Week #2: Sunday, November 15

Funny how some nicknames just stick...

Got stuck on the christmas play for a while but now up to page 26.

write! Sometimes you just need to steal time to write...work breaks are great for this. I wish you broken legs and lots of writing time in your future! :)

there has been no time to be able to write 70 pages. for that, as i had said, i should have no other life beside my one play. if on stage a page lasts about a minute, then imagine how much time u take to write one.
there has been no time to be able to write 38 pages, for that i should have been a good programmer, a good schedules-maker. but i'm not.
there also has been no time to be able to write 0 pages, because for one thing i'm grateful artists have been blessed is conscience. artists (or am i fooling myself by thinking so?) seem all to be infected by disease called "lazyness" and without conscience there were no art-piece in this world. this teasing, sometimes awfully cruel devil-faced, yet the most innocent feeling ever has been always there to all artists in this world, always memorizing: you have a word!
but yet, i don't have 0, don't have 38, don't have 70, i have had time only to write 18 pages.
my only cure to this would be a good battle plan with time, tell me how do i beat 24 hours in a day?

...you are being a writer.

so if you have 38 - good for you!
if you have 70 - good for you!
if you have 0 - what is it that is stopping you from putting down words, and can any of us help to release the words from you?

hugs

Up to page 17. Kind of at a stall now, but feeling good about getting a third to half way done by the end of the month.

In the surprisingly funny "The Ugly Truth", Gerard Butler's character says "If you don't want to sleep with you, why would anyone else?" If we don't love our plays, how can we expect anyone else to? Love doesn't always mean LIKE of course! :-)

If i said i have 38 pages, you'd all think: good, that's how it goes, you are in middle and there's just half way more to go. I wouldn't be stressed, scared that i'm getting under wheels of time, i'd be just doing my next moves on the chess-game called "playwriting".

If i said i have 70 pages, you'd all think i'm lunatic, surely you'd find a way to put in better words, but that's pretty hard to believe, isn't it? (probably you'd think i have no life and job except writing, plus i should be very trained writer: no time for lazying). I just imagine how happy and proud i were of myself and my play. Perhaps, whiner as i am, i'd still find a way how to nag about my almost-done-play, but deep inside i'd be just so relieved. (Exhales deeply).

But i just can't help myself in thinking: what would u all say if i would come here and write: "Dear rhinos, it's week 2 and i have 0 pages." What would you think? What do you think how would i feel?

I love all these comments. It's amazing to be in the company of writers, isn't it.

I did a lot of devil may care type of writing the first two weeks and I'm ready to get down to making it all better. I'm ready to do the stiching. Always the hardest part. We'll see how things go...

This is so great to hear!

Go Punter Go !

This is totally my writing style. Usually the first scene I think of when writing a play is one that's in the middle. Then I jump around, maybe writing the last scene, then the second scene - I follow my instict on what I should write next. Then in the end I just try to make it all fit together.

Well last week wasn't my most productive week of actually getting words onto the page, but I think taking a little break was good. I was able to sit down and really think about my play and figure out where I could trim the fat. I also have some great ideas for scenes, so I'm hoping to get another burst of writing energy (much like the kind I had at the beginning of the contest) this week. And hopefully by the end of the week I'll have a more definite answer to the question "what is my play about?"

To be continued...

I am feeling an enormous sense of having developed as a playwright in these last couple of weeks. I still procrastinate. I still want to edit and analyse too much. But I feel more comfortable with just sitting down to write the next scene.

There are probably a few factors. A big part is feeling that my struggle is shared by lots of other people. And there is such a positive, fun ethos here that soomehow I'm a bit freer. And also the looming deadline keeps giving me an excuse to sit down at the computer and write.

And like everything, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

31 pages

Thank You

No, not Halfway house...

Actually, a bit more than halfway, as I hit 40 pages tonight. I'm going to try to pick up the pace so I don't get behind over Thanksgiving.

Just had to note that two of my favorite writers are quoted on this page already: Tony Kushner and Raymond Chandler. This is why I like playwrights!

"Let's keep going!" --Callie Khouri, Thelma and Louise

Karen,

I love how you always fall in love with your plays. It's so very inspiring to me...

Sometimes it's best to do just what you can see--if it's not linear, it's okay. Connecting the dots becomes more obvious as you work through it. You can always re-arrange the pieces later. Keep going!

isn't it funny how that works? The hubris we have about the play, that we are in control. But what comes out from letting go to the characters and let them live their stories, thier lives, it's so much more interesting and fulfilling. I am so glad that things are working well for you. Can't wait to see what happens. :)

Well, I took the advice from the posts, as well as Prince Humperdinck's, and "Skip to the end!"  And got several pages done.  I sure hope I can connect the dots.  My brain is screaming to edit, but I am really trying just to get all the puzzle pieces down and I'll slide them around later.  38.

My Beloved and I went to see August: Osage County last week, and the TS Eliot quotes had me flickering over to the full text of The Waste Land, which although written in the 1920s, is inspirational in its understanding of the bleakness of the Depression and the ultimate rise of evil in those hard times. I am not a good writer of fantastical stuff - I am still so new at this, it is hard enough to stitch together something that sounds real and true in plain language. But it seems correct to call the writing muse, the "fickle wench", or:

"...Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.."

My protagonists have turned out to be two women who cannot simply sit and endure, they must act. I thought the play would be about the men and their attempts to fix a terrible situation, but the Lady had other ideas of her own. The men are Stuck, until and unless the women kick them into movement.

This is what I love about writing. This is the joy. We create a world in which we begin with the hubris that we control it, and all who populate it. But in the end, it is not about control at all. It is about discovery, it is about opening up to what may happen, it is about characters that MUST do this or say that to be REAL, and it is about finding that true place, where they can be seen in our mind's eye as three dimensional beings with, as it turns out, minds of their own.

I love the phrase "of situations" because that is a lot of what playwriting is for me: here are these characters. Put them in these situations. what happens? what do they say? why do they say it? what do they want, need, desire, in the Situations?

56 pages. Four scenes.

The Lady beckons. I am so lucky and so privileged, to know that gesture is for me.

Eight more pages today? Yes! End Act I or bust!

This one is tougher than last year. Last year I had a story model that I knew worked (even though the way it worked is morally repugnant). Given that the play was a vaudeville, I could simply riff.

This year, the story is much more "my own," though it's also a distant cousin of Rip Van Winkle. I have to supply ta lot of the dramanating force (dramanating = actual real word).

'In the Bunker' is on the verge of something--what I have no idea. But it's pulling me in a direction I wasn't expecting. This may very well be a two act play with two different storylines. It seems as though I have exhausted 'In the Bunker'.

I had an idea that 'The King of Children', another play I had been trying to work on for literally 10 years, may rear its head. In that case, my dear Rhinos, I may actually be becoming a rebel Rhino. I guess I just need to follow what the work wants.

I am not unhappy with the direction the play is going. In fact, there was quite a bit of overlap in my daydreaming about 'In the Bunker' and 'The King of Children'. It's going to be a daring thing to make it work.

But first I need to get it all on paper.

That's wonderful, Karen! Being in love with the play is very important. It will carry you a long way. Remember that love when you hit the rough patches; it will sustain you!

Week 2 already? Good grief. About to do a walking tour of Zagreb then fly to Frankfurt later and home tomorrow. Although it truly is completely coincidental that I'm writing a play about travelling whilst doing so much travelling, it's been REALLY useful in terms of ideas and inspiration. Not so useful in terms of time to get writing, and last night instead of writing 'pages' I ended up writing lists for my characters - whats in their hand luggage, two recent passport stamps. I've also been playing with shapes for their movement and dialogue, I'm getting all esoteric on this play and I have no idea why but all I can say is IT'S WORKING.

So. Twenty two pages. But I'm in love with this play.