Thesis and Class Excitement!

Geez Louise, it's been another month since I posted.

HOWEVER, it has been an extremely productive month! I've been meeting with my playwriting/thesis advisor weekly, which pretty much means I get my world rocked by his wisdom and suggestions every seven days. Seriously- he's opening this play up for me in ways I don't know if I ever could have conceived. The first two acts of SOTM are now totally different and I'm really happy about that. I've cut a few scenes, added a few more, and rewritten the scene I've hated for two years to the point where I almost love it.

The biggest difference is that it is no longer a children's play in any way. This is startling to me, and surprisingly so; I knew it wasn't for little kids, but I figured it could still be considered TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences.) In fact, recently I've been asked by several people if it is and I've always said yes. But no more. Of course, my advisor says it's never been a kids' play; if it were, I'd have to take all the crazy asylum stuff out, which I don't want to do, and now that I've added some other things... I've written an adult play. WHOA. Rachel, the YA writer, has written something for adults. What is this madness?

But when my other thesis advisor, the one who's overseeing all of us theatre seniors, asked me what I thought about this change, I said, "I was never setting out to write a children's play. I was setting out to write a play." Which is true. I just want to write something good and moving.

And while I don't think that this play is Pulitzer-worthy, or even submission-worthy at this point, I do have a fan. I asked two recent graduates from my university to direct, and the first one who answered seemed pretty interested. I sent him the play around 11:30 one night, and he had read it and e-mailed me about it by 9 am the next day... saying he loved with the play, that he thought it was beautiful and had a mature voice. I was ecstatic, and it's going to be fantastic to work with someone who's just as excited as I am. Right after the director had agreed to direct it, I got a response from the other guy, one of my friends, who was all about it, too, but I told him that the director had gotten there first and was very enthusiastic.
To be honest, I kind of thought I would get someone who was like, "All right... I'll direct this college's kids reading... blahhhh," but instead, both the candidates I asked were really nice and great about it, and it's just awesome to have gotten such a fantastic response.

The reading is scheduled for April 23rd, but a month before that, I'm having a private reading, which was cast this week. Hopefully hearing the play in people's voices will give me an idea of the changes that need to occur and also what works, before I present it to a bigger audience. A month is not a long time to make thohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifse changes, but hopefully I can do it.


Also in writing news, my Poetry & Fiction II class has been going swimmingly. My first critiqued piece wasn't so great, but I think I've redeemed myself with my last two, which have both gone over very well. I just got back from having my third piece reviewed, and at the end the professor casually mentioned that that should edit it and send it out. Maybe I just will...


Also, shameless plug: I mentioned my collab blog last time, and it's been doing really well! Come on over and read it!

Today I Decided...

That I am going to do Script Frenzy this April. I've wanted to do it for awhile- after all, I've written scripts my whole life, why not do it with other people?

But I always made excuses. Last year, I really don't think I could have done it; my classes were eating me alive and I had to focus on writing just a few excerpts of a script for my Children's Theatre class. I'm glad I decided against it last year.

But this year- no excuses! I mean, really, I can't think of a single reason why not. I don't have school for the entire month of April. Yes, I'll be traveling to different places, sometimes different countries, in the last two weeks of the month, but that's what my writing journal is for. Also, it's only 3.33 pages a day. From NaNo, I know that what looks like a meager number in the beginning seems huge when you're in the throes of the event, but I do think I can do it.

Plus, I have a script I want to finish. Last May, I was on the train coming home from an audition in New York when I suddenly got an idea. I had one piece of paper on me- the print out of the audition information- and in about an hour's time, it was completely full. I started typing the rest of my ideas into my cell phone memo section. I'm still pretty excited about the idea, and Screnzy, just like NaNo, is a great way to be pushed into writing something and getting all of your ideas out.

I can't wait to get started!

World Premieres!

This weekend was The Weekend- the weekend that two of my short plays premiered in the QMUL Theatre Company's New Writers' Festival!

It was definitely an experience. I had hoped to attend a rehearsal or two of each to see how things were going, but I didn't end up doing so, for various reasons, which means that I was surprised on Friday night and tonight!

First up was Funeral Circus (I'm sorry that I'm making you follow a link to see the videos- Blogger won't let me display videos. I promise it's just YouTube.) This is a piece inspired by a dinner I went to with my friend Kara, her mother, and her grandmother. It was a lot of fun and when I went to a day-long playwrighting workshop and we were given forty-five minutes to write a scene, that dinner popped into my head and I wrote this scene. It's hardly been edited at all since its first draft, and I was really happy with how it was received and how it was presented. The director added a ton of stuff, all of which I loved. In the original script, the waiter is only in the scene for about three seconds to give the women their desserts, but I thought it was pretty cool to have three waiters onstage the entire time making comments on the action onstage.

Tonight's piece was Funeral Sketch. I promise, I don't only write about funerals. I almost didn't get to see this one- though I had e-mailed them days ago, they forgot to put my name on the reserve list and so told me I would only get a seat if people didn't show up. I looked around crowded lobby and knew I wasn't going to get in- I wasn't even the first on the reserve list! I tried to think of a backup plan and finally decided to ask a girl from my RT class to film for me- I HAD to film it so I could get the reactions of the audience and edit the piece accordingly. Thankfully, fourteen people (which is kind of a lot) didn't show up, so they were filled by people like me, desperately waiting for a ticket.
This piece, though also comedy, is very different- no family dynamics here. It also took me months to write, which is why the audience reaction was a little disappointing... or lack therefore. I'm not sure whether they didn't like the piece or if they were just a quieter audience, as it was a different crowd of people than Friday night. Either way, I saw a lot of places where I needed to do some tweaking. The actors' delivery of lines were sometimes much different than I expected, and there were a few lines that were changed. I loved the projected pictures on the back wall, and even though it took me a few minutes to get that, though the actors are seated far away from each other, they're actually sitting together, I really liked that in the end. And I thought the actors were especially great during the eulogy part of the scene- they made me laugh and I've been living with this script for about a year. I also loved how the director used the audience as the other people at the funeral- I'd never thought of that!

Overall, it was a good experience. It's pretty awesome to have people laugh during a scene and know that you wrote it. And I'm not going to lie- I was extremely nervous before each piece, the same kind of nerves I get when I'm about to open a show. I was shaking and I couldn't sit still, wondering how things were going to go. It was also a very different theatrical experience than I've ever had before. It's the first time I've done something in theatre where not a single person links me with the piece. I was completely anonymous- yes, my name was on the poster and in the program (which thrilled me to bits), but no one here really know who I am. This is something I've never experienced; acting is a pretty public thing, so for better or worse, people know it's you up there and you get feedback of all sorts, Also, while I sat there all nervous... I sat there alone instead of being surrounded by my fellow, just-as-nervous actors. This is is why it was a bit weird to walk out of the theatre... and just leave. And while I'm going to sound like a horrible person, I wasn't a huge fan of the anonymity. I like getting credit for my work. Maybe I'm just immature, and since I do want to be a playwright, I suppose I'll have to get used to this. But it is something very different.

Anyway, I feel extremely honored to have been included in this festival- most of the material in it was truly great. Both of the other pieces tonight really blew me away with both their writing and their presentation. I'm glad to have been a part of it and that my work was seen by real, responsive audiences. There is at least one great thing about the fact that people didn't know who I was- when I overheard that someone liked what they saw, I knew they meant it :)

Activating

When I got my (great and very helpful) play evaluation back on my Peter Pan play, one of the biggest notations was that a lot of the scenes were all talk, no action. They were full of smart dialogue... but no one ever did anything. And as I was writing scenes for a different play I'm working on, I noticed the same thing. I really liked what was being discussed, but they just sat on the couch and talked.

So I wrote to my teacher and asked him if he had any suggestions to liven up the action. He gave me a few suggestions and I'm going to try them as soon as I get these darned reviews written for my Reading Theatre class.

This is when I wish I had my arsenal of plays with me. Sadly, I only brought three (Proof, Time Stands Still, and Leaves.) The good thing is that they're all talky plays, so I'm going to scour them for ideas as to how to get my characters up and moving.

Any suggestions from my fellow writers?

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.

Plotting and Planning

So not only is NaNoWriMo fast approaching (11 days and counting), during which time I will be asked to produce at least 1,667 words every day or risk falling behind on the ever-important word count, but I'm working on two shows AND I have all of my writing classes that will be going strong in November as well.

I know you know this; it's the purpose of this blog. But I thought I would just reiterate just how much writing I'm doing this semester, and especially in November. It's crazy. It's great. And it's going to be really hard to keep up.

I'm having kind of a moral crisis about NaNoWriMo. It centers around the fact that I've already begun the novel I'm going to be working on. I feel like I'm in one of those angel-and-devil-on-the-shoulders type of situation.

DEVIL: If you fall behind on your word count, it's TOTALLY acceptable to count the 14,679 words you've already written in for the day. You're busy, it's understandable. Besides, it's not like you're writing this in a blog or whatever- NO ONE WILL KNOW!

ANGEL: Are you doing National Novel Writing Month or National I Wrote Most of This in a Month But I Cheated Because I Was Lazy Month? Do you think you'll really feel fulfilled if you take teh easy route? You know if you don't compose 50,000 BRAND NEW words this month, you won't let yourself count it.

DEVIL: She can't do math anyway, so why not make it that much easier?

ANGEL: Yes, but starting her wordcount from scratch will push her to explore her characters and situations more deeply, especially if she's short on words for the month.

DEVIL: What do you think she's been doing for the past several months? Exploring characters and situations!

ANGEL: (sing-song) Cheating, cheating, cheating...

DEVIL: It's not like she didn't put work on what she's written for the past few months-

ANGEL: (putting her fingers in her ears) La, la, la, I can't hear you!

DEVIL: Aren't you supposed to be the good one?

Yeah...

Anyway, in addition to continue to work on the plot of my NaNo novel, I spent this afternoon sorting out the plot of my Peter Pan play. I'm so, so excited that this is going to be my final project because it's going to push me to finish it. I also found out, as I was filling out the breakdown table I made in Word that technically, I have the most of the first part of the assignment done. If I wanted, I could call the first act (of, I think, three) done. Wow... It's still going to take a lot of work for me to finish this play in a way that my Type-A personality will accept as "good."

Speaking of well-written plays, I just bought my ticket to see Time Stands Still (by Donald Margulies) for a second time. The writing in it is just incredible, so great that I was willing to pay through the nose to sit in the orchestra section (I was in the very very last row last time- they actually had to give my friends and I booster seats to see.) Also, Laura Linney, one of my favorite actors, is in it, along with Brian d'Arcy James, who I also love. They're electric onstage. I'm so excited!

WIP Wednesday

I wrote this monologue for Play & Screenwriting. I had planned on composing something completely different- a not-so-great experience from my life that caused me to make a few choices I still hold fast to today. However, as I was writing it, I realised that, though it had actually happened to me, it sounded convoluted and over-dramatic. Plus, I thought I would be okay with people reading it, but in the end, it was too personal.

So in the end, I wrote this. It's kind of surprising to me that I did because, as an actor, I LOATHE monologues like this- where the delivering character is listening to someone who's not there. There are other parts that I like though, so I'm all right with that.


HANNAH: I was actually on time for class, Mrs. Collins, but honestly, I’m lucky to have made it here at all. See, this day has just been terrible. I mean, awful. It’s like that- that thing you were talking about a couple of classes ago, the whatsit… some guy’s law about things going wrong. (Beat) Yeah, Murphy’s Law, exactly. Well, it’s been like that.

I got up this morning and things immediately went downhill as soon as I looked in the mirror. I don’t really consider myself a vain person, Mrs. Collins, but seriously, this morning, my hair decided to stage a mutiny. I won’t bore you with the sordid details, but suffice it to say that scissors and an excessive amount of gel were used. It wasn’t pretty.

I knew I was running late so I literally ran to my car because there is nothing more important to me than your English class, as shown by the hours I spent finishing up that essay last night. (Beat) Well, I don’t actually have it on me… that Murphy thing again, it’ll kill you, right? (Laughs, but gets no response) Anyway, I ran to my car, turn the key and what do you know, the battery was dead. Unbelievable, right? I thought so, too. Luckily, after a good twenty minutes- that believe me, Mrs. Collins, were spent in tears on my part, I was so distressed- my dad found some jumper cables and brought good old Sammy the Saturn back to life. (Beat)

Well, yes, you would think that that would have been it, but as I was racing here, I realized that I hadn’t had any breakfast. You may not understand this, Mrs. Collins, due to your slender frame and will of iron, but when my stomach asks for something, I have to oblige. Otherwise, things get ugly. Plus, you know by my outstanding academic record that I am nothing if not a rule-follower, and I would not want to cross the United States Department of Agriculture if they found out I had skipped the most important meal of the day.

But did I stop at my favorite café for a delicious croissant and fragrant cup of coffee? No I did not. Because making it to your class is worth the health risk of fast food. Unfortunately, today McDonald’s seemed to be operating under a… oh, that thing you talked about when we were reading A Tale of Two Cities… a paradox! Am I using that right? Well, anyway, what I’m trying to say is that today, it was slow food. I mean, how long does it take to make a freaking breakfast sandwich?

Eventually they finally coughed up my food- not literally of course, that would be gross, and then I would have had to wait for another sandwich. So then I jumped back into my car, pulled back onto the road, thinking I was going to sneak in right on time… but I hit every single traffic light. Like, all fifteen. (Beat) Well, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but I’m not lying when I say I hit all of them. (Beat) Okay, I hit both of them. Then I pull into the parking lot, stumble out of my car, race into the building and I’m practically to your classroom when Principal Harris demands to see me in his office. Can you believe him? Denying me the pleasure of attending your class to have an impromptu talk with me? And the subject of the discussion was completely ridiculous- he claims that my file includes several more tardy arrivals. I told him I resented the slander to my reputation, but he just kept talking.

He finally let me leave, but when I got out of the office, I saw that the janitor had just washed the floor, and I don’t believe in disrespecting our maintenance staff by traipsing across the spotless floor and undoing all of their hard work. So I had to go down the language wing and then up the mathematics wing, and that was slow going because numbers make me dizzy and I was concerned that I might faint and then not make it to class at all.

So Mrs. Collins, I just wanted to return this detention slip to you because not only do I believe it’s unnecessary due to the unforeseen circumstances that prevented me from arriving to your class in a timely manner, but the thought of a tree dying for a mistaken gives me a pain in my heart… although that may be the breakfast sandwich. So here you go. I’ll turn in my essay tomorrow.



There are a few changes to be made- my class gave me some awesome suggestions.

In related news, I got permission to write the complete adaptation of my Peter Pan prequel. My teacher's a little skeptical about whether my main character (Mrs. Darling as a child) is interesting enough, but nevertheless, I'm jazzed that he's allowing me to explore that- in a full script. I've got what accumulates to about half of it (40 pages), but I think he wants me to write the first act first... eep! I'm not a linear writer at all! Thankfully, I have the advantage of knowing my project pretty well already.


Hm... I think someone's smoking under my window... gross.

Flashback Friday

So because I'm at the part of rehearsals where I'm trying to forget just how much memorization is ahead of me and the fact that I couldn't fall asleep last night, I decided that I HAD to finish my writing file last night. I love boxes and organizing-type things, and I recently bought a new file box and decided to use it for my past and present writing.

A CONFESSION: I am a pack rat. I keep everything because I always think I'll have a use for it later (and generally, I use the excuse that I might need it for a future play/musical that I'm in... which is the case a lot, but not enough to keep all the stuff I do.) It took me about four hours to go through all of my past writing last night and tonight (most of my preseny writing was already filed away.)



SOME PROGRESS

And that was only about a quarter of all of the notebooks I threw away. And while some of them were, as the top notebook suggests, academic, most of them (even those in the school category) were filled with writing. In between pages of a+b=c were ten pages of a story I was working on at the time.




TWO FIFTH GRADE NOTEBOOKS


Yes, I was rather proud of the name stickers that made it look like my moniker was exploding out at you in a burst of confetti when you moved the cover. These are two notebooks that I kept intact rather than simply tearing out the pages that had my writing in them. I carried these two notebooks with me EVERYWHERE during my last year of elementary school. The turquoise one contains a "Happy 11th Birthday!" message from my best friend inside the cover, a "complete" twelve-page play called Thoughts vs. Reality as well as a props list, cast list, costume sketches. There is also an incomplete play (twenty-two pages) of a play entitled The Parkers vs. the Sytas (I was apparently really into putting "vs." into the titles.)
In the final section of the notebook is eight pages of an incomplete play, untitled, that I abandoned that same year, picked up as a novel the next year, abandoned soon after, then picked up again at sixteen, when I turned it into a screenplay, entered it into a contest, and won an award for it.

In the marble-covered notebook, I have a partially-written story about a girl who really wants to have a carnival (or, as I said it back then, "carvinal"), another half-written tale about a girl who starts a new school in fifth grade, a list of play ideas and titles, a series of drawings I did in seventh grade, and a "Things I Want to Bring to Middle School" list. Also, onc contained in this notebook (though it was torn out for the performance) was a sketch I wrote for the D.A.R.E graduation at the end of fifth grade, in which I played the lead, Natalie, who was peer pressured and had a classic "angel and devil" moment, with one on each shoulder :p


Besides the satisfaction of storing everything away neatly, it was also cool to see my growth as a writer (though I didn't read most of the things I filed away) and also, just to see how much writing I've done in my life, which is, well... a lot. Also, to see what types of composition I dabbled in. In first and second grade, I wrote both stories and plays. Third and fourth grades were strictly stories. Fifth grade was some stories and a reintroduction into plays. Then in sixth grade, I became convinced that I was a terrible playwright and refused to write anything but stories for four years. Eighth grade was stories and some poems I was forced to write for my comm. arts class. Tenth grade was when my friend Katie and I began our feature-length (still in-progress) screenplay and I got back into writing plays in addition to stories. During my theatre-school years (eleventh and twelfth grade), I was almost strictly a playwright. And college so far has been plays, novels, screenplays, and short stories. It's been an adventure, and it's all contained in a purple accordian folder.



MY FILE BOX AS OF HALF AN HOUR AGO


I don't know/think that this "Flashback Friday" thing will be a regular to-do on my blog, but it might pop up occasionally, because I think it's cool to see writers' growth... even if that writer is me. And so to kick off this thing-that-might-possibly-never-happen-again, I give you the opening scene (and the only scene I actually physically wrote- the rest was memorized by dictation and rehearsal) of my very first play, written at age seven (with my clarifications in italics):

DIRECTED BY: Rachel & Allison D.

The rouel (royal) anonsment (announcement)

Pupets: Gorge (George): "Crunch, munch, crunch, munch.
"Oh hi I'm crureos (Curious) gorge, and,,,,, [crash he drops the pepper he is holding) Ops, I drop a pepper, ernie is going to be mad!"
ErnieL "GORGE"!
"what are you eating?!"
Gorge: "Nothing"! Well. ah, Ernie I was eating a pepper but juce (juice) din't get anywere or, or, or."
Ernie: "Just be quit (quiet) and let Me do the talking, buster."
Gorge: O.K., O.K. I will be quit, but you have to promies me, you'll let ME do the talking for the NEXT show!"
Ernie: O.K! (go backstage). (sound effecs.) (backstage) CRASH!
Ernie: you broke the tape! That was the tape we were saposed to use!"
Gorge: Oh well."
STARTING THE PLAY: Loud speaker
"Introdusing..."


I know, after reading that preview, you are all amazed that this play was only performed in my basement and grandparents' living room (where we hung a sign reading "we hop you injoy the play!") I had a lot of fun with it though. It was about ballet dancers because I had just gotten a pair of slippers that looked like ballet shoes for my birthday (the puppets were not in the ballet part... for some reason, I was adamant that all my plays had to start that way.) In fact, here's a picture of its final performance at my grandparents' house:



ME IN MID-TWIRL




CURTAIN CALL


Now, if I can just get that confidence in my writing back...

WIP Wednesday

All right, all right, I'm here :p Today I'm giving you a snippet of a play I'm working on, loosely titled Acceptance. Though I have a lot of random lines and moments and most of Act II planned, this is only the second scene I've written. So here goes:

(GWEN and PATRICK exit. AMY turns back to her work, leaving CORA to stand alone in the middle of the room. The silence stretches between them. )
CORA. So, Amy-Bear-
AMY. (sharp) No one calls me that anymore.
CORA. Oh… sorry, I didn’t know.
AMY. Of course you didn’t.
CORA. You look different than I remember.
AMY. Growing up will do that to a person.
CORA. (trying to ignore the sarcasm) You’re really pretty. I guess I’ve just always had the image of you as a little kid in my head. But I guess you’re not really a kid anymore, are you? (AMY makes a non-commital noise.) So how have things been going?
AMY. You mean, what have I been doing for the past seven years?
CORA. Sure.
AMY. Well, I’ve been testing out the only-child thing, since my older sister ditched me.
CORA. (stung) I didn’t ditch you, Amy.
AMY. You didn’t? What do you call walking out one day and never coming back? Thanks for all the postcards, by the way. Nothing like keeping your family in the loop.
CORA. I didn’t want you guys to worry.
AMY. You never told us where you were! One short note every year or two, sometimes unsigned. You could have been dead and we never would have known.
CORA. Come on, Amy-
AMY. No, you come on. When you first left, I ran to the mailbox everyday, hoping for something from my big sister. It didn’t take me long to realize that nothing was coming, that you had left us behind completely.
CORA. (dropping the forced cheer) Oh, please, Amy. Grow up. You were eleven when I left, not three. I thought you would understand that I was a little strapped for cash. There weren’t many money-making opportunities for me where I was.
AMY. You could have had those opportunities if you had stuck around and gone to college.
CORA. College isn’t everything, Amy. Maybe it seems like it right now, but it’s just four years; there are things that come afterwards, and I decided to jump right to that part.
AMY. You could have at least told Mom and Dad you were leaving.
CORA. Yeah, their reaction would have been great. I can just see it.
AMY. Well I had to really see it. They were frantic- they had no idea where you were. You couldn’t have left a note or something?
CORA. Amy-
AMY. You should have told them. Then maybe they could have talked you out of it.
CORA. Has it occurred to you that maybe I didn’t want to be talked out of it?
AMY. Then what did you want?
CORA. I- (she stops, unable to think of anything)
AMY. Yeah, that’s what I thought.



Oh, and if you're wondering, that huge audition I didn't work on nearly enough? It actually went pretty well :) Now that that huge weight is off of my shoulders, I can return to my writing!

Struck by Inspiration

Yesterday I went to New York City to audition for the national tour of a very big show. The audition went well (though I don't expext a callback) and afterward, I headed to one of my favorite places in the city: The Drama Bookshop. I go there whenever I am there and spend far too much money on far too few plays. This time, I hit the jackpot. I had a list of plays I wanted to get and got some of them as well as a few others. I got tired of walking a few hours later and went to find a seat in Borders. I cracked open the first play I had bought (The Metal Children by Adam Rapp) and read it straight through. It's fantastic; the plot revolves around the banning of a young adult book in a small town, and since censorship is something I'm strongly against, it was a very interesting read. Then I started July 7, 1994, by David Margulies (which my school is doing next spring) and read straight through, too, and sat crying in the middle of Borders over the sad ending. Then, while waiting for and on the train, I read Sarah Treem's a feminine ending, which is fantastic and I want to play the lead character so badly.

Reading all of these amazing works was very inspiring, especially since I haven't read a play that made me feel any of those things for a long time. I was so inspired, in fact, that I wanted to write something, anything, right then. But I didn't know what to write. I had no ideas. But about half an hour later, a question and a name tiptoed into my head and I quickly noted them in my phone and didn't return to them for awhile, until on the train, all of these ideas started flowing. At first, I only had a tiny snatch of dialogue, which I again typed into my phone. But two hours and one piece of paper later, I had this:

I got home fairly early, so I typed all of this into my computer (with a bit of difficulty- when I'm writing quickly, my handwriting is atrocious, and adding the bumpiness of the train made that entire page almost unreadable.) As of now, it seems like I've got almost all of Act II sorted, and a tiny, tiny bit of Act I. I'm pretty excited, although daunted, as I've already got one writing project I need to work on and three more I'd like to. This will be the fifth project on my plate. But I'm enthusiastic, and that's all that matters, I guess.

Slacking and Different Views

Wow... sorry for the absence. Unfortunately, it'll be going on for a little longer. Though, compared to my fellow students, my finals week- and finals in general- have been pretty easy, I've still had so much to do in the way or projects, packing, performances, etc. However, I'm done with my sophomore year of college tomorrow at noon (just a scene from Much Ado About Nothing to do for Shakespeare!) But while I've made notes on all of the edits that my friend made on my novel, I have not actually applied any of them yet. Me = slacker. And while I have many, many plans in the next two weeks, I do have some free time to work on the novel. So I hope I will have a WIP excerpt for you next Wednesday!


In other news, I have done back to the editor side of the writing process. My roommate has written a play for her thesis and I have been her primary editor since day one; I just finished editing her final version, which means I've read about four or five versions of the play.

My roomie and I are very similar, but there is one thing we don't really agree on, and that is writing. Our styles are so incredibly different, and every time we've edited each other's composition, we've been borderline arguing. We agree on almost nothing- conventions, grammer, word choice, character development, and, in the world of scripts, stage directions. Our debates over her final draft got so heated today that I had to stop talking about it because I didn't want to fight with my wonderful roommate who I am leaving forever in less than 24 hours (she's graduating in a few weeks)! So now we've reconciled and worked out some plot points together. It's just very interesting to me how we can have such different views on a topic.

But... But...

The other day, I mentioned that I would get my Peter Pan adaptation grade back by e-mail from my teacher. Last night, I got back to my room from rehearsal and my roommate said, "Our teacher e-mailed us!" I got very excited and immediately booted up my computer. I was sure that there would be a few good comments, as well as some constructive criticism that would spur me on to write the entire play and then one day it would be produced! And then published! And then-

It didn't exactly work out that way. The good news is that I got a decent grade on it, probably mostly due to the fact that, as I covered in Monday's post, I did have a good rewrite of the devil dialectic scene, and my project, in its written and presentational form, was pretty well done. But in my world, none of that matters if the storyline isn't well-recieved... and it wasn't in a way.

The comments basically stated that my teacher wasn't sure what the action of the plot was, what the body of the story is, and that if the story follows pretty much the same line as Barrie's, it's not terribly important.

Getting these notes upset me on a few levels. On the grade-grubbing level, I wanted more points out of ten. On the shallow level, I wanted to impress a teacher I admire. On the skill level, I wanted to be seen as a good writer. And on the make-excuses level, I wanted to e-mail her back and say things like, "But... I didn't explain my whole plot well during my presentation! It's so much more than that! But... you only saw one scene from the entire play! I have more! I have them right here! Read them!"

I didn't do this last thing, of course. My grade is what it is. My presentation, in all its okay-ness, filled with my nervous babbling, was what it was. I can't change any of that. I do believe that my story is important, that it's a different look into the Peter Pan story we all know. But it's a fault of mine that I didn't get that across in my presentation. I had ten minutes and I didn't use them as well as I could have. Making excuses will do nothing. However, I plan to write this play. It may never be produced or published or even read, but I want to write this play for myself because I am interested in the story. It's true that I want my teacher to think I'm an awesome writer, but even while I'm composing this play, I can't harp on that, because then I worry too much about what I'm doing to actually do it! And I want to do it. Getting those disconcerting notes just made me want to do it more. And I plan to.


On a separate note, I discovered an essay contest on a board at school yesterday. You either write about your all-time favorite book and how reading it changed your life, or write about e-books and the future of bound books and literature. Both of these topics are excellent ones that I feel passionate about, but I think I may write on the latter. I have neither the time nor the money to do this (I'm on location for the film from noon to midnight pretty much every day this weekend, starting right after my Shakespeare midterm today, and the entry fee is $25. And I am poor college kid) but I really do want to write these essays. Perhaps I'll bring the topics with me to the set, since I'll be sitting around for awhile. If I win, I get $500 and that would be kind of awesome.

Ughhh

It's probably best that I waited to write this entry, because I was too upset to write well earlier this week.

What am I talking about? What else- the scene for Children's Theatre. The experience is all coming back to me as I type up my weekly reflection, which includes a question about what we gained from the assignment. I feel bad wrting "nothing", because that's not true at all and it makes it seem like a bad assignment. It wasn't a bad assignment; my writing just sucked. Seriously. I am not being modest or anything- it was bad.

Okay, I'm not being modest, but I may be being a little dramatic. My writing wasn't terrible, I guess. There were parts of my scene that I was proud of, like how I matched the style of dialogue with Barrie's (to the point where my roommate, who is also in the class, asked me if it was an excerpt from the play. Unfortunately, she hadn't really meant it as a compliment.) I was also proud of how I revealed the big "surprise" of the scene, which could easily have been extremely soap opera-y and dramatic, but I worked for literally hours crafting that one line to make it both chilling and undramatic (is that a word?)

However, nicely crafted dialogue and subtley revealed secrets only make for great scenes when you fill the requirements of the scene. I failed so badly that it still brings tears to my eyes. I just don't know what to do to understand this stuff. I would love to be a playwright, but if I can't understand the concept of the dialectic, how can I do that?

Learning to Adapt

I have mentioned before my Children's Theatre and I will probably talk about it occasionally for the next few months because WOW do I love it! It's funny that I say that because I was quite scared of children's theatre before, thinking it a scary, foreign animal of acting. But in addition to finding out that it is, in fact, no such thing, I am also loving the class so much because we're talking about writing and adaptation.



Adaptation is something I've been interested in since... before I knew what it was. It's natural for children to mimick, and naturally I gravitated toward my favorite stories. As I grew older and continued to be an avid reader, I found myself wanting to play certain characters from the books I devoured, and this led me to adapt the stories.



In the past few years, there are certain books that really jump out at me for adaptation. The biggest one is For Freedom, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. I have a half-written screenplay based off of it and one day, I would love to get the rights to truly adapt it (I think it would make a wonderful stage play as well as movie; I'd love to do both, but especially the stage version.)


I always thought this dream was one that I'd secretly stew over, secretly and illegally adapting bits and peices of novels into plays that would never be mounted on a stage. But this class is showig me that perhaps I can actually do this- and what a wonderful class to discover this in! Our teacher is a produced and published playwright herself, so who better to teach us about the subject? I have a new hope about what I can do... and maybe one day, I'll just succeed :)