Progress

Well, I finished writing the combat scene. It's not great- my lack of experience (in both writing these scenes and combat in general) definitely shows, but it's okay for now. My critique partner is good at writing combat scenes, so hopefully after he reads the novel, he'll have some suggestions on how to make it better.

Since I finished that, I've been working on more additional scenes than I realised were going to be added. One thing I'm definitely not good at is cutting scenes. I'm fine with writing scenes and not putting them in- I do that all the time. But cutting things after they've been in there for awhile? Not so great. I may have to do this with TOSOL, though- my last reader pointed out two or three scenes that, while well-written, don't give any new information and therefore aren't necessary. In fact, I just now made the decision to cut a scene. See, I'm growing right in front of you :p


I'm still feeling guilty about not working on my script while here in England, so I vowed earlier today that this coming week, I will work on it at least a little bit. I've been focusing on TOSOL because two people are waiting to read it, but I really want to get some of this script done as well.

Now back to studying- I'm terrified of this English-style exam and I've been studying my butt off for the pas week and a half.

Blehhhh

The title is probably as articulate as this entry is going to get.

I'm at the "talking to myself" point in editing this novel. There was one time this afternoon when I just threw up my hands and cried "WHAT IS GOING ON?!" at the computer screen (but really at myself.)

My novel needs sosososo much work. Last night, I spent hours making this:

It's a timeline of all of the events in TOSOL, because the more I read through it and the edits, the more I realise the problem is that I write out of order; times don't line up. And while it is definitely a fixable thing, it's going to be really hard and take a long time. I want to cry. The only thing that's keeping me working on it is the love for this novel, even if I do feel like I hate it right now. I can't believe I let it be seen in a state that was even worse than what I have now. Ughhhh.

I'm just having major writing frustrations right now. It's not just the novel. I didn't win ScriptFrenzy. I petered out at 69 pages, mostly because the plot didn't have enough to it; what I do have is a lot of repetition. This is okay- it's the same problem I had with my first NaNo. You just have to learn how to do it. But I feel like a little bit of a failure for not finishing, and as much as I repeat to myself that the only person I made a promise to was myself, I still feel a physical weight over not finishing.

And then there's my other play, SOTM. I feel guilty for not working on it for a month or two. March was taken up with essays and April was filled with travel, but why am I not devoting time to a play that takes place in London while I'm in London? My time here is running out (only a little over a month left- eeee!) and I want to apply the atmosphere here to it while I can still feel it around me.

Basically, all there is is frustration right now...

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 :)

Auditions... For MY Writing!

Yesterday and today were the auditions for my English university's New Writer's Festival... which means that people- actual, willing participants who most likely can act- were auditioning for my pieces.

I was actually there as an actor, but as a writer, it was pretty exciting too. Since I'm new to the school, no one attached the writer name to me, and I got to hear people explain and discuss my pieces while remaining essentially invisible. And everyone who read them seemed to like them :) As I said before, they asked me a few times if I wanted to direct and I said no. Now I see why they asked me so many times- almost everyone else is directing their own pieces, so they must have thought I was really weird. But even in hindsight, I think I made the right choice.

I auditioned for my pieces as well as the six others that were chosen. The shorter one, the one based off the dinner I had with my friend, her mother, and her grandmother, is being directed by a guy who has some pretty cool ideas about it, which he explained to me when he found out that I was the playwright. I'm pretty excited to see it played out- it's going to be even funnier than I wrote it!
When you went into these auditions, you wrote your name down or, more likely, they asked you and wrote it down themselves, probably to put a name with a face. So when I went into my second one, they said, "Name?" I could see mine glaring out of the byline that the girl had right in front of her, so I said, "Rachel." "Rachel what?" I practically whispered my last name, and she went, "Oh... oh, you're the writer. Okay... well, now I'm nervous." I told her not to be, that the reason I had submitted them was so they could be played with and to help me improve them. She seems pretty excited about it, and she's pretty much just keeping it how I wrote it- no fancy sets or crowds of people. I think both of these directors are going to be great.

The most interesting thing about watching my pieces be auditioned for was seeing how the humor carried over into an English setting. I didn't realise how many little Americanisms there were in my pieces until they were being performed in English accents. Besides one character saying "Mom" a few times, I also make reference to Stephen Sondheim and Ginger Rogers in one of them. No one had any idea who either of those two were... which was a little surprising considering that Stephen Sondheim is pretty famous worldwide. In the other scene, I have one character call another a jerk, and I'm not sure if they use that word here, but hearing it with the accent was pretty funny. Thankfully, most of the humor seemed to carry over well.

I'm hoping to be cast in something, but even if I am, I'm not sure if I can accept it (they announced last night that there will only be marathon rehearsals for the week before the show... and I already have a friend from France coming to stay with me for the majority of that week), but either way, I've got my pieces in the festival!

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?

!!!!

More excitement!

I was super early to Play & Screenwriting today because I'm a nerd, and when I got there, my teacher handed me my six-week evaluation. First, there were surprises- like that he liked my first terrible piece more than I thought he had (I was literally in tears over it), and that he didn't quite understand the last piece I submitted (which wasn't exactly a blow... I was never too enthusiastic about it myself.)
And then there was the awesome- when he wrote about my first ten-minute piece, he said he wanted to send it to this great theatre fesitval that my school took part in last year, and will be again this year. AHHHH!!!!!! I am so excited, because he'd already offered it to another girl in my class and I had wished that I could do that- and now I am!

Now the challenges begin- all submissions are due THIS week, and I need to get it down to ten pages (it's fifteen at the moment, though in the original draft, it was ten.) It's going to be hard, mostly because Alice shows begin tomorrow (invited dress... eek.) However, since we don't officially open 'til Friday, I have a whole night free on Thursday, so though I had thought I might go see a show, I think I'll stay in and work on this script. I'm so excited!

(And a little fact about this scene that I think is cool- I began writing it at last year's theatre festival, sitting in the middle of an auditorium surrounded by my fellow artists.)

Emergency Rewrites

Filming with the company I'm a member of is never dull; we all have great senses of humor and get along very well. And as a fledgling film company, we have a lot of learning and growing to do. Today, we learned and grew the amount we usually do in a month of filming, in three hours. Today's lesson(s): MAKE SURE YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING... AND LET EVERYONE WHO IS INVOLVED IN ON IT.

See, we do most of our filming in our kitchens or living rooms or backyards. It's free, it's ours, and we have unlimited time. But as we grow, we've been trying to branch out, which means real locations. So when our director procured us a great, artsy cafe that was perfect for our film, I was extremely excited. He had talked to the owner and she was also very excited that we were coming. All she asked was to be put in the credits, which we would have done anyway.

We met up early to run lines and though the owner wasn't around, we got permission to film in the kitchen of the cafe. Long story short, we spent about a half hour in there shooting and then moved out to the main area to figure out what we were doing next. This is when the owner (a lady from whom I took art lessons as a child) came out and started asking us some questions about our company, the film, etc. She then asked to see what we had done. This is when things started to go downhill. Turns out, there are a lot of health laws we were violating by being back there (though we didn't touch any of their equipment- I wrote the script so that we wouldn't have to actually make coffee, etc.) Another long story short, though there were some scary moments when we thought we were going to be thrown out, the owner is very forgiving and in the end was helping us work out shot angles that wouldn't show the equipment and gave us props to use. She even made me a little barista magnet with my character's name on it to put on the barista board!

All of these new rules meant that I had to rewrite a lot of the script on the spot. There was an adorable metaphor moment at the end of the film where one character cleans up the others mess, literally and figuratively, but there was no way, after all we had already done, that we could show a smashed coffee mug on the floor, even if we didn't actually break it in cafe. Also, the entire film originally took place at the counter or in the back room, neither of which we could use, so I rewrote it so that we could be moving around the entire time. Because of all these changes, what was meant to only be a three/four hour shoot has turned into six to eight hours, as we're going back tomorrow (can you imagine? The owner actually encouraged us to come back. What forgiveness!)

All I have to say is, though all of us are pretty similar, thank God we have our differences, too. Because while the director and I were freaking out, our camera guy was totally chill, letting it roll right off him; he saved the director and me from having complete breakdowns on the spot!

Now time to go rework that script for tomorrow!

WIP Wednesday: Scene at a Funeral

Whew, just made it. And I, uh, wasn't actually going to post anything, as I didn't do any work on the piece I wanted to work on and almost everything else is on an external hard drive, my laptop having gone into surgery yesterday (as soon as I returned home from school, it began to sound this constant, loud hum that could be heard throughout my entire house when it was turned on, and since the Great [Albeit Temporary] NaNo Novel Loss of 2009, I take impending crashes very seriously.)

So anyway, enough rambling. Here's a short-ish excerpt from a short I hope will be shot this summer, though I still want to tweak the lines a bit... or, make that a lot. What you need to know is that this scene takes place at a funeral.

[Sorry! This excerpt was removed! :(]

When I Least Expected It... Success!

In two areas!

This morning, my Children's Theatre teacher gave us back our Peter Pan adaptation projects. I really wanted it, but she's doing so much in addition to her teaching that I didn't know if we'd ever get them back. But this morning, we finally did! She said she is going to send us our grades through e-mail but that she had written some comments on the papers we had given her. I had handed in a nice, covered copy and flipped through it... no comments. I was rather upset. But then I thought to check the copy that was just stapled, which I had given to the second judge. Lo and behold- comments! Only two, but they were both great. She really like the vocabulary I chose for George and Mary Darling, both, particularly the lines, "Your sister is the very embodiment of sloth," and "The verdure of England is hardly my chief concern at the moment." I was happy to see this comment because, as I stated before, I like to give characters their own ways of speaking.
The second comment was the one that made me happiest- at the end of the rewrite of that terrible scene that gave me so much trouble, she wrote, "What a great rewrite!" and underlined it four times. Hooray!!!

A non-writing success surprise: after eight months of being without a real production to act in, I was cast in a student film yesterday! I am soooo excited, especially since it's something completely different from anything I've ever done before (a slasher film, in which I play a violently raised, murderous teenager.) I'm not exactly sure what this film will entail besides four days of filming- I haven't gotten the script or the shooting schedule yet. But I can't wait to get started!

What's In a Name? That Which We Call a Rose By Any Other Name...

(Yes, my Shakespeare class is proving helpful, LOL.)

Names are something I've always loved. Not even solely for writing- I just love names. And choosing names for characters in my stories/scripts can sometimes be an arduous process, as they not only need to match the character's personality, but they need to roll of the tongue, especially in a script. This includes their last name, and sometimes, on the rare occassion I bring up their middle name, that, too. It becomes more complicated if a character is married and for some reason I bring up their maiden name or they get married in the middle of the story (which I think I may have only done once. I write mostly YA, so marriage is not really a theme in my stories.) If they have siblings, their names must also sound good together.

Lately I've been getting lucky with names- my characters are just naming themselves! This is almost as interesting as carefully choosing names for them, as the names they pick are not ones that I would normally go for. For example, Pauline. Not a huge fan of the name, but Pauline wanted to be Pauline and so, she is. Same with Eliza and her friend Jonah. I never thought those two names would appear in my writing, but they're there with top billing in Q/Quarantined.

Here are some of my favorite names I've used over the years (mostly girls', as they tend to be my main characters):

-Marianne (script)
-Ruthie Halpert (Remembrance. I'd wanted to use the last name for years before I finally found a first name- and a character- that fit it.)
-Noah Halpert (Remembrance- Ruthie's little brother)
-Claire (script)
-Caleb (script)
-Adam (script)
-Amy (script- Adam's sister. It was not until the script was completed that I realised their names together were nearly the name of a currently famous actress [who also happens to be one of my favorites].)
-Lyddie Palmer (The Other Side of Light)
-Julie Palmer (The Other Side of Light, Lyddie's sister)
-Thomas Callum Flynn (Caroline. Yes, I had to put his full name, a) because it sounds so good and b) because I am in love with him.)
-Caroline Eberlee (title character, though the title will not always be her name.)
-Alexis Holt (script)
-Jack Brennan (same script. He dates Alexis.)
-Claire Medina (different Claire, different script.)
-Lexa Harris (last year's failed NaNo novel)
-Drew Donovan (same thing. Lexa's friend- and love interest.)

And those are just the main characters! What are some of your favorite names?

(I'm trying to get up the nerve to post something from a WIP tomorrow... I admire those who have the courage to post them more regularly.)

Writing My Own Opportunities

This blog is about my writing... which means this blog, at the moment, is about one of the only things that is keeping me sane at the moment.

See, when I'm not being a student at college, my life is mostly focused on being an actor. Besides the fact that I'm studying acting at school, a good chunk of my free time is spent looking for auditions, preparing for auditions, going on auditions... and then waiting. The waiting doesn't really bother me because I know that's how it works most of the time. But usually, something comes of that waiting, namely a job. And lately... it's just not happening.

This very frustrating to me because when I was in high school (a mere year and a half ago), I was always in a show. Most of the time I was in two at once. I was by no means the lead in most of them, but even a chorus role made me happy because I loved being at rehearsal. When I wasn't at rehearsal, I was at auditions. During performances, I sat at the dark edges of the wings and did my homework by the lights of the stage, quickly stuffing it away when it was time for my entrance.

Last year was a little slower than usual, but I chalked it up to the fact that I was in a new town. I went crazy for one showless semester and then I got the biggest show of my life so far- a wonderful Equity show where I played a fun, constantly-crying character in a little-known but fantastic play. The small cast was the best I've ever worked with, and the same goes for the crew.

This particular show has been on my mind a lot lately, for two major reasons. A) In two days, it will be the anniversary of its closing after an extremely successful run and B) I have been showless for eight months. EIGHT MONTHS.

I wish I could say it's because I've been lazy or busy. I have been loaded down with schoolwork and stuff, but I've been auditioning constantly... and gotten nothing. I had an audition at the beginning of last month where I knew the pianist, who kept me updated on what was going on behind the scenes. For two weeks I heard nothing but "You're in the top two" "The director loved you", etc. etc. Wonderful, encouraging things... and then I didn't even get a callback.

My acting teachers have assured me that this is all "fine" and normal. And maybe it is... but I can't help but feel restless to the point where I will do anything for a show.

So how does this relate to my writing? Well, as I've mentioned before, I'm part of a film crew. I became involved with them when we were all in eighth grade. Now we're nineteen and twenty and still working together. While I started out playing bit parts in their short films, I'm now their go-to actress (the rest of the crew are boys) and writer. I've written two feature films for them- one that we shot in the summer and fall of senior year and another that we're doing this summer. I've been cranking out shorts for us to do in between feature shooting and the aforementioned Stuart (director, writer, actor, and friend) has asked me to write a series of shorts that follow the same storyline, something I've never tried before.

This is all wonderful for my writing. Writing shorts, especially, has given me a freedom I've never experienced. I'm mostly a novel/feature-length screenplay writer, and working a plot, or part of a plot, so that it fits into a certain timeslot is a new challenge for me, and a really fun one at that! So far this semester, I've written about a brother and sister on a killing spree, a long-lost romance rekindled in a coffee shop in the wee hours of the morning, an odd and comical encounter at a funeral, and the return of a prodigal sister. This is stuff I'd probably never get to touch in a novel, and maybe not even a screenplay.

As good as it is for my writing, it's just as beneficial for my acting. As I said, this is all stuff I would probably not normally write about. It's also stuff I wouldn't usually act in. I'm generally cast as the sweet (sometimes overly-emotional) teenager (case in point- in my school's musical theatre club, I just got cast as Leisl in Sixteen Going on Seventeen.) I adore playing these characters because they're very close to me and I love them. But I won't be able to play them forever. While I'll probably always look young for my age, I won't always look sixteen (even though I'm beginning to sense that I'll always feel sixteen inside.) Writing these crazy parts is an interesting process because, as the only girl on the film crew, I know that most likely, I'll be the one playing the female parts. I could take the easy way out and only write the sweet girl characters. I could, but that wouldn't challenge me as a writer or as an actor. My teachers are school are working to stretch my range (one of them loves to cast me in roles for class where I scream and rant a lot), and I want to figure out how to do that myself.

So I'm going to continue to audition- you bet I'm going to continue- but I'm not content to sit around and wait. I'm going to keep writing and acting and practicing and maybe one day, it will all work out.

Finally Cooking!

At last! My terrible, horrible bout of writer's block has broken! And none too soon, because the project the scene is part of is due on Monday! I am not actually using the trouble scene as part of my presentation, though I do have to turn in an edited version.

The breakage happened on Wednesday. We had sort of a work day in class and so for about half the class, I just read over everything I had that related to the project- the two scenes I had written, all the notes I had taken, my page of random thoughts about the Peter Pan story as a whole and what could be done with it... and then something clicked. One peice fell into place, then another. The brainstoriming I did with my friend Kara the other night really helped me create a skeleton of the synopsis. I formed ideas, rejected them, brought them back and remolded them, cast other ideas aside. Instead of getting hung up on the questions, I made a note that there were questions and moved on. Our teacher had given us permission to leave early if we wanted, but I stayed the entire time until I was one of only three people sitting in the classroom, writing and writing without any distractions. Then yesterday, I took all the notes I had made and typed them up, filling in the holes and answering the questions as I went. And now I feel pretty good abuot the project. I wish I were further along, but it's merely technical reasons (the library being closed and not having my own printer) that I'm not. But I'm actually excited about my presentation on Monday :)

More Frustration

I should know how to do this. I've been writing plays since I was seven years old. But now, suddenly, I'm faced with the prospect of writing a scene- one scene- based on or inspired by material that's been around for over a hundred years, and I can't do it!

This is so frustrating. That little cursor that begins a blank page has been blinking at me all day. Though we only have to write one scene, we have to approach this project as if we're being commissioned to write an entire play, so we need to have a general synopsis. I talked it over with my friend Kara, who had read the scene I've complained about in previous posts, and she helped me sort out the ideas I already had and also extracted some extra stuff from the scene, as well as giving suggestions over her own.

Now I sort of have an idea of what I want to do... but only sort of. I wish I would just stop thinking so hard over this.

I have always been really protective of my writing. Well, maybe not always- I was quite a confident little kid and had a reputation as a good writer in elementary and most of middle school. But when I got to eighth grade and was accepted into a tough advanced writing class, I realised that there were people better than me and I kind of shut down and became very secretive about my writing. To this day, there are only a few people to whom I show my writing.

So in Children's Theatre, we were asked to write a two-person scene that, in the course of the action, involves a change one or both of the characters' worldview. I have been working on this scene since at least Friday morning. I finally, finally finished it this morning with the help of my mom (who I have never, ever shown my writing to). I am so relieved it's done, but I don't know how good it is. I've actually shed tears over this scene. It not really because I think my writing is bad, but because I'm feeling the pressure of having it read in front of not only my teacher, but her playwrighting teacher. I hope it's all right...


On another note, Melissa is having a nifty contest on her blog, so check it out!