that leak just a little bit. Pens that have a good scent to the ink. Pens that feel good in the hand. Pens that write swiftly. And if you give me a pen to sign a form and it happens to fall into one of those categories, the odds of you getting it back are slim. Be forewarned.

I've also become a huge fan of paper in general. If you were to see my office, you would see I have nice journals, lots of those notebooks that go for 10 cents on sale during school supply season, multi-subject notebooks, strange odds and ends from Big Lots, loose leaf paper...you name it, I probably have it. It's actually becoming something of a problem.

My name is Toni. I'm addicted to office supplies. Don't get me started on labels, notecards, high lighters, folders, binders...we could be here all night.

Then there's some things that are tools that are more like habits I have developed. And one of them is a problem for national playwriting month: writing long hand. It's a habit I cultivated in college that has worked very well for me, even to this day, and even through my bout with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. There's something more primal and immediate for me about writing long hand--the paper, the pen (this is where the smell of the ink comes in). It's the tactile experience of writing that keeps me going. I've tried to type first drafts, but it's harder for me. The inspiration doesn't come; it just isn't comfortable. Handwriting my drafts means I really have NO IDEA what my page count is until I actually type it up. Last year, I tried to type it up, without editing, as I went along. Perhaps this year I will wait until the very end to type it all up. We will see.

The other is something that some of my writer friends have marveled at my ability to do, and that's watching television and listening to music with words. When I was in college and I didn't have a television, I listened to a lot of music and downloaded tons of it from the internet (shhhh, don't tell anyone!). Stuart Davis, various 80s music, Duncan Sheik, ABBA--it's all in there somewhere in my college plays. Now, it's the music of Jonathan Coulton, They Might be Giants, Paul and Storm, but added to the soundtrack is television. Project Runway, Law and Order, The Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy are all involved.

I have to have some kind of noise going on because I have this part of my brain that doesn't want to do anything but freak out and get distracted by shiny things. I call it my monkey brain--because it simply goes ape. So without some kind of noise, and some kind of noise that I am familiar with and I don't have to pay that close of attention to--I'm good to go.

So I got my giant basket of pens, a stack of notebooks, and my family guy and futurama DVDs. I am armed with my weapons for NaPlWriMo.

Are you?

Countdown: 9 Days--some thoughts on ideas

2009-10-22T20:21:00.000-05:00

So it's getting down to the single digit numbers before November 1, and as I was walking through the humid rainy Southern fall weather to my car after work a bit ago, I was trying to think of where the idea for 'In the Bunker', the play I'm going to write this year, came from. Sometimes, if I just think about it long enough, I can remember where the idea came from, but this time, I can't.

I can tell you where the inspiration to write a play about the Holocaust came from. There was a Polish-Jewish pediatrician, Janusz Korczak, who had an amazingly and achingly human story that was just begging to be told in these times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak for those interested). He had about 200 children in his orphanage's care during the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and eventually they were liquidated to Treblinka, where they died (at least we think they died--no one knows for sure, but no one saw or heard from them again after they were liquidated). Without going into great detail, Janusz was an incredibly loving, incredibly flawed, incredibly beautiful person, and his has left behind a legacy of learning about children and how they grow that is still extremely important, if not more so today. But I digress.

I wanted to write a play about him since I was introduced to him in Winter 2000, when I took a class called 'The History of the Holocaust', and he has stayed with me for going on a decade now.

So how does that relate to the Goebbels children? It was interesting, because I was thinking about these children, who grew up as the offspring of one of the biggest monsters the world has known, with their godfather being probably the most evil man who has ever existed. But they were children.

Something about them tugged at my heart. I looked beyond where they came from, who their parents and godfather were, and realized Hedda, my heroine, could very well have been me. I grew up with parents who were much older, who both had heath problems, and with a father who was an alcoholic who drank himself to sleep in his chair every night, and eventually to death. As a child, I thought this was normal, until I met the parents of my friends. I realized it was far from normal.

But these children, this life would be normal for them. They were very sheltered and had no base for what to really measure their reality against. So what was it like for them in the last 10 days of their lives? What did Hedda do? What did her siblings do? We know from history some details, but the exact details are lost to time.

What this long drawn out ramble is about is your idea for your play. If you're still looking for an idea, you can look to history, and see what lessons we need to know, and translate them through your heart and mind into something new. You can look to your own personal history, or the history of anything you're passionate about. If you love it, if it burns for you, let it set your world on fire.

Maybe you have a little something in mind, maybe, like me, you have something heavy on your heart, burning there, wishing to be put on paper. There's no time like, oh, 9 days from now, to do it.

Countdown: 10 days until November 1 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Tired

2009-10-21T18:56:00.002-05:00

Yeah, it's ten days BEFORE NaPlWriMo, and I'm already tired.

Today I ended up working a 12 hour day and I will work 3 more eight hour shifts before I am off on Sunday. I have homework, writing, crocheting of a baby blanket for Ruby due in November (not my child, because REALLY, all that would be even more insane), my fiance's job search, and my duties here And a 55 hour work week. I already said that. I'm tired.

Anyway, apologies for the rambling. The point is to not have a contest about who has more to do (like I did with some of my co-workers today), or make people feel bad for doing or not doing things, or to scare anyone off. The point is, I have grown to LOVE my life busy like this.

Ever since I started at a community college in 1996 until I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2005, through working a full time job and working at Comedy Sportz Quad Cities, all while being an improv newbie, through being cast in a play and working the current full time job, up until just about a couple weeks ago, I've been insanely busy. It seems I'm not happy unless I have about 85 things I love to do at a time.

Plus, being tired weirdly makes me feel like I'm alive.

Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones and The Long Quiet Highway, among others, says in The Long Quiet Highway:

"Recently I dorve alone from Minneapolis to New Mexico in late December, the darkest time of the year. I had to cross the souther border of Minnesota, drive straight through Iowa, across Kansas, into Oklahoma and Texas...The half moon and one evening star were directly in front of me. A train roared by on my right. The moment was over and I was tired, puling into a Best Western at ten P.M. in the town of Liberty on the Oklahoma border. What I wanted was to love all of this: my weariness, the wind lifting as I got out of the car at the Texaco....Every moment is enormous, and it is all we have...There is not a short cut from Minneapolis to New Mexico. My car had to cover every mile. We learn with every cell and with time, care, pain, and love....We all must go down that highway. Our life is the path of learning, to wake up before we die... (xii-xiii)."

Tired reminds me that I'm alive, that everything I'm doing, every moment is all I have. And being tired from doing things I love--that's the best.

So don't be afraid of being tired in November, even with a pile a mile high of everything you have in your life, plus writing a play. It will be worth it. I promise.

NaPlWriMo 2009 11 days left!

2009-10-20T08:46:00.000-05:00

We're getting close to single digits of days left!

To commemorate this, I want to tell you a little about something called Monomyth, The Hero's Journey. This is a pattern common to many stories from around the world. Joseph Campbell explores it in his book, 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces'. There's seventeen stages to this. I'm not going to get into all of them in this post (this isn't school for God's sake!), but I would like to discuss the Call to the Journey, the first step in the journey.

"The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown." (Wikipedia)

This is where we are all at, Rhinos. We heard the call to write an at least 75 page play in November. Right now, we're dealing with the 'mundane'--working, going to school, taking care of our families, dealing with our worldly obligations. I put 'mundane' in quotes, because I don't want to lessen the importance of these obligations--we all need to eat, we all need to get our educations, take care of scraped knees and hungry pets. These things are important. But it's also important that if you are hearing the call to writing, that you listen to it.

This call is to head off in the unknown--but it might not be completely unknown. We might actually have an idea of where the play we want to write is going to go--I personally have a real life historical structure for the beginning, middle and end. We might have characters in mind, we might have even seen the entire play in the fog of dreams or in the clarity of our mind's eye, all set out on the stage, waiting to go. Some of us might have a title or maybe a vague idea. Whatever we have, it's still the unknown.

I don't know if any of you deal with this, but I have a serious issue with dealing with the unknown in reality. It's surprising I up and moved to Arkansas two years ago--this is NOT something I would ordinarily do. But I had the call--actually several calls--but the overwhelming one was one of change in my life. So I did it. I went off into the unknown. I fell down a lot, had a lot of bumps in the road, had to have my meds adjusted, but there's more good than bad to my story, my own journey, which started with the call to the journey.

So I urge you today, think about the call to the journey of NaPlWriMo. Think about what you want to accomplish--of who and what you want to write about. Whatever you do, don't ignore the call to the journey.

It is life-altering.

Happy 11 days left, Rhinos!

Heavensent

2009-10-14T09:06:00.004-05:00

With only 17 days left before NaPlWriMo, I don't want to start anything new, but I still want to work on things to polish and submit. I had been thinking about this play for a bit the other day, and decided to pull it out, dust it off, and see how it's going.

Heavensent.

This play was first drafted in 2006. I had been in the aftermath of a massive break-up and I had been on the rebound with a fella I thought was pretty great, even though there were ten million red flags abounding in that relationship that ignored. The inspiration of the play came from the issues surrounding meeting this guy's family. I had met his mom, who happened to be blind, so he doted on her quite a bit. His father was another story. If I'm remembering correctly, his parents are divorced and his father had a new wife. It was like pulling teeth to try and meet his Dad. Finally, he relented and as I recall, that evening with his father and his new wife was pretty terrible. The process of trying to meet his Dad inspired the play.

What if his father was really dead? (This was before I knew he was alive, kicking, and kind of a douche). What if my father and his father were conspiring in Heaven to get this guy and I together?

That's where the play came from.

The play involves a lot of supernatural aspects and a lot of playing around with the Christian pantheon. I had thought about my Latin classes back in college and about how the Romans and Greeks treated their gods. They ascribed them very human like tendencies--having affairs, getting angry and changing people in animals as a punishment, envy, etc. It was very fascinating. I wondered what would happen if I took God and St. Peter and Satan and gave them all human like tendancies, the good and the bad. And the supernatural aspects of the play came out. As I have God and Satan playing games and gambling, I was brought back to the story of Lot, which was God and Satan in the Old Testament basically doing the same thing they are doing in my play. Fascinating.

I don't want people to think I am doing this because I don't really ascribe to being a Christian per se. I don't want people to think I'm doing this to make fun of Christianity or anything like that, but I know that's always a possibility, and I hope that people can see past that and see the funny aspects of the play.

So I went back and re-read the play, writing down the settings and the characters and all that good stuff so I can work on a summary and character list for eventually submitting the play. And the play is actually in pretty good shape. I have a couple of things I need to fix and look at, but for the most part, it's ready for people to read.

This play was a thorn in my side for three going on four years. I liked the play, I loved the characters and I wanted it to work, but for some reason, like with every play I work with that has a supernatural aspect, I have a hard time dealing with that aspect. Part of having supernatural and dead characters makes my life easier as a writer. No one knows for certain, regardless of spiritual proclivity, what happens with the afterlife or with the supernatural. But with this freedom comes some problems of creating rules for a world and sticking to them. In reality, we have to, for the most part, stick to the rules of gravity. If we break them, there's a reason, but they are rules that we all know and follow. But if you create a world and rules, and then break them, you run the risk of losing and angering readers and viewers (hence my hatred of 'The Lovely Bones').

The point is, this play is getting close to a final first draft--almost four years later. It's inspiring and good to see the process I've gone through, because the process really is the important part--not the destination.

Comix 101

2009-10-07T08:27:00.003-05:00

Last night, I had the extreme honor of seeing Art Spiegelman speak at Hendrix. For those who aren't familiar with his work, he wrote and drew Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers. He makes these notable little books called graphic novels, which is not a phrase he uses. He would just say that he draws comic books.

That man can TALK. He talked for 2 hours and would have kept going if he had been allowed to. It was pretty fascinating, to learn the history of comics and to learn how to read one. The talk was pretty dense, it was a lot of information thrown at the audience, but it was a fun and fascinating talk. How often can you say that you saw a speaker call an audience a bunch of anti-Semites, and have the audience crack up at it? Of course, there's context, but he really makes you think about a lot of things: about race, anti-semitism, comics and where they fall in the spectrum of art, if they are art, sex, you name it. He's a pretty fascinating man. Check these out of you are interested in his work, as well you should be. Maus is beautiful. I haven't read In the Shadow of No Towers but I might change that in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Spiegelman

http://lambiek.net/artists/s/spiegelman.htm

Okay, so what does this have to do with playwriting? As I was listening to him speak and watched him pick apart comic pages and as he talked about the architecture involved in comics, I realized, I had SO much to learn from them! Part of writing a play does involve thinking about the visuals of the work and because comics blend words and images, I would argue that reading comics can inform writing plays incredibly. There was something that rang so true about the building of a strip and how much work went into them that I could relate to--I could call Mr. Spiegelman a comic-wright, but that would sound strange. But it makes sense--there is a lot of building involved, a similar construct. It is helpful to think of writing a play and creating a comic as being a similar kind of building--a long long long lost cousin.

Another thing that drew me to his work is the fact that the play I'm working on for National Playwriting Month (http://naplwrimo.org), or rather, WILL be working on, is about the Holocaust, 'In the Bunker'. I kept wanting to ask him a question about constructing the work, about the play and how it's not the kind of play I would normally write, or maybe I'm just saying that because I know that Hitler will be portrayed in this play, and I don't want to look like a sympathizer, but how does one construct something and not look like an asshole? I couldn't figure out how to vocalize this question because there's more to it than not wanting to be an asshole, and I think that some of it comes from my goy background, and how does a goy write about another group of goys, but this particular group of goys like killing Jews? See? It's still not making sense. It's just a struggle I've had with 'In the Bunker', and I suspect he would tell me to not worry about it and let the story be the story. Probably after he called me an anti-Semite in jest of course.

Unofficial Submission Spree

2009-09-30T07:12:00.002-05:00

I have found myself in the midst of an unofficial submission spree. In the last month, I've submitted to about 15 different theatres and competitions, and 11 of those have been in the last few days. I don't know why I thought this was so hard before. You just do what the theatre asks for and hope for the best.

It's amazing how your mind can trick you into thinking something is so hard to do. I just had to figure out a way to outsmart it.

In other news, I am gearing up for NaPlWriMo and doing some research on the play itself ('In the Bunker'). I am going to need to spend November working on the play itself, not doing research, like I did last time. So in addition to working on submissions, I am also doing research, and school, work, the cats, Bill, and crocheting are all in there somewhere too. Busy little bee, that's me!

The recent arrest of Roman Polanski brings to mind an argument I had with a dear friend, Randy, about his win of the Oscar for 'The Pianist'. Randy (and I am paraphrasing) was of the mind that Polanski didn't deserve the award because he should have been in jail. I will give that yes, Polanski should have been in jail, but the work and the man are separate. And I've been thinking about that recently as well. I still believe the work and the man are separate, but what of the artwork of Hitler? Because of 'In the Bunker' I've had Hitler on the brain. It's a hard topic to talk about, because no one wants to say Hitler was a good artist (and he was mediocre at best--he couldn't draw people from what I know of his days of being an artist), because of who he was. But what if he had painted 'Water Lilies'? Or 'The Mona Lisa'? Then what?

I don't have an answer for anyone but myself, but I would have to separate the man from the art, as despicable as the man was. My dear friend, Dorothy, posted a really sweet article about the girl that Roman Polanski is accused of raping, http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/note.php?note_id=287132570166&id=41993989526&ref=mf and it was very interesting. If you have any opinion on the whole Polanski thing, be sure to read this. It will give you an interesting perspective you might not have had before. And you will definitely think this woman is the bravest woman ever, with a good heart.

National Playwriting Month

2009-09-22T21:48:00.002-05:00

www.naplwrimo.org

This November marks the second year I will participate in National Playwriting Month. I am planning on working on 'In the Bunker' and that I might be working on naplwrimo in other ways as well as being a participant. I will know more tomorrow night. Suffice to say, I am excited, and I hope that I can do more than just participate, although participation is a great thing on its own.

To dedicate yourself to writing an entire play, or novel, or whatever else you might decide the month of November should be of writing is a great thing. A humbling thing. And a personal thing. It's humbling because you have to do more than just talk the talk. You have to write the writing. And every day, you come to the group and tell them what you've been doing and how far you've gotten. And it's a personal thing because you dedicate yourself to actually working on something for yourself. Not for your family or your job (unless you're lucky enough to have a job in the theatre already). Something just for you.

And it's hard. I won't lie--it's no picnic. There's going to be times where you want to quit. I got to the point where I had to just sit down and barf out as much as I could in one sitting, near the end of the month. But I did it. It turned out terribly (and this is not just self-depricating humor--the play is uneditable and unreadable--I'm not sure it ever saw the light of day--which is good in the end). But coming through to the end--making it through to the end--seeing it through, solidified even more that playwriting is what I need to be doing and will be doing.

So, if you are reading this, and that sounds like something you need or want, please hit up the link above. You might just change your life.

motivation

2009-09-15T09:11:00.002-05:00

It's funny how my motivation has recently taken a turn for the stronger and better. I have a HUGE list of theatres and contests and such that I've collected over the years, and I never really did anything with it. I've been spending the last couple of months going back through all of them and finding places to send my work I have ready to go. And it's really helped SO MUCH in so many ways that I can't even really adequately express...it's funny how I don't usually end up being at a loss for words, but I can't even explain this. It's just funny and awesome.

I've been stuck on 'Squall Lines' for months. It's been a mess, but a doable beautiful mess. And there were two theatres that it looked like it would fit in with really well. And one of them has a program going on where you can submit mostly completed drafts. So I dug the play out again and really started to rip it apart. And it's definitely being pulled apart: characters being revealed, scenes being ripped from where they were and cobbled in where they belong, subtext is getting its due and things are starting to make more sense, the less reality I put into the play. It's funny, because it seems like the outside world always intrudes in these plays and makes the world I've created make no sense and makes me want to scrap the project all together. I can't let that happen though. There are rules in the worlds I am creating, and as long as I adequately explain the rules and have them all be obeyed, things are going to be okay in the end.

I'm just happen 'Squall Lines' is starting to come together better. It makes me happy.

Now if 'Sand and Water' would come along, but seriously, I should just be happy that this is happening. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

I had a dream last night

2009-09-09T04:25:00.003-05:00

Two lines of dialogue. Love it.

A: "Why did you take the wrap for me?"
B: "Because it was between my best friend and my favorite singer. One was already dead. How else was I supposed to save you?"

Saving that for something blooming in my brain.

Bloom, baby, bloom!

break on through

2009-08-20T08:05:00.002-05:00

So, in case I haven't mentioned it, it appears I have figured out the dreaded synopsis.

For years now, I had been driving myself mad with writing these damn things. For a while, the very word 'synopsis' would have me depressed and away from writing for a week. And I know I'm not the only one.

And every time I had to write one, I would go back to the books and websites I had found to help me along. And every single one of them would mention how a synopsis is sort of like the blurbs you find on books--the two or three short paragraphs designed to sell the book.

And then it hit me. READ SOME.

So I ran into my office and grabbed seven or eight of my favorite books that had these blurbs on them, and read them. And read them again. And again. Until I understood what made them tick.

Within an hour, I had dashed off a better draft of the synopsis for 'A Death in the Family' (still with Mr. Robert's help!).

I know it's not the easiest thing, but thinking of it in terms of the jacket blurb is much more helpful than all the exercises and warnings and crap.

That was the first breakthrough.

While Bill's parents were in town, I had limited writing time, and I was trying to rework some of the next play I was going to send out, 'Pleased to Meet Me' ('A Death in the Family' needs to sit around for a month while it percolates from Paul's suggestions--thanks, Paul!). Before the weekend was up, I managed to re-read the play and put notes down about it. And I had one scene, that was a sloppy, drunk mess (just because the characters are drunk and sloppy doesn't mean the writing needs to be). And I knew that there was a lot of stuff I needed to cut, re-arrange, and the thought of it was daunting. So instead of cutting and pasting on the computer or in real life, I just re-wrote the scene from scratch by hand. I cut out three pages of repetitive nonsense and I think the script is better for it. I had to cut some good stuff out, but I left the better stuff. So you know, be happy that the great stuff is still there, you know?

I sent out a play yesterday. Goodspeed to it.

I know the process of getting a play out is hard, but I really think I was making it harder on myself than was needed because it is so hard. Does that make sense? I kept whining to myself, it's too hard, too much, I don't know what I'm doing. Well, I won't know until I do it. So here I am.

Things are much better on the writing front. I know I need to be creating but I feel like this is what I need to be doing--the uncreative submission process. What's the point of creating more if no one is ever going to see my work? I have to give my children their way into the world.

revision

2009-08-06T08:25:00.005-05:00

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE revising. Well, 99% of the time I do. Even the stuff that seems hard to get through and correct, I just love figuring out what exactly the characters are wanting to do.

And I really thought that 'A Death in the Family' was ready to go out to theatres. I really did. I even wrote a synopsis and everything, which, as we knows, is the bane of my existence. And I even went as far as finding theatres to send it to.

Last time, on Dramatecture, I mentioned the people who have helped me a lot. This has been both a great and bad thing. The great thing--I'm getting much needed feedback from both people involved with theatre and those who have an interest in it, but aren't exactly playwrights or actors. The bad thing is that I have A LOT of revision to do.

But this is also a great thing. It's probably the best thing to have happened in a long time. Obviously, if the play is not ready to go, I need to work on it. At the same time, I just want to be able to start sending out packages. I suppose I could do that and continue to work on the play while I'm waiting for responses. God knows it usually takes awhile and in that time I could really do some hardcore revising on it.

That's probably what I will do.

In related news, I have done one read through of 'The Dramatist's Toolkit' by Jeffrey Sweet. I'm starting to go back through it and really read each of the chapters carefully and jotting down notes. Sadly, I have noticed many deficiencies in my work. But happily, I know how to fix them, or, at the very least, I know how to attack them now.

My work generally suffers from issues with high and low context levels. Mostly I end up with characters, like in 'A Death in the Family', who have known each other for YEARS--their whole lives--they are family after all, even if the kids haven't been home for the last four years. There's one character--Belladonna--who isn't just a newcomer for the purpose of providing a way for high context information to come out from the family--she's got an agenda of her own, which is in direct opposition to the male lead's agenda. The funny part, I never even really thought to use her for the purpose of disseminating high context information, except one time during the play, so I guess that's a good thing. I just have to figure out a way to get all the high level stuff out in the mannerisms, the actions and words of the characters without saying, wow, this family sure fights a lot. It's good that I've noticed it, now I just have to figure out how to fix it.

Part of me is bummed by all the work this is going to entail. But I know in the end, I will be a stronger playwright and my work will shine more. But still, it's a bummer.

I just have to remember, I've only been writing plays seriously since 2003. I've come VERY FAR in six years. I just am a perfectionist and want to be even further in those six years. But daily work on the play and listening to and looking for the red flags will do more to help me than anything.

And having readers to help is amazing too.

I will just let myself have a pity party about it today while I'm at work and then come home and do more work on the play.

Support

2009-07-27T07:37:00.002-05:00

image from myspace.com/cattaneostopthewaraj

It's kind of amazing how people who live so far away can make you feel supported in your work. My friend, Paul, who lives in New York, and my friend, Robert, who lives in Texas, are two of these people.

Paul recently answered my call for assistance with reading the first act of 'A Death in the Family'. He read it within a couple days and answered a series of questions that were aimed at problems I was having with the work, and to get his general opinion. He gave me so much to work with, that I wonder when the play with be finished (but not, because it's never finished). It's not a bad thing, it confirms without a doubt a lot of the things I was concerned with, and now I just need to figure out how to deal with them. And then there's the ending of the play, which I will save for another day.

And Robert has just been awesome. This is his website: robertneblett.com. He and I have started a 'book club' of sorts, and our first play is 'A Number' by Caryl Churchill. What's awesome about Robert, besides just being a sweet, cool, funny, awesome fellow LOST fan, is that he's totally into the academics of theatre, and that is something I am sorely lacking right now. It's hard to analyze a play on your own with no one to bounce it off of. And now I have one. And he's helped me with synopses, listened when I've griped about writer's block, depression and how much working sucks. And did I mention LOST? Yeah, January's gonna be insane.

So the editing of 'A Death in the Family' is coming along. I still have to get back to a couple people who read the first act and see what their reactions are, although I am sure I know what the reactions are going to be. At least some of them.

And I've been frying my brain sending out emails to theatres looking for submission guidelines. Most of this happened over the weekend, but I already heard back from one. If anyone out there is interested, the Jewish Theatre of New York is not accepting submissions right now.

The depressing part of this is seeing how many theatres either have closed, as relayed by their websites, or have said that they have suspended looking for new work, or have dissapeared alltogether. Stinking economy.

But things are moving along.

synopsis

2009-07-21T08:52:00.003-05:00

This is the worst thing I've ever had to write in my entire life, and I've written some pretty terrible irritating assignments in my life.

But it's finished. Which is great.

Well, it's not finished but it's almost there. Thank God.

My secret? First, I had a Robert to help me get started. Second, I grabbed a pile of really good books off my bookshelf and carefully and repeatedly read the backs of them. I paid attention to what information was given in the jacket blurb. And then I went to work.

That's it. Reading the backs of books I know well.

Now let's hope I can see that play.

The 35th Year

2009-07-17T18:01:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks ago I started my 35th year of life.

I spent the first week or so kind of feeling sorry for myself when it came to my writing. And then I realized something.

I need to kick my own butt into action. So this is what I am going to do.

I am going to edit the crap out of everything I got and start sending stuff out. Constantly.

I am working on the newest draft of 'A Death in the Family'. I've already found a bunch of theatres to send things to, I just need to get the draft done. I am about half-way finished.

I think this is what I need. I'll admit, I've been spending a lot of time, kind of pretending to spend time submitting to theatres, meanwhile, floundering around, being jealous of other people who have done the submitting and are travelling all over the country, seeing their work, working with people, and getting somewhere in the world of theatre. And I realized that if I want to get anywhere, I need to pay my dues.

So I am.

Another mantra

2009-07-11T22:15:00.003-05:00

(from averyhappylife.blogspot.com)

I won't lie, writing has been a struggle recently. I've been working through a couple of different playwriting books just to see if they could help. I mean, I'm not writing anyway, so if I use a book of theory to help and I get something, it's good. If not, I found out more about my process.

I did get the Jeffrey Sweet book, 'A Dramatist's Tool kit' and it's really quite good. And I have one other. And beyond that, I think I'm going to be try to trust this idea of working through the hard spots. It might not work, but anything I try is going to be a learning experience that can do nothing less than help me learn to write more.

Trusting myself in the moment and just running with it is not a strong suit of mine. Running with the first thought, which, in improv, we learn has the most energy and is less incumbered by the censor. Sometimes, I am good with trusting myself. Other times, not so much.

Like 'A Death in the Family', I had this long long monologue which featured a character that didn't come back in the show at all, and it was kind of gratuitious. Like, the next scene talks about the things that happen in the monologue, so i jut dumped it. Every draft I've had, I've wanted to cut that whole first scene, and just grow some ovaries and do it. So yeah.

just trust yourself.

Otherwise, I am working on polishing stuff for sending out. I figure, I should do that when I'm not being creative.

Sand and Water

2009-06-14T22:19:00.004-05:00

I was all set to write a blog post about research as I involve it in my writing of plays, but something else took over. That research blog might just have to wait until after vacation.

The 'Frank Lloyd Wright play' has a name: 'Sand and Water'.

When I realized what the name of the play is, I was kind of taken back. I first heard the song by the same title as done by Beth Neilsen Chapman. It was on an episode of 'E.R' that I think I saw when it first premiered in 2000, although I could be wrong and I might have seen it in reruns. Regardless, this song really worked well with the subject matter of the episode and I really kind of hung that song on the wall, in a way, waiting for the right moment for it to come out.

And it did come out. It fell off the wall and right into my play, right where it fits perfectly.

Another piece has come to me.

Now if I could really get these characters talking.

Learning to write THIS play

2009-05-28T09:43:00.002-05:00

I am, for the most part, done with the basics with Julia. Now I have to move on to Marisol, Toby and Andrew. I thought that since I was seeing a lot more of the play in better focus that I would try to write some scenes I had thought of. Well, that worked about as well as me trying to cut and past part of my friend, Debbie's, response to my last blog entry so I could address a couple questions she had. In other words, it didn't work very well. So here we are.

Anyway, Debbie was wondering about the three events in the character's life that gives shape to who they are at the beginning of the play. She wondered if they were set in stone or pencilled in as guidelines. My answer to both is yes and no.

Now this is where things are gonna get a little wacky, so you might want to strap in for this. Or don't, it's your funeral.

When a character first comes to me and starts to tell me about her life and what has shaped her, I write it down. And I have some preconcieved notions of what I want her to be. This isn't always who she is, and if I try to force that too hard, she will stop doing anything and cross her arms and blow raspberries at me. Sometimes, as was in the case of December in 'Hauntings', she wouldn't talk at all. I had to poke and prod at her for days before I finally got the story out of her. I mean, she was embarassed as to what she had done, so I didn't blame her, and she was paranoid that people thought she was a bad person, so it's no wonder that she took forever for finally open up. But still.

So basically, my preconcieved notions of my characters have to meet somewhere with the character's reality. Sometimes it matches mostly with what I've come up with on my own. Sometimes it meets halfway. Sometimes, I'm completely wrong. But it differs with every character.

In all honesty, there really isn't that much about my plays that ends up set in stone. As was in 'The Rope Swings', the original ten minute play that spawned 'Hauntings', I knew my set would be a set of weight bearing rope swings. That wasn't going to change. The first set of characters I put on the stage didn't work. They just kind of meandered about and the dialogue was crap and then I realized these characters were not the characters for this play. So then I was stuck with a day left to write the play before the submission deadline and I was definitely toast. And then Margo and December came along. Margo timidly sat on her swing while December baited her and baited her until Margo finally explodes and there you have it. The play was written in an evening. Sometimes you just don't have the right characters for what is set in stone, but I am slowly realizing, you don't set much in stone.

Even with that said, I have the Frank Lloyd Wright house set in stone, or rather, on top of it. The top is being put back on the mountain as Mr. Wright himself said of this triptych that he designed that never saw the light of day. But it will in my play.

And these are the right characters. Sometimes it just takes longer to get them to show their spots as it were.

On the back of 'The Dramatic Writer's Companion', the blurb on the back begins:

Moss Hart once said that you never really learn how to write a play, you only learn how to write this play.

The more I write, the more I realize it's true. It doesn't matter how many plays I've written, how many characters have come to me with their stories, none of it really matters to the play at hand. It will be coming from freshly tilled ground, with freshly spread fertilizer and freshly sprayed water. No two summers of snapdragons will hav the same ground, fertilizer and water. It will all be new every time. And you might not grown them this year, as big or bold as the year before. But you will find your own way to the big bold snapdragons. They will just be new. Completely new.

strengths and weaknesses

2009-05-20T09:17:00.002-05:00

The new play I am working on, which is as yet untitled by is being called 'The Frank Lloyd Wright Play' because that's kind of, sort of, not really what it's about, is turning out to be about strengths and weaknesses. I've been using 'The Dramatic Writer's Companion' by Will Dunne and it's been super helpful as far as fleshing out the characters.

With this play so far, I can see in my mind's eye the actors on the stage. There's two women and two men. And I can see what they are wearing, what they look like, but they aren't moving around or doing anything. They just stand there, as if in an archival cast photo. It's kind of insane, actually. I came up with the idea for this play nearly a month or two ago, and all I see is the archival photo.

So, here I am, sketching out the 'herione', Julia. And she's coming more and more into focus. I've been dubious of doing actual sketch work on characters that list their birthday, height, vital stats, etc., which this one does, but it focuses more on things like Julia's childhood and the best thing it asks me is something to the effect of 'what three things happened in the character's life that are the most important and shaping and how and why did they shape who the character is at the beginning of the play'. AWESOME.

As I'm sketching her out, I'm getting ideas for scenes and situations, and how things should go. I have several large blanks to fill in, and this is definitely helping with that. I am hoping that once I get through sketching all four characters, it will come together well. Here's to hoping.

And here's a quote I think I'm going to use for Julia's credo:
"At times, our strengths propel us so far forward we can no longer endure our weakness and perish from them."
Friedrich Neitzche

(in)concievable

2009-04-26T09:41:00.003-05:00

sometimes all it takes is the right name or title. I know this. I've known this since I've been a writer. Sometimes a character will just sit there, fully dressed, ready and waiting, but without the right name, he or she will do NOTHING. No amount of poking or prodding will help.

'All in the Family' is now called '(in)conceivable' and suddenly, everything is roses. After days and days of struggling and such, one thing changes and everything is better.

I feel relieved. I told my friend, J.R., the other night that not being able to break through the writing is like having heart constipation. It's like I got something waiting in there, and it just won't come out. And it sucks. And there's nothing but time for it. There's no amount of emotional fiber that can help.

So here we are again. Writing is on fire. Let's take care of business before the fire dies down again.

don't worry, be happy

2009-04-13T07:17:00.003-05:00

I've been working on 'All Shook Up'. It's been a couple months since I worked on it, and I was kind of afraid of it. The last couple things I went back through to revise just were in such bad shape that I got kind of stuck. But I picked up 'All Shook Up' after I started working on a new play, 'Almost', and 'All Shook Up' is in much better shape than I remember it being. There's still a few places that need to be tightened (I have a tendency to repeat things and us a lot of 'well's and 'yeah's that are just fat that need to be shaved off), but there are only two major problems I have with the play now. One of them us just a character related thing that needs to be sorted out, but the other was an issue with the time span covered in the play.

Without going into too many details, I talked to one of my favorite dramaturgs ever, Robert, and explained the time frame. I knew that I was really putting myself on a ledge for no good reason, because he gave me some suggestions that will make things work better and also, some fun things to think about for the play that adds to the 'magic' of the play. So this was good. I was just getting all tied up in knots about it, and was so worried I wasn't serving the play in the right way. Robert told me to not worry about that part. But I think worrying about how I am serving the play and the characters is a good thing to worry about. I only marginally (read none) worry about what theatres might think--and that's what really led to me talking to Robert about the time frame issue. I didn't want a theatre to get a finished draft of 'All Shook Up' and read it and be like, WTF is this playwright doing? She has no concept of time in this play.

So that's been solved. Now I just need to find some time to write. I'm glad the block is over for now. And 'Almost' is on the horizon too.

November can't get here fast enough.

move along

2009-04-06T20:19:00.002-05:00

when all you got to keep is strong
Move along
move along like I know ya do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through
move along

move along
All American Rejects

This won't be the last time I quote lyrics. This will happen a lot. Early in my writing career I would hear a song and write a story (prior to becoming a playwright) straight from the song. It wouldn't be from the music video, but when i would hear a song, i would start to see characters in my head and the work would be born. It's still that way, although not as direct anymore.

This is less about what insprises me and more about how moving along is the best thing to do sometimes.

Yes, keep writing. Yes, write through.

These are good suggestions and often they work.

But they were not turning out anything for me as of late.

So I backed away, got sucked into homework, and suddenly, a play i thought of when I was still at the University of Iowa, after I graduated, came back to me and started to form clearly in my mind. And now I'm thinking and working on it. It wasn't the play I wanted to work on, but sometimes you don't get your choice.

So moving along in my writing life can be two things:

moving along through the rough parts. writing against the tides, the avalanche, and somewhere you will dig out through to the other side of hot writing.

and

moving along to a different play.

the work will let you know when you need to stop pushing it and pulling on it. And if you don't listen, it can be very bad for you.

Trust me on this.

Order Out of Chaos

2009-03-29T22:21:00.002-05:00

It's funny, because I was ALL set to write a pity-party tirade about how I can't seem to get this new play out, and how it was inspired by something I saw on a PBS program about Frank Lloyd Wright and his rediculously chaotic life and how his designs are supposed to be order out of chaos, an island of serenity in a tossing world, and I wanted to write a play about this idea, and then i realized that I was doing exactly what these characters were going to do, making order out of chaos and how chaos always comes back around because it's the order of things.

So I need to learn to love the chaos.

But it's still damn hard to see the characters on the stage in my mind, to even see parts of the stage, but it's in the fog, just on the edge. It wants to come forward, I want it to come forward, but it's not time yet.

Not yet time.

It's no surprise to me that I'm my own worst enemy

2009-03-12T08:26:00.003-05:00

So the writing retreat was a bust due to: bad vacation planning, bad weather and bad sickness. I guess it always can't go the way you want it to.

But, I did start working on a play, 'Man Out of Time', simply because I wanted to edit it and make sure it was ready for submission. I discovered it was so far from being ready that I am pretty much revising the whole damn thing. I might now sound happy about this, but I actually am.

My struggle with my writing and subtext has continued. I know that the masters make it look easy, but damnit, I'm a human who has subtextual conversations all the time with people. I should be able to do this.

But it's okay. I'm working on character motivations and what is underpinning their behavior and all that. It seems to be helping. I guess I won't know until later, you know?

Here's the other thing about 'Man Out of Time'. It's really more disturbing to me than it was before. Which is good, I should feel some emotion from it, otherwise, why would i have written it? I shouldn't have otherwise. I'm afraid it might be just a rehash of stuff from before, but who knows.

Also, I can't BELIEVE I am having as difficult of a time as I am getting an informal reading of my play together. Seriously. This is ridiculous. People are busy and that's cool, but let me tell you, it's getting a bit out of control. I think I am just going to have to try and get some people together and just do it. I wanted to have some theatre people involved as well as other people, but man.

depression of the economic variety

2009-02-27T08:43:00.004-06:00

Yeah. That.

It's definitely affecting the theatre world. Ticket sales are slumping, donations from corporations are slumping, theatres are closing, theatres are pulling back on accepting new plays, being more picky about what they accept and some are putting on hiatus new play development, contests, etc.

What's a young playwright to do?

First, be depressed. At least that's what I'm doing. See, here's the problem I've had. There's people better than me out there, so they will get the stuff I want (readings, productions, whatever). Paranoia of that sort. Then add in that I have NO IDEA what I'm doing when it comes to submitting, and that equals depression.

Then, I will make a plan. This includes:

being more aware of where I am sending work. My budget is tighter too, so I will send stuff to people I think I have the very best chance with.
being more aware of what is going on online. There's a playwright's website I've been involved with, and I will try to be more involved with it.
reading the vast library of plays I've accumulated. Hendrix had a library sale last year and I came away with a crate of plays. A lot of them I wasn't familiar with, many of them were by playwrights I knew of, or plays I had heard of. So I need to start reading them and learning from them.
keep writing. it's the best way to get through until things get better.

I'm still wrestling with 'Grace Kelly' and I am going to get some plays together and such for my weekend writing retreat with Bill next month. I'll be doing some work on 'In the Bunker' for sure, so we'll see how that comes along.

Subtext is hard to learn about. I'm working hard on it. It's been the single biggest struggle I've had with playwriting so far, but I think it's going to be VERY good for me in the end. When it breaks through, it will BREAK through.

Back to the grind with school. Writing retreat is coming.

Ps.....

I don't talk a lot about my personal life on here, but I got engaged a week ago. :)

coffee break

2009-02-08T08:26:00.004-06:00

http://yeevon.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/coffee-art-5.jpg (gotta give credit where credit is due!)

I didn't want to say I was taking a break from writing, even though that's what I'm doing. It's my other career related (Certified Dietary Manager through University of Florida and I want to be done with it all in October and I have a long way to go). I'm working along at a good clip, but I had to make a sacrifice somewhere, so I'm keeping actual writing to a minimum.

I did discover something interesting while taking a break. The time I do have for writing (which, because I'm thinking so much about 'In the Bunker' right now, it involves mostly research) that time is extremely focused. I am off my day job this weekend and I am going to spend some time at the library this afternoon at Hendrix while Bill is working in his office and I am going to look at some books on Goebbels and Nazi Germany. There's precious little information out there about Goebbels' family, virtually no books about the children themselves, so I have to take what I can.

Whenever I'm doing something pretty rote, my thoughts turn to Hedda. I've developed some interesting ideas, but I haven't quite gotten a hold of the final days in the bunker. Once I have those down, a feeling that was running through, etc., I'll begin writing. But that might be next week before I get to that.

I was very bummed out about this when I first realized I had to put this on the back burner. I didn't want to do it. I don't feel it as often, but sometimes I would feel pressure to keep writing and editing so i could get my plays out there to get done. This is, in essence, a good pressure, but I think I was getting too caught up in it and it was making me depressed. So taking a break is also good on that front.

Back to the coffee break. I'll be back soon though. I can't stay away. It's like holding your breath as long as you can--you come out gasping for more.

staring into the abyss

2009-02-03T21:12:00.004-06:00

I don't know what to do.

Actually I know what to do, and I will do it, but I just have to get these fears out of my system.

It's no secret to those who know me that I have a very (un)healthy interest in the Holocaust. It's just so fascinating, I don't understand how something like that could happen the way it happened. It just blows my mind, especially if you look at the intricacies of how it happened.

But this post is not about that. I don't even really want to discuss it because that isn't even what the play is about.

This is about children.

There's a Polish doctor, Janusz Korczak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak) who was taken into the Warsaw Ghetto with a whole mess of Jewish orphans under his care. Eventually they were liquidated to Treblinka, where he and the children more likely than not died in the chambers. His story is fascinating, and I was struck by this man from the time I took History of the Holocaust when I was at Black Hawk, all the way back in 2001. Yes, this man has stayed with me for eight years, and I still plan to write a play about him. And I've tried. I've come up with a couple scenes, but the play wouldn't budge any further.

A couple months ago, I ran across a show on the History Channel about the Goebbels' children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goebbels_children). This was totally fascinating as well. It looked like the six children who were in the Fuhrerbunker during the last days and who were eventually murdered with cynanide by their own mother, Magda, who could not imagine a life for her children beyond the Reich, may not have known precisely what was happening to their world or to them. I am particularly fascinated by Hedwig 'Hedda' Goebbels, the almost 7 year old. I see writing a play from her point of view.

Now, I do realize, children are much smarter than they give us credit for, and not only do they often know when something is wrong, but they often find any way possible to blame themselves, so no one has to mention that. I was a child once, with sick parents.

What fascinates me is what happened to the innocent children of the Holocaust, on both sides of the issue.

And the wheels in my brain are turning, and I both love and abhor the direction they are going. Can I put 'Aryan' children and Jewish in the same play? They both suffered the same fate, and if I focus more on them being children rather than 'Aryan' and 'Jewish' it might work.

But I don't know. The more I think about it, the more scared I get about doing this, but the more it pulls me. Hedda and the Good Doctor, they're both pulling on me.

Also, I just looked back at the last entry I wrote with these two tags and I wrote pretty much the same exact entry a little over two months ago. Oops.

The point to this is, I am going to see where Hedda and the Good Doctor, and King Matt, I want to see where they are going to take me. It's going to be quite an adventure.

too close, too far away

2009-01-25T18:39:00.003-06:00

I'm having this problem with my writing. It's not a recent problem, but it's a problem nonetheless.

I can't seem to write subtext.

Chekov I ain't, that's for sure.

Actually, I wasn't even going to call it subtext. But I think that's what it is.

When I'm working on a play, I often have very explosive emotions I'm dealing with. I often have very personal, private, emotional issues. Children coming out of the closet. Lovers cheating. Love revealed. Pain, happiness. But how do I do it without saying 'i don't support you', i support you', 'i hate you for cheating', 'leave your lover', 'i've loved you always'. How do I get there without using a regular map, the well beaten path?

On the playwrights' forum (www.stageplays-forum.com/), I had posted about this problem. And I felt like a total moron doing this. I mean, I should know how to do this, right?

Wrong. I'm the 'heart on the sleeve' kind of person, and not everyone is. So, it's hard when you're dealing with characters who aren't, and plus I think it's more interesting when there's things that are unsaid.

So now I'm dealing with the subtext of the plays I'm working on, especially 'Grace Kelly'. I'm trying to get this one revised, because I want to get it ready to be read by my friend, Terry. He said he would help me with it, so, I'm working on it.

I'm just too close to the characters, but too far away to actually make the play work. I guess it just needs more time.

I hate dealing with this sort of blockage...thankfully i don't usually have to deal with this. But I need to deal with this, or I'm not getting any further with my work.

here's your warning

2009-01-13T07:03:00.004-06:00

It's not easy to read the type below the caution box on the bag: "YOU COULD WIND UP BEING PORTRAYED AS AN ASSHOLE FOR ALL ETERNITY" is what it says.

I got this from my wonderful boyfriend for Christmas this year. It's fabulous. People certainly find it as amusing as it is puzzling; a lot of people haven't met a living playwright. It's funny, because when I was a fiction writer or a journalist, I never heard someone say, hey, I've never met a (fiction writer/journalist). I guess we are a few and far between breed, but it strikes me as odd.

Anyway, I digress.

I've always said to people, even when I was a fiction writer, that everyone and everything is in danger of being in something I write. I've been told, you can't write about this, right before someone tells me something very awesome, and it always makes me sad. Well, not sad, because eventually I will write about it in some way, shape or form, but that's an invitation to write about it. Forbidden fruit and all that.

Sometimes it's worrisome to write about people I actually know, especially if it was something that wasn't so flattering. I don't want to get sued, but sometimes, the events of other people's lives that I have either witnessed first hand or heard about from friends or on the internet, are just too damn good to not write about. There's one particular event in my life where I was scared to death that I was going to die at the moment, but knew that I was going to write about that particular moment in a future play. Now, two-ish years after a girl insane with jealously broke into a guy's house that she and I both happened to be dating (the guy, not the house) and waved a flashlight around screaming, I have managed to find humor in it and used it in a play I'm working on. People who know me and the girl best will know what the scene is harkening to, but no one else will, I don't think.

You've been warned.

diet for a play

2009-01-09T07:47:00.003-06:00

This is the time of the year for diets. God. It's driving me mad too. All these pills, food bars, promises of losing weight with gum (all with the disclaimer of--with appropriate diet and exercise written in the tiniest print you could ever find on the screen)--it's enough to drive a slightly pudgy playwright mad. Don't get me started on the exercise tapes and equipment and food plans you can get through the mail. Blarg!

Anyway, this is not about me being overweight. This is about my play needing a diet.

I just finished the seventh draft of 'A Death in the Family'. It's around 100 pages long right now. As I was just working on my last two correction notes for this draft, I was realizing, as I was writing it out, that all that I just did needs to be cut. There's a lot of repetition, a lot of unfocused writing, a lot of running around in the same circle. It's time to cut the fat.

So what is the proper diet for a play?

Good question. Not really sure. I think it varies from playwright to playwright. First, I'm going to let the play sit around doing nothing for a while--ideally a month. Then I will print it back out, read it, and write down comments and look for where the fat needs to be cut. I might actually give it to someone else to read for help. Then I will take my pen and cut things out. There's several things I really love that I might need to cut--time to kill my babies again I guess.

It seems appropriate that I'm talking about killing my babies. That's what led me to this blog anyway.

So what does a playwright do when one of her plays is off dieting? She works on another play. Another draft.

God, I love rewriting. Seriously.

keep going

2009-01-06T07:46:00.005-06:00

Okay, it's next exactly Hell, but it's a good thing to think about.

After a dismal post about the financial status of the world and such, I am trying to keep a positive attitude. I got the newest issue of The Loop and I found some places to submit a bunch of stuff, so now I have to work on getting revisions in FAST.

You would think that if I knew something was coming up in two months, it would be easier for me. I don't work well under long long deadlines. I do better when i have very little time to get things done. There's less time for procrastination. I am a world class procrastinator, as this morning at Panera in Little Rock has shown.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I was planning on being here for like five hours, doing a bunch of revisions on 'A Death in the Family' maybe start on 'In the Bunker', but I have a sick cat at home and I am going to be leaving soon to take him to the vet in Conway (I bet Dr. Carlin is going to be SO excited!). So that derailed my plan. So I looked at the Loop and did some work with that and did some revisions based on some things my friend, Randy, stated about 'Pleased to Meet Me'. I wondered why I decided to send that one to him. It was shorter so he wouldn't be as burdened with it, but I could have chosen something even shorter and less complext. Now I know--I'm sending it to two different one act festivals. So thanks, universe, again for leading me in the right direction.

All right, I'm off to take a sick cat to the vet. Eventually today I will get back to working on my writing--after I stop at the post office to get a couple of envelopes to mail stuff in.

Move along, move along
like I know you do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along
just to make it through
Move Along
All American Rejects, Move Along

happy endings

2009-01-04T06:54:00.004-06:00

Happy endings are a problem for me.

They have been all my life. I won't even get into my hardcore belief in having a happy ending in life (failing to realize over and over and over again and will over and over and over again in the future that happiness is a process, a path, NOT a destination). I'm talking about having happy endings in my plays.

My plays have them. I just don't know how I feel about them. I'm of two minds.

1. The typical happy ending. You know the one. It's the one in fairy tales where the princess gets saved by a knight in shining armour, the princess awakens from a curse with true love's first kiss, you know the stuff. The one where everything is wrapped up neatly in a bow and there's a happily ever after.

2. The atypical happy ending. This is the one where the hero or heroine gets what he or she wanted but it wasn't exactly what he or she had hoped for. You know, like in 'The Shape of Things'. This story is just as messy as the first example, but just is messy still at the end.

I'll admit, I'm a sucker for a good typical happy ending. The scene in 'The Wedding Singer' where Julia realizes it's Robbie singing on the plane--that makes me cry every time. Let me amend that earlier statement--I'm a sucker for a good typical happy ending when it's done right. It has to tug the heart strings the right way, and the only way to do that is to actually get the audience invested in the characters. If the characters are crap--partially formed or, even worse, just random stereotypes, investment is hard. If there isn't investment, there aren't tears at the end of the play on the part of the audience--there won't be a reaction--at least the one the writer intended. I don't know about other writers out there, but the worst thing when I'm writing is to have the completely opposite of what i wanted out of the audience--not satisfaction that the ending was happy, but annoyance that it was drawn out of them--that they were TOLD how to feel about it, not allowed to feel whatever it is that they would feel.

Perhaps that's the problem I have. Actually, it IS a problem I have. I have a tendency in my work to tell people how to feel instead of drawing it out in the writing. And I'll be honest--I don't know how to fix that. I don't think I do it all the time (if I do, SHOOT me please and take the pen of out my hand), but I know I'm doing it at the end of 'A Death in the Family'. It's the final scene where everything gets wrapped up neatly and it's a good happy ending. All the arguing is done, everything is forgiven, but I guess I'm not sure how to make it work.

I guess the only thing I can do for my happy ending with this play is to just keep working on the happy ending. Maybe watch good examples of happy endings. Read good examples.

All I know is that I need to get this thing tied up. The play is in its seventh draft, and with the exception of some bits and pieces, the last scene is a mess that stands in my way. There's transition problems and then there's the happy ending problem.

Guess I have some work this week.

Happy New Year!

recession

2008-12-24T07:28:00.002-06:00

I'll admit, I've been a bit of an ostrich during this whole downturn in the economy thing. I've been trying not to think about the 401k I just started at my day job (hey, I'm only 33, I still got years to put into that thing...but still...) and I am certainly trying to not think about losing my job (luckily this time, I work at a hospital, and it's very difficult to lose a job at a hospital these days especially I think, so hopefully, I will stick on the right path there). But it finally got my attention when I started doing my annual 'weeding of the theatres'.

This is how I figure out who to send scripts to. I spend time going to every website, seeking out new guidelines, figuring out who is still around (I wish I could say that hasn't been a problem) and who is still accepting at least synopsis and samples from the play. This has been disheartening to say the least. I've found at list six theatres who who have either suspended their play development or submission areas indefinitely or who have switched to agent-submissions only.

Ugh.

Stupid recession.

But I am going to keep working my way through. I have a reading of a play that's very tenatively scheduled with a local theatre group (like, we're trying to get people together to just do the reading at this point, so keep your fingers crossed). I need to get my work done out loud, even if I have to bribe people with pizza. That reminds me to check on the availability of a conference room at the hospital I work at for the reading. The only way my writing is going to get better is to get it done in some fashion. So I'm taking it to the streets, baby.

I'm also still working on 'All Shook Up'. I feel much better about the play than I did a couple months ago. It's actually got a plot arch that makes sense now, or at least more sense. It's almost ready to be printed out and torn apart again.

And I have several other things coming down the pike as well.

TAKE THAT, RECESSION. I'LL JUST KEEP WRITING.

distractions

2008-12-19T09:52:00.002-06:00

This isn't a post about normal distractions, like the phone, the mail, cats begging to go out then come in, go out then come in, go out then come in, go out then come in, facebook, facebook, cats begging to out out then come in...ad nauseum.

I've had those, I'll have those. But I find this to be more peculiar, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

I've been working on 'All Shook Up' recently and for the page count (close to 60 before I started the 5th draft) it was almost full length length. But it wasn't finished--far from it. I had a bunch of far flung ideas, several scenes that needed to be combined, and some odd character things going on. It was all so dispora, nothing clinging together very well. I'd too much plot, too many character quirks, and nothing very solid.

So here's the funny thing. This play came out of my attempt to do 365 days/365 plays, except I wrote a scene every day instead of a full play. I did if for close to six months before being in a play myself took over my life. And I started this play during that time. I had two scenes that ended up being with the same characters. One was with the main character, Rebecca, realizing she's a virgin yet has been empregnanted by Elvis in her dreams, and the other was another minor character, Mindy, and her desperate love for the Weekly World News (RIP). The first about Rebecca has remained in the play, but I fought hard through all the months I've been working on this play for Mindy and her tabloid obsession, but in the end, I just couldn't make it work.

But it was supremely distracting. I'd never had a character trait fight so hard to exist. I realized this is not the play for this, although you would think that since WWN was all about Elvis sightings and the play itself is about a character getting pregnant by Elvis, it would have been easy, but it simply wasn't working out. It was annoying, but it's how it pans out sometimes.

But I've never had this happen before. It was kind of disconcerting to have something from the play distract me from the play itself. It was novel, but annoying.

So I'm trucking along in 'All Shook Up' now, but it's requiring the biggest editing job I think I've ever done. But It's coming along.

what's wrong

2008-12-15T08:12:00.004-06:00

Ever since I finished NaPlaWriMo, I have felt off in my writing. It could be that I've needed a break, and I took one.

But I think I figured out what's REALLY wrong.

I'm a a crossroads. I don't know where to go next. I am not obsessively sending out my work and I know I need to send out more, but I feel sort of stuck.

I'm new to the whole sending out my plays stuff. I don't know what one does. I suppose you just keep sending out plays until someone wants to do it, but I feel like I'm in a vaccuum right now.

And I think that has a lot to do with how I'm writing right now. Maybe not so much the how as not having a group to help me hear my plays out loud. I don't think I know enough people who have the time or the energy to invest in an evening of reading one of my plays out loud and discussing it. I know that the best thing for me is to have people read it out loud, informally, formally, whatever. But I need this so I can know what else I need to do to make it better. Because I feel like I'm a good writer, but plays are meant to be read out loud.

I feel like back in the Quad Cities right now, I would have a much better time with trying to get this done. But you know the grass is always greener and bullshit like that.

I'll admit, I am kind of complaining without doing much work with this aspect. I don't know much about playwriting beyond actually writing the plays and sending a few out here and there. I wish there was some kind of guidebook.

But I can just write my own as I go along. I just need to get it together and get it done.

So nothing's really wrong, exactly. I just need to get my ass in gear.

controversy

2008-12-09T18:54:00.002-06:00

I sometimes worry about the things I want to write about or have written about. Sometimes I worry that I might be writing something too controversial--that I might be thought of as a bad person or something. That it's not societally correct.

Case in point, a new play I'm working on is about the Goebbels' children (for a quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goebbels_children). This story is sad and fascinating. There are some scenes already growing in my head, and yes, at least one or two of them involve Hitler, but a different kind of Hitler that a lot of people might not know about. He loved children, particularly the Goebbels children. So that's intersting. And controversial. Trust me, I never thought I would be saying I'm seeing a side of Hitler I didn't know about.

However, I am not writing a pro-Nazi play or anything. I think it's just interesting to see what was happening there with the children as the center of the play. And one of them, the almost eight year old, Hedwig, or Hedda, is tugging on my sleeve to get my attention and has been for a number of months. She has a story. I will tell it.

But then I realized that I have another play I wanted to write about Janusz Korczak (again, quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak). This play has been hanging out since 2001 when i took history of the holocaust from Dr. Arthur Pitz at Black Hawk College my last year there. I have several scenes I have planned but nothing has come together--until now.

Here's two group of children, on opposing sides, and a similar fate.

But I'm still kind of concerned about the controversial nature of the work, I don't know. I just am afraid I might be offensive (which it would be to someone ANYONE regardless of what I write about), or I might give the wrong idea. Which is funny since I'm not sure right at the moment is even the whole idea.

And done.

2008-11-20T19:28:00.002-06:00

But not really done.

Yesterday, November 19, 2008, I finished my first National Playwriting Month play. The play is called 'Old Woman' currently, but since it's evolved into a whole other creature, it's title will be 'Highway to Hades' from now on.

This has been an insane 19 days. When I got to around day 7 and I was feeling really lousy about my play because it wasn't as fabulous on paper as it was in my head, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't quit. I owed it to myself to figure out what was going on and finish the play. Part of the problem was that I was trying to write my first draft on the computer. I've been writing long enough to know that this seldom works for me. So once I started attempting to do some of the work long hand, I had break through after break through after break through. It's just something about being intimate with the paper and smell of the ink. I don't know what it is, but it breaks through.

And all my plays have some kind of research involved. This one was probably one of the most research heavy onces I've written since 'Koma' when I took dramaturgy with Art Borrecca at Uiowa. It's all mythology based, there's a chorus and everything.

So this is what the 19 days were like for me:

write about 20 pages, hate them, start doing long hand writing, research, scrap about half the 20 pages, start writing ALL of it long hand, typing it in as soon as I had a scene and a choral ode done. I did this all within 19 days.

I feel the first draft suffers worse for the wear in this instance. I had to sacrifice a lot of quality of the writing in order to get the whole thing done, but it got to a point where I just had to finish. I was 15, 10 pages away from the end, and it was so close, I just had to run for it.

Tomorrow I'll post the play on the website (after I do a spell check, because i didn't do one after the last round of writing on the 19th). And then eventually I will start doing edits.

But I finished.

It still hasn't sunk in yet.

makin' progress

2008-11-14T15:21:00.003-06:00

Wow, this has been a crazy couple weeks. National Playwriting Month has started. It's day 14 and I've made extremely good progress, considering I started with 20 pages on around the 11th and decided to strip most of it off and start all over again with a new structure, et al. My friend, Chris Leyva, told me it would be a test of endurance (or something to that effect, I am paraphrasing) and he wasn't kidding! This play, just like my other works, requires a certain amount of research. Some are more research heavy than others and those research heavy ones take time. This one is unfortunately for the time frame of the work, a heavy play. So I've had to squash my process, which is fairly slow and Midcontinental drift like, into a much smaller amount of time. And since I basically care about getting a full length (at least 75 page) play out of this, I'm doing well not getting too bogged down in how much the dialogue needs work, because it does.

WHEW! That's my play I smell and it stinks!

Anyway, this month has been crazy. And it's been a very emotional one for me as well, considering the election. Everyone has their election blog, talking about the day, the lack or abundance of lines he or she had to wait in, where he or she was when the president was announced. I know where I was, I was in bed because I was sick and couldn't make it until 11, when apparently it was announced that our next president was Barack Obama. I did, however, get to see the live by hologram insanity on CNN, but I was too sick to actually enjoy it.

But the country voted the way I hoped the country would vote. It gives me hope. It makes me think that with a lot of hard work, and there is no fooling around with this, there is a TON of hard work ahead of all of us, not just President-Elect Obama, and a lot of togetherness, we can make it through. I believe in Barack Obama. I feel he is a good man with a good heart and good intentions, and yes, I know the path to hell is paved with good intentions, but it gives me a good feeling and hope. There is no other word to describe the feeling I got when I woke up on November 5th and saw the first pictures of our new president. I am getting a bit misty-eyed thinking about it. Yes we can? We can and we did.

Then today, while working on my play, I was catching up on a couple issues of American Theatre that i missed. One, the January 2008 issue had an opinion piece by Naomi Wallace in it. I studied one of her plays, The Inland Sea (actually, I am not sure what the title ended up being, it's the only title I can remember) during my dramaturgy class at the University of Iowa. Her plays are in a word possessing. Her work, like the work of Caryl Churchill, is not the kind of work you might just understand outright with your mind. This is the work of the understanding of the heart. The inner life. And that is why I love Naomi's work. I really hope to get to see some of her work performed and actually take a class with her one day.

But anyway, she wrote an opinion piece called 'On Writing as Transgression'. There's a ton of stuff that spoke to me in this article, but this stands out for me right at this moment. It might not be because of this play in particular, but it's certainly because of something I'm working on ('Squall Lines' possibly?). Here's the quote:

"When I speak of 'writing as transgression', I am calling for a teaching of
theatre that encourages students to write against their 'taught' selves and
to engage, as bell hooks puts it, in the kind of 'self-transgression' and
'critical awareness of self' that will enable the to become, as John Donne
suggests, 'citizens of the world'. Transgression is, among other things, a
dissection of one's self and a discovery of larger worlds. Both processes
(or perhaps they are one) involve questioning entitlement and empathy."

She speaks of the status quo being untouched. Of the really important things being unexamined. Of us knowing more about Bennifer and Brangelina than of how much radioactive waste was left behind by our country at the end of the First Gulf War. Of obscuring what's important by what's trivial.

And I won't cast stones in a glass house; I do it too. I get tripped up on the trivial. It's easier that way. It requires less thought. It's easier to think about the trivial. It's harder to think about the big ideas and the big truths, but they are certainly worth the effort.

This is not the last I am sure I will write about Ms. Wallace. She's opened my heart to something bigger than me. And I think that's what some of my plays need, something bigger than me and my characters to get moving.

Anna Deavere Smith from "Letters to a Young Artist"

2008-10-30T07:53:00.001-05:00

FAITH

Dear BZ:

"I have fought the good fight,

I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

II Timothy 4:7

No doubt about it, more important that the race and the fight is faith. Whatever that means, spiritual or otherwise. It's crucial to keep the faith. Never stop believing.

Faith requires discipline and a lot of imagination.
ADS
Baltimore, Maryland
September 2003
(pg 173)

rejection

2008-10-24T18:19:00.001-05:00

I got a letter from The Public Theatre today. They are not going to pursue "Hauntings". This is actually okay. I mean, I got to send my work to The Public Theatre. That's a big deal on it's own. It just means it wasn't the right time or place. At least something was wrong. But at any rate, I am going to continue working and sending stuff out. Someone will want to do this play.

thank you, Neil Gaiman

2008-10-19T08:31:00.003-05:00

Last night, when Bill and I were in Little Rock, we were in the parking lot of Bed, Bath and Beyond, we were listening to NPR, and they were talking about Neil Gaiman's newest book, The Graveyard Book, and had some interviews with him about the book and the process of writing it. This is what he had to say about coming up with the idea of the book and kind of poking around at working on it:

"I knew I had a book," says Gaiman. But when he sat down that afternoon to write he came to a difficult realization after a page and a half: "I am not yet a good enough writer for this idea," Gaiman recalls thinking.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95835164

I had a moment of comfort from hearing that. I have a couple plays that have been hanging out in the back of my brain for literally years. I pull them out every once in a while, get maybe an extra half a page out if I'm lucky, and then set the plays back in the back of my brain.

But now I know WHY I haven't been able to get any further on these two precious plays: it's because I'm not ready. I don't know when I will be ready, but I have a feeling that when I'm ready, I'll know.

So I just have to be patient.

Also, my play reading last month went spectacularly. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for a better experience. The Green Room (http://thegreenroomtheatre.com/) was amazing. Tyson and Derek are consummate professionals and the actors were amazing as well. The space is wonderful. The Green Room is the site of the Brew and View, so it has the seats set up still like it's a movie theatre. There's a large black void above the stage where the screen was, and that has a ton of potential. There weren't a ton of people there each night, maybe about 30 people showed up in all, but the audiences were very helpful with their comments. I even got a standing ovation on Saturday night! It was just beautiful.

And I got wonderful feedback and I am going to be working on revising the play. There's not major changes, just little things to make it tighter.

what crazy random happenstance

2008-08-26T04:41:00.003-05:00

Goody. The 'Dr. Horrible Sing-a-Long Blog' quotes are starting to creep in over here. Sarcasm! That's original.

Okay, it's too early in the morning with too little sleep to be able to get my faculties on right.

A week from tomorrow I will be driving back to the Quad Cities for my first after college reading of a play I wrote. I will be at rehearsal on Thursday and the reading on Friday and Saturday.

It's a funny experience, seeing your work with feet, lungs, hearts, minds, saliva. This is much different from a full production, where I would have seen some of the play already. I am working with people I don't know for the most part, all of whom have good intentions and good reputations. I still can't help but be scared about it.

What if the play is actually terrible? This is the one that a reader from the Joseph Papp Public Theatre decided was good enough from the synopsis and sample to request and read the entire work. That has to mean something.

I will need to continue this rant about being frightened about this reading. I use the word frightened extremely loosely.

unintended sabbatical

2008-08-01T05:57:00.003-05:00

Whoa. I don't know how I forgot to post for a month and a half. That will happen sometimes, though.

I was going through a bit of a writing crisis. I haven't gone through a particularly terrible spell of not writing, of bad writing or anything like that in a long long time (thanks effexor xr for straightening out my brain chemistry!). But I was dealing with a couple plays in which continuing to work on the drafts just didn't yield any headway. And I was bummed about it. Seriously bummed.

I tried to just write through, because 99% of the time writing through the bad times while working on something definitely helps. This time it didn't.

So I had to put those plays away. It's not the first time I've had to do this, but you know. Sometimes it's harder than others.

And it's not like I don't know how these things work. I try to realize with grace what I need to do for my writing, because I'm getting to know what works and what doesn't. But sometimes even knowing what is right for your work doesn't mean you'll always do it.

So I banged my head against a wall metaphorically and then stopped.

I was bummed out a couple days because i couldn't write. This was the real problem. It wasn't so much that the characters were all flat and sounding the same, the plot was aimless or anything like that. Those things will work themselves out eventually. The problem was that I wasn't writing during these times.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself to be producing constantly. And maybe I shouldn't put that much pressure on myself about it.

Let's put it this way. I think I needed to cultivate a writing habit where i needed to do it everyday or something isn't right. And I think i did a good job cultivating that habit.

But part of the problem with being the perfectionist I am is that when I'm not writing for whatever reason (usually because when I have time to do it and i don't for whatever reason) I get mad at myself and that starts this cycle of not writing because I'm completely anorexic, writingly. So you know, that's REAL helpful.

So, as I try to adapt my writing life to a more buddhist moderation approach, it happens that I am going to have times where I don't write. Not just because I have to work until 7:30 and then turn around and work at 5:15 the next morning. Not just because i have cleaning to do and a kitten to play with and because I'm tired. But because doing the act of writing means that there is going to be an opposite of the act of not-writing. There's always two sides to it. And I think I need to remember that and not be so harsh with myself when I don't write. It's not laziness or general depression or anything like that anymore. It's because maybe I just need to let the writing doing writing in my subconscious.

That being said, I set those plays aside and have been heavily working on another play this whole past two months. And it's definitely shaped up better than it was, but it's getting to the point where i need to let it rest because it needs to cultivate.

In September I will break those other plays out and see if I get a breakthrough or not.

In September, I will be attending the rehearsals and reading for 'Hauntings; back in my home town. I am very excited, yet very nervous about it. It's the most personal thing I've written and it's about my mother and it's going to be performed in her town as well. I just hope it's something like a real play. It would be nice for it to be. I will be writing to the director some notes behind the play. I'll post them here as well, so you can get an insight into the work.

so i'm back, look out!

iowa city

2008-06-17T07:48:00.002-05:00

As most of you know, there's been all these crazy floods in the midwest. Iowa City, where I spent four years of my life, is really messed up.

http://www.dilibraryarchive.com/slideshow/616sat/index.html

I look at these pictures and think, oh my god, I used to walk there, and there and there, and oh my god, the fountain in front of the IMU is completely submerged! And I think about the theatre building and the art building with the Pollock hanging in it and the library and I just want want to cry.

Why all this over a city?

This is my writing heart, the place the pretty well shaped me into the writer I am today. I know, everything in my life has, but after my father died, it was pretty much the next thing that kept me writing, encouraged me to write. I wrote and performed my first No Shame piece, 'Deep Thumb' , in Theatre B in the theatre building. I went on to write other pieces and to take playwriting classes, and the people and the very city itself helped me to become who I am today.

It's my angel, you know? And to see what the flood has done to the place I love, it's heartbreaking.

I know it will rebound and will fix itself, and this will be forgotten, but it just makes you remember the important angels of your life.

things you learn

2008-06-07T08:12:00.002-05:00

i approach writing my plays from a dramaturgical standpoint. I took a class in dramaturgy when I was at the university of iowa, and I wrote a play, 'Koma', as my final project (or protocol, as it was called in the class). It was awesome to research some varying things and then weave it all together into a play. i very much enjoyed that process. it tied my love for research together with my love for writing.

because in case you didn't know, i'm a giant nerd when it comes to research. Research papers were some of my favoritest things ever in college. i would get a bit of a thrill from having to do one. I loved spending time in the library, looking for the right source, wandering amid the rows of books, inhaling their hoary, heady scent. Awesome. So when I took dramaturgy and wrote 'Koma', I knew I had found my way of creating a play.

So pretty much every play I write has some research involved in it. Some plays, not much, others, tons. The one I am working on right now, I kind of had to create a whole new religious idea (which may or may not exist, possibly under a different name), but I have two characters who are best described a fundamentalist environmentalist Christians.

How about that? That's super exciting.

And I'm also dealing with the element of a character in disguise. This character, originally, I was going to have her just be in the play as herself but with some changes she claims happened to make her more able to fit into the group of people she's with. She's basically undercover, and several people are suspicious of her right away, and with good reason. It all felt predictable and not quite what the play needed.

But then I came up with the idea that she's in deep undercover: new name, look, etc. No one recognizes her, except one person. who remembers her character as one created during high school for a play. But there's no proof. Then another character also becomes suspicious when he full on recognizes her, and these two characters work together to figure out what the undercover character is up to.

And it works better for the play in the long run. It's harder to pull off because I won't have the audience knowing exactly who she is when she first shows up. So the challenge is to leave appropriate clues and see how things go after that. but i think it's going to work better, be less predicable, and more like what the play needs.

it's just funny because i never thought the play would turn out like THIS. it's amazing how those things work.

Things I Do when I have Writer's Anorexia

2008-05-30T08:56:00.002-05:00

I'll get to the whole 'Writer's Anorexia' thing in a post or two.

Recently, I've been suffering from a bout of it. It's made it hard to get anything done, so I go and do what I usually do when I can't seem to get the pen or cursor moving: I work on submission packets.

And I realized that I have a month to get 'Squall Lines' together to make a deadline I want to send a package for it to. Luckily it's for 'works in progress', otherwise I would have to choose something else or not submit at all.

But I am realizing some things about the play. And it pertains to killing babies from the last post. I need to cut whole sections and paste things together so they work. And this is okay. It's actually kind of cathartic to do. To not be so attached to something that you can't just hit delete and never look back.

Natalie Goldberg talks about having a spontaneous poem booth at a fundraiser or two, where she would write a spontaneous poem on any subject given by someone, and the person would pay some money for it. She would write the poem and give it to the person, never to be seen by her again. That is the ultimate in letting go. Spontaneously writing something like that and seeing it walk away. That idea is very fascinating to me. It might be difficult to do a spontaneous play booth (I think that's actually covered by improv), but it's a good thing to think about.

I really feel in the end when something needs to be cut or trimmed or tossed completely out, it's for the best of the work. It's only when the ego gets in the way that things get rocky.

Like now.

I mean, when I wrote 'The Rope Swings' in 2003, I had written several different drafts of the play. It was the night before the play was due for 'The Ten Minute Play Festival' and I scrapped the whole thing. I started over, splitting my own argument in my head about what to do about a demand my mother had made on me into two different characters, sisters, linked by family and by emotional damage inflicted by all the mothers in their lineage down to the very first mother. And I just dashed it off, a first draft, and turned it in the next day. I fretted for several days until I discovered I had made it in.

So killing your babies isn't a bad thing. I have to work today from 11 to close. I am hoping that I feel better after I get off work, better than I felt last night, so I can actually rip 'Squall Lines' apart and put it back together again.

Dramatecture

Winding Down the Year

Deus Ex Machina needed

Naplwrimo

Breakthrough: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

Waiting on November

Getting ready for November

May the Farce be With Me

And I have Returned to the land of normal sun

Alaska

Few and Far Between

Packing is a Good Thing

Loving my Play to Death

What a Headache...

When it Rains...

Becoming a Night Owl to Give a Hoot

Giving a Hoot

I want to be the living example of this, on and off stage

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. "~ Cadet Maxim

Holding Pattern

Some Much to Do, So Little Time

Brain Reset

Three Rejections and Two Responses

Human Girl and Script Frenzy

Bothered

Almost to the end of NaPlWriMo 2010

National Playwriting Month 2010

Full Moon

Time Changes

Steamrollin'

Augustend

Garage Sale

....tries again...

'Sand and Water' back on the back burner

Laurel Snyder: Be a Critic of Critics

Sand and Water, Draft 2, 'finished'

The First Step to Recovery

In Progress

winning the war

Enjoy the Silence

English is so Imprecise

(dis)alignments

something's always wrong

The Writing Life

http://www.getyourgoodnews.com/toni.html

Meta-Grafi

wrestling with that angel, subtext

Sand and Water

Too Busy to Come Up With an Insightful Title

well, it was bound to happen

New Year, New Look, New Play, Same Issues

I know, I know

time flew

One day left of NaPlWriMo

time flies!

Countdown Day 5: Tools of the Trade

Countdown: 9 Days--some thoughts on ideas

Countdown: 10 days until November 1 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Tired

NaPlWriMo 2009 11 days left!

Heavensent

Comix 101

Unofficial Submission Spree

National Playwriting Month

motivation

I had a dream last night

break on through

revision

Support

synopsis

The 35th Year

Another mantra

Sand and Water

Learning to write THIS play

strengths and weaknesses

(in)concievable

don't worry, be happy

move along

Order Out of Chaos

It's no surprise to me that I'm my own worst enemy

depression of the economic variety

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. "
~ Cadet Maxim