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Don't ignore the world - embrace it

By karenjeynes - Posted on 04 November 2008

Ok, so you're having an election in the US. Here in South Africa our ruling party is splintering. We have jobs, shows, other stuff. Isn't that fantastic? Look how much raw material the world is throwing at us? Go and vote - and observe everyone else, they might make an excellent character for your play.

I get some of my best stuff from real life - normally I take a starting point and interpret it, so it's not "documentary" or anything - just inspiration. Some such things:

A very out of place "rural" couple at an upmarket coffee shop at our Waterfront became the play "I'll Have What She's Having"

My friends' tale of how her house sprung a leak, and the water main was in the road, and she went out in her pyjamas to turn it off and suddenly realised how many people were staring at her funny became an incident in a novel I'm still busy with.

My son's proclamation at age three that "sky too big", became a play by that name...

And just today an incident with a colleague's laptop gave me a great gag for my play - I wrote another two whole pages today, which impresses the hell out of me.

Now you'll have to excuse me, I have a novel and a play to write.

:-)

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Ack! Computers are good until they're bad.

Submitted by QueenB on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 10:12pm.

You know the feeling. You're on a roll, typing away furiously to get all the dialogue in your head down on paper/computer and then--splat! The program you're using gives you a cryptic little message that says, in essence, you're screwed: So sorry, but this program has to close and you're going to lose everything you haven't saved.

Yep, it happened to me tonight. Lost 3 pages of dialogue, and had to go back and recreate them. Of course, it's not the briliance that I wrote the first time, but after some tears and primal screams, I rewrote the pages, saving every other minute.

On page 19. Done for today. Tomorrow will be a better day. I hope...

tomorrow, tomorrow

Submitted by karenjeynes on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 2:44am.

Ah, the joys of technology. The joys of machines, that have minds of their own. The joys of rewriting, when it's the last thing you want to do.

Tell your computer it shall not win. You shall triumph!

"When in doubt, have a man enter the room with a gun in his hand." Raymond Chandler

Computers.

Submitted by josh-con-carne on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 10:25am.

When I was twenty-two I lost every play I'd ever written due to a computer crash. seriously, I had no hard copies. I shan't make that mistake again, I can tell you that.

-Joshua

just one of those stories

Submitted by karenjeynes on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 11:56am.

A friend of mine was working on a novel - he was on the last stages of his first draft. he had it on his laptop, his pc, his flashdrive, and a hardcopy. IN THE SPACE OF TWO HOURS someone stole his laptop, someone else broke into his house and stole the pc, the flashdrive mysteriously vanished and remains lost to this day, and the hardcopy? His dear mum, who had it for safekeeping, had recycled it the week before.

I have no moral to this story except shit happens!

"When in doubt, have a man enter the room with a gun in his hand." Raymond Chandler

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