Day 18: November 18, 2009

I agree with this. I'm someone who always overwrites. Or used to anyway... :)

Editing would take me a long time but when you have a lot of things to cut, sometimes you end up with a really nice finished product because you really get to choose wich words to keep.

But that's to worry about that later. Don't think finished product, think process right now ! You'll have the entire rest of the year, to cut, edit, revise !

I bet you'll have a blast and don't forget to spread the word about Naplwrimo for next year! :-)

So I shall send positive, creative, send in the alien clowns with the gun in their tentacles talking about jello....energy.

Remember, you have all of December and January to edit, but this is the month to WRITE!

:o)

Up to 45 pages, which is an OMG number because 50 is in sight, and if 50 is in sight, then 75 is around the corner, so OMG!

Also, just wrote a bit about how the vegetable peddler completely ineffectually stabs another character in the arm with her knitting needle.  I'm still laughing at myself!

"Now go apologize and promise you'll never stab him again."

I write a lot of my stuff long hand and when I type it up, I can't help but edit as I do. I guess it's not the urge to edit but the urge to edit long long long. Don't beat yourself up if you go back over it and edit a bit...just don't spend the majority of your time on it. Just keep writing and leave yourself a note somewhere that something needs to be changed.

Have fun with your playwriting workshops. I would love to run some someday!

glad to see you poking your head in. Wonderful, actually. Come on in whenever you can, no pressure. Anything you add, regardless of what you add, is always helpful. :)

keep on chugging through that swampy thing. You can make it. And if you hit 80 and there's no end in sight, just keep going.

Well, smell you! That's wonderful! Keep on keeping on. :)

You can definitely make it. Just keep writing! If you have any problems or run into any hard corners with your play, post on the site. We will help you out!

Cheers!

it's funny, because you might not even know when you write the next act if you're halfway through the story or not. Aimee Bender, author of the wonderful Girl in the Flammable Skirt and An Invisible Sign of my Own, when she was writing Invisible Sign, wrote for over a year on the book and then realized she was writing the book from the wrong character's POV (if I recall correctly).

While that sounds sad and like it's a waste, it's not. It's never a waste because it all becomes fertilizer for other things in the future.

Cheers!

Hi all, so nice to know everyone is still "chugging" along nicely. I luckily finished my postgrad stuff at the beginning of November, but have since been busy with...well, all sorts of things, you know how it goes.

As far as the play goes I am frantically resisting the urge to edit and rewrite! I want to go back and finesse the early pages, instead of hurtling on towards...the end? I'm about halfway, just over 30 pages. Feeling good, still loving it.

Am running playwrighting workshops all weekend so hopefully will keep inspired to write my own things in between!

I feel so out of the community this year, even though I purposely volunteered to be a blogger to keep myself active in the community. Last year I was on this site multiple times a day and posted in every daily check-in thread. It was part of my daily writing ritual--check the website, write a comment, and get my three pages of writing done. This year I'm a total mess. I'm beyond busy, and I got a cold this weekend on top of that.

But here I am, more than halfway through the month. All I've written so far is about 20 additional pages to my full-length, so with my pre-November cheating pages added in, about 39 pages total. The saddest part is that I don't even really know the plot of my play yet. It's like 40 pages in and I don't really know what the play is about. I know some people work best that way, but I usually like having at least a vague idea of where I'm going that I'm allowed to revise along the way. As it is now I just feel lost. I could have the characters sitting around just talking to each other for hours, but I have no idea where it's going.

I feel bad that I haven't been nearly as involved as I wanted to be. For anyone considering any sort of grad school (whether it's related to playwriting or not), it's hard. And for anyone considering working full-time in addition to grad school, it's even harder. But it's great and I wouldn't trade this experience away at all. I've seen my writing improve since September and I have (a little) more faith in my writing ability. I just end up always feeling like I've been run over by a truck by the end of every day. :) Hopefully I can start checking in more often now that my weekend theater shifts are over.

Welcome to the party, Nachtebuch!  You'll see that many participants talk about where they are in acts, or scenes, and if that works for you to keep things moving forward, that's great.  I just write it all in one long thread.  If I try to divide it up I find it forces the issue and I don't find where the natural high points are. 

You'll find a lot of the encouragement given around here is, "whatever works for you, just keep writing!"

Once upon a time, I thought I had a fairly basic plot to guide me. I thought I had done enough research to tell a historical tale.

Then I started writing it. And it needs action, but I'm inexperienced at writing action. [Not included aliens landing, and shoot outs, of course! Blow it up! Blow it all up!] I really want to avoid the hackneyed, polarized stuff and to emphasize the quiet heroism of ordinary people.

In short, I haven't a fat hairy clue where it's all going, and I will likely end up with 80 pages, but no ending in sight. Sigh.

It's the old "get to the top of the hill only to see a valley, two deserts, a swamp, and then another hill" to go.

I shall take the words of Mead Hunter to heart - worry about authenticity later, worry about plot points [hah!] [stuff is happening to some people...my plot has evaporated or more precisely, has lost its vicosity] later, worry about editing later, just write.

This isn't the wall. This is definitely the swampy bit after the desert...with my boots sticking at every step.

Ok, I've missed a couple of check in days but the writing is chugging along. I was able to get rough drafts of all 30 scenes for the ten minute play collection and I'm up to 8 scenes on second round re-writes. Toot toot!

Ugh. I was crazy enough to start this in the middle of the month. Correction: right after the middle of the month. I need to clock 6 pages a day or I will never hit the 75-page mark by November 30. I started about an hour ago - it's currently 22 18, and I'm at Page 5 with 1,553 words. The next few days are going to be slightly crazy.

At the moment, I'm not sure I want to divide my plays into acts - or even scenes, for that matter, so I shall just keep writing, and see what happens.

Well, half the number of pages (now 38) and at the end of Act 1. Not half the days remaining though.

I have a few blotches. Bits where they are talking about stuff that isn't moving the story forward. And a few key moments that I've missed, omitting to say what I will later rely upon.

Am I halfway through the story? I do worry a little that my Act 1 highpoint isn't actually just plot point 1 in disguise. It depends on the story I'm telling of course. If it is PP1, then by rights there's probably another 114 pages to go.

There's only one way to know - write the next act.