inspiration

So here’s the thing. There is no “right way” to write a play. 

You don’t have to have an outline. You don’t have to write scene 1, then scene 2, then scene 3, and on and on. You don’t have to know how the narrative will end before you sit down to write. In fact, you don’t have to know the major plot points or even know exactly who your characters are.

What you do have to do is write.

And if you’re like me, outlines do not help. In fact, for me, outlines stifle my writing process. When I begin writing a play I usually know the ending and the beginning, everything else is a mystery and writing the play is a process of discovery. The narrative and characters reveal themselves, become more complex, as I write.

Oh, and I don’t write my scenes in chronological order. I put them in order later. You see, I’m very intuitive when it comes to writing. I listen to my Muse. And if the scene I begin to see and hear in my head is further along in the narrative, so be it. I’m going to strike while the inspiration iron is hot and write the scene that’s present in my mind—I’m not going to wait until later, until I’ve written all the scenes that come before. 

I write this way because this is what works for me. And you need to find out what works for you. So if outlines do work for you, if writing scenes in chronological order keeps your writing flow going—then do it, by all means.

But if you find your writing process stalling because you’re trying to adhere to an outline, if you find yourself facing writer’s block because you’re trying to write a specific plot point then pump the breaks.  You may want to try a different way of writing. 

You may just need to throw out that outline, along with any preconceived ideas about how to write a play.  Because while our preconceptions about theatre help us understand what is possible for us to create, while what we’ve seen and read inspire and inform our writing, they sometimes hem in our imagination for what could be. 

So remember, there is no right way or one way to write a play. For each playwright, there is just their way.

Go find your way.

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Poet turned playwright Marisela Treviño Orta has an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco where she exclusively studied Poetry but somehow found her way to theatre. Her first play Braided Sorrow won the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama and the 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama. She is an alumna of the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwrights Initiative and a former member of Playground’s Writers Pool. Currently she is participating in AlterTheater’s AlterLab residency program where she wrote her new play The River Bride, the first play in her cycle of Grimm Latino Fairy Tales. The River Bride will be produced in AlterTheater’s 2013-2014 season.

If you’re in NYC on November 27^th (6:30pm), you can see a reading of Marisela’s play American Triage, a finalist for the 2012 Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition at Repertorio Español.

Playwriting is as unrewarding as anything Sisyphus could possibly have an application in for. Success in playwriting is getting your text into a theatre good enough that you’d care to see a show in it for a reading. It will be incubating, in the new play nursery, from where it will “experimentally” “emerge” for a “world premiere reading” or some bullshit. After which they will tear it apart and explain that in a few years you will be good enough for the black box downstairs (or offsite).

That’s WINNING.
I know.

So don’t think I don’t know what the voices after your midnight bourbon and Fudge Stripe run say. I do. It sucks. Those voices are the single most destructive thing to anyone’s creative process. The no’s someone else tell you can be motivating. The no’s you mutter to yourself before an idea is voiced is the perfect destructive crime. No one can stop it and you’re accountable to no one for it.

So stop it.

The negativity and the creative abortions, not the midnight bourbon and Fudge Stripe runs those are still on.

 Let me segue clumsily to a metaphor you care nothing about

That right there is the Green Monster.

It is a thirty seven foot (and 2 inch) wall that graces left field at Fenway Park in Boston and it is a sports icon. It’s enough of an icon that even some of you non-sports fans knew what it was.

Can you see the texture?

The Green Monster stippled with the imprint of thousands of batted balls. It gets resurfaced occasionally and recently was surfaced with hard plastic in lieu of the old school green-painted tin, but while that surface is hanging do you know how you can tell one dimple from another? You don’t. You can’t.

One divot is indistinguishable from another.

The wall faces every batter who steps up. 
A very short 310 feet away it looms begging your attention, but it’s as unpredictable a target as you could imagine.
There a scoreboard on it. And a ladder. And there are dead spots in it that hamper bounces.

Balls that are sure home runs in other ballparks are singles with a true bounce while conversely (relatively) tiny men like Bucky Dent can chip a ball over it for devastating home runs.

Watch Bucky Dent in action. 

But you have to play.
You have to swing.

It won’t be a career (and life) defining moment every time out. It definitionally can’t be. Heck, in baseball two thirds failure make you an all star…but you can’t let the unlikeliness of world beating success stop you from writing. We need your voice in this moment. We need everyone to suit up or we don’t have a culture. We can’t win this game, this recordation of our cultural moment, without the entire team. One hit at a time.

Not a single one of those wall dimples is “success” by the ultimate definition of success for the baseball hitter– the home run. Not one of them. But the mark they left is very real.

You’re up.

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Travis Bedard is the Artistic Director of Cambiare Productions in Austin and the managing editor of 2amTheatre.com. A long time theatre blogger and proud advocate for new work in general and Austin theatre - specifically in the social media realm, Travis is also a participant in Arena Stage’s #Newplay initiative and livestreaming channel, and a facilitator for World Theatre Day. With Cambiare Productions he produced the Austin Critics' Table Best Comedy and Best New Script nominee MESSENGER NO. 4 (OR HOW TO SURVIVE A GREEK TRAGEDY), produced, designed and performed (Menelaus) in ORESTES (multiple 2009 B Iden Payne Award Nominee including Best Production - Drama), produced and directed Caryl Churchill’s SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN, produced (with Gobotrick Theatre Company) the Austin Critics' Table nominated NINA VARIATIONS, produced Megan M. Reilly’s design-as-performance work TRANSFORMATIONS and co-created (with Will Hollis Snider) the B. Iden Payne nominated INTERMISSION.

Dear Rhinos, Remember me? I'm the crazy one who created Naplwrimo because I wanted to write a play, not a novel-though I thought Nanowrimo was a very cool idea. Two years ago I stepped back from running things around here and Elizabeth and Toni stepped up, because they didn't want the project to end. So here we are and I'm so happy to see so many of you here, writing plays. Though I'm not writing plays much these days, I still write daily. This morning, the gods of writing made me write this and it occured to me that it might be of inspiration to you as you finish up Naplwrimo. So... here is to you and to the 75 pages you can surely write by Midnight tomorrow. I won't wish you luck because you know that's got nothing to do with it.

Write

Write until the ancient ruins no longer crumble at your tears.

Write until there are no words left.

Write because you have nothing else.

Write because you could be doing everything else.

Write with your fists in your mouth.

Write until you finish the coffee.

Write until the clock says 12.

Write until the bird outside lands on the feeder.

Write until the kids wake up.

Write until the phone rings.

Write because most days you don’t.

Write because most days you won’t.

Write because it’s sexy.

Write because you’re bothered.

Write because you said you would.

Write because you haven’t used up all the words yet.

Write because someone who loves you told you to.

Write because you love yourself. Write for hatred.

Write for pain.

Write for joy and peace and all the goddamn clichés.

Write to occupy yourself.

Write while eating leftovers.

Write when the coke machine is broken.

Write when it’s too cold to run.

Write when it’s too warm to sleep.

Write because it’s not your turn to change the diaper.

Write because your grandmother would have wanted you to.

Write for freedom and power and all the bloodshed.

Write for revolution.

Write for the fish and the butterflies and the wolves.

Write so you can meet everybody. Write so you can fall in love.

Write so you can wear a cape.

Write so you can hang out in the North Pole.

Write so you can lose the map.

Write so you become the river.

Write to your heart’s desire.

Write so you are not alone.

Write to repair broken bones,

Write like you’d punch a wall,

Write to stop the nausea.

Write in charcoal,

Write in blood,

Write like the clouds that make shape,

Write double rainbow all the way.

Write avocado, margarita and pamplemousse.

Write like the clouds that make shapes,

Write like a dreamcatcher,

Write like a Rorschach Test,

Write like an encyclopedia.

Write like an African folk tale.

Write like an Irish drum,

Write like a Passion Play.

Write like Toni Kushner,

Write like Toni Morrison,

Write like Bad Religion.

Write like the Great Wall of China.

Write like the Space Needle,

Write like the Eiffel Tower.

Write like a cancer,

Like a fallen tree,

Like burnt metal,

Like soft steel.

Write on Satsuma peels, hospitals floors, chicken wire and subway stations.

Write with a clown nose on,

Write in hiking boots,

Write wearing nothing but a hat.

Write like a pregnant lady,

Write in a tiny book,

Write on the breasts of babes,

Write even when you’re wrong.

Write with the TV on,

Write to infinity,

Write to remember your dreams,

Write to ignore the future.

Write to forget the now,

Write to be more mindful.

Write to listen more,

Write to pray for sick,

Write to blame the rich,

Write to stop preaching,

Write to avoid politics,

Write to chew on this,

Write because it’s right.

Write so you can,

Because you can

And you always could. Write.