Thursday, October 28, 2010

Spoke Too Soon?

Whoops... sorry about not doing a WIP Wednesday yesterday. Though I did have an invited dress of Alice, I also had a cancelled class, so I don't really have an excuse.

I do have unfortunate news. I was talking to the head of the theatre department yesterday about submitting my piece. As I was filling out the form earlier that day, there was a part that asked that, if you were chosen, would you be at the festival? "Do you have to be there to submit?" I asked him. "Yes," he said. "They work really closely with the playwrights and the whole workshop process is part of the package. Not being able to go will really lower your chances of being chosen."

CRAP. As excited as I am to go to England, it's stuff like this that makes me sad I won't be in America. And the worst part is, I'm only missing this festiva by about two weeks. But I just keep reminding myself of all the great opportunities over there.

Anyway, the point is, since I can't go to th festival, it would be smarter to hold onto my script until next year. That way, not only will I not be teasing them with it, should they want to choose it, but if I DO get chosen next year, I won't have to endure the heartbreak of turning it down. I already almost cried when I heard I had to attend the festival in order to be considered.

But what I need to remember is a) there is a festival next year, and the year after that, and so on, b) I'm not a senior this year, c) I can submit peices up to two years after I've graduated, and d) not being able to submit this year should not detract from the exitement of just being asked to do so; I'm thrilled that my teacher thought enough of my writing to ask me to submit it to a huge competition like this.

That said, he hasn't answered my e-mail about this topic. I could call him- I have his number. But I don't want to break it to him or hear him disappointed or hear whatever I'm going to hear. I'm going to work on the piece until he says stop, just in case there's some way for me to enter.


In other news, I'm testing out the new Scrivener for Windows Beta. I've wanted Scrivener for years, and though it took me awhile to figure it out, I'm loving it so far.

2 comments:

  1. It's this writing program that used to be exclusively for Macs, but that they're soon releasing for Windows.
    Basically, it allows you to write, outline, organise, and compile all in one program. If you make a change on one section, all related sections will make the same change, rather than you having to go in and manually make the same change five times. You can also include research, pictures, PDF files, and pretty much anything else you want. And when you're done, you just hit "compile" and everything you want to put in one draft, goes into it, and you can then print it right from the program or save it as one of various file formats. It allows you to work as simply or as complexely as you like- there are lots of fancy parts to the software that I've not tried yet. Apparently lots of professional writers use it, and I can see why- it's very helpful (though I'm not describing it very well.) You can use it for letters, novels, non-fiction pieces, all forms of script/screenplay, and a bunch of other stuff.
    The other cool thing about it is that it has a button you can press that blocks out anything BUT your project, so you can completely focus on what you're composing.

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