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!

Good News of the Day!

Yes, I have been gone for longer than anticipated again, but I return with three pieces of good news!

Firstly, if you've been reading this blog for a bit, you may recall my mentioning a sci-fi novel. At one point it went by the the title Quarantined, which was then shortened to Q and then I abandoned that title altogehter when neither of those fit what the story had become. For probably about a year now, it's simply been known as The Untitled YA Sci-Fi Novel. And as of yesterday, The Untitled YA Sci-Fi Novel was completed.

Of course, I use the word completed lightly; this draft is finished. But I'm really happy about this. I've been working on this novel on and off, and then consistently this year, for over two years. I made a mess of it in November and spent the last two months cleaning it up and finishing it.

I hope to get a NaNo reviewer go over it and get some feedback, then work on it some more!

Bit of News #2 is that my friend and critique partner Stuart have started our collab blog. It is a writing blog, including book reviews, and we've gotten great reception so far. Check it out here!

And Bit of New #3 is that my final semester of undergraduate (and possibly all, but never say never) education is upon me, which means that I will be completing my senior thesis. My thesis is a new draft of my play, Straight on 'Til Morning, culminating in a staged reading of it. My playwriting professor has offered to be my mentor and I'm really excited. I'm meeting with my thesis teacher tomorrow to discuss the details and I really can't wait to meet up with my mentor on Wednesday. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

NaNo and a World Premiere

I'm still here, I promise. My life has been ridiculously busy. The world premiere of the play I'm in happened on Thursday night and I have my fifth show of the week today. This play is one of the best I've ever been in- possibly *the* best- and working on it has been the most amazing experience of my life. But I'll get to that in a second.

If you're wondering what happened with me and NaNo- I won! I nearly dropped out a few times; rehearsals and schoolwork were keeping me really busy, but I just have to win now that I have twice before. So I finished with a little over 51,000 words.
I'll just reiterate the tip I gave in the last entry: DO NOT do NaNoEdMo. It completely destroyed my novel and I think I'll have to do a complete rewrite. It just takes your mind to the complete wrong place when you're writing and editing at that speed. Next year, I'll be doing NaNo the traditional way.
When I have time, I also need to check out what's up with my word count; Scrivener says I only have 32,000 words, but that's impossible since I had 33,000 words before I even started NaNo. Thankfully, I have this novel backed up several times. I learned my lesson from the Great Word Loss of NaNo '09.


Now back to the play. As I believe I mentioned, it's a brand new play written by a very young playwright, a recent graduate. However, her credits are quite impressive, and I'll admit to being sort of star struck whenever I saw her (which wasn't often before this weekend, as she lives in New York and I'm in Philadelphia.) Even though she's only two years older than I, I always felt like a little kid around her because I was so intimidated by her credits and her writing skill. Last night, however, I got up the courage to ask her about something mentioned in her program bio: being produced at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville. I happen to be looking there to do an apprenticeship, and who better to talk to about it than someone who's already done it?
As it happens, she hasn't done it; her friend did, but the playwright's work was the one the friend produced. But with that one question, doors were opened. Besides being introduced to the friend when she comes to see the show next weekend, it also finally started up the conversation that I've been longing to have with the playwright about playwriting in general. She's such a nice person and I very much enjoyed talking to her. She asked me if I wrote too, and when I told her I did and gave her the plot of my play, she said she'd love to read it! That was a "whoa" moment for me, and now I'm nervously looking over my most recent drafts to make sure they're not embarrassing. But what an opportunity!

The process of working on this play has been nothing but inspiring to my own playwriting endeavours. When next semester starts, I expect I'll be writing a lot more, as my play is my thesis!