The Return of WIP Wednesday!

So while I haven't been posting anything for WIP Wednesday for I'm-afraid-to-check-and-see-how-long, I have been writing. A lot. I've been editing The Other Side of Light as well as doing some major revisions on my play.

I've also come across the information that if you post your novel online, it can take away your first publication rights and therefore make you less attractive to publishers. While this isn't a risk for me at the moment- The Other Side of Light is my first piece of writing that I've considered getting published and I haven't posted enough of it here to make it a risk- I've decided not to post excerpts from it here. However, for this week, I decided to do something that my favorite author, Libba Bray, did with her last book in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy: opened the book, pointed to a line, and posted that as a teaser. While I don't have an actual book, I do have a word document and access to a random numbers generator, so here are the results of that:

Pg. 127, line 24: “He would have been a perfect match for you. But where is he now?”

Pg. 118, line 26: She walks the few steps to her desk, pulls out a drawer, and removes her wallet, holding it out it my direction. “Here.”

Pg. 72, line 14: This is the first I’ve heard of anyone besides my family being involved in this business. “Who are ‘the ones we’re working against’?”

Pg. 149, line 19: “Oh,” Aunt Kelly says. “Yes.” She guides me inside, never taking her eyes off of my mother.

Pg. 93, line 4: Finally, when I’m outside the school a few days later, digging in my bag for my cell phone and I hear, “Hey.” Oh, no. It’s Aaron. I knew he would find me eventually, and I’ve been trying to rehearse the conversation I need to have with him.

Pg. 13, line 13: The doorbell rings as I’m halfway through my first book. I have no idea who it could be. I mark my place and I open the door. Once I see who’s on the other side, I freeze. Because standing there is Aaron Tves, the guy I’ve had a crush on for the past five months. He is beautiful and smart and well spoken and he is standing on my porch.

:)

Reintroduction

So I've been feeling a bit disconnected from this blog- I'm running three blogs at the moment and it's overwhelming me a bit. But I promise to keep this at the top of my to-do list and start doing WIP Wednesdays and the like again, starting tomorrow!

To reconnect myself with the blogging world, here's a meme I picked up from Hannah, who was my first follower!

How would people describe your personality (if they could only use ONE word)? Are they right?
My friend Megan just said “determined” and I would definitely agree with that. I am a very focused and sometime tenacious person when it comes to achieving goals.

What celebrity/celebrities would create a “Star Struck” feeling if you saw them in real life?
I am easily star-struck (I used to get star struck around leads of community theatre plays I’d be in), so the easy answer is “anyone with a higher coolness factor than I.” But to narrow it down a bit, I would (and have) gotten star struck around my favorite author, Libba Bray, and would around another favorite, Maureen Johnson. I was pretty bad around Keira Knightley when I met her a few weeks ago. Uh… Laura Linney. Emma Thompson. Kate Winslet.

Who is your favorite blogger? Why?
I love reading Hannah and Rachel’s blogs- they always remind me to look on the bright side and see the beauty in life. Libba Bray and Maureen Johnson. And The Struggling Actress, too!

What is your comfort food/drink?
I’m pretty addicted to Diet Coke, and chocolate is definitely my comfort food.

Be brave- tell us something very random and weird about yourself.
I have extremely dilated pupils all the time, so much that people have teased me about it.


Do you have a strong desire to do something you’ve never done? What is it?
I would love to go rock climbing on a real cliffside. I love rock climbing (though I haven’t been in years) and I think that would be so cool. Something that doesn’t jibe with my love of rock climbing, though? I’m afraid of heights.

Movies: Action, Drama, Romantic Comedy, Documentary, Comedy? What are your favorite genres?
I would say that I just like smart movies. If I had to choose from the above, I’d say drama, but really, if a movie is intelligent, I’ll probably like it.

Books: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Romance, Biographies, True Stories, Self-Help, Devotional/Study? What are your favorite types of reading material?
On a broad scale, I love young adult literature. Within that genre and branching into others, historical fiction is my favorite.

Music: Funk, Rock, Country, Jazz, Classical, Film Score, Blues, Classic Rock, Crooner, Alternative, Heavy Metal, Techno? What are your favorite types?
My musical taste is very eclectic. If I hear a song that I like, I’ll put it on my MP3 player, no matter what it’s classified as. My favorite it Broadway music- I love that it has a story and emotion to it. I also love music from the 1940’s and the only band I can say I love right now is ALL CAPS.

If you inherited a million dollars, what is the first thing you would do with your money?
Well, I’d love to go on a shopping spree- I’m a bit of a clothes horse. But I’d also give a large chunk of change to my university theatre department and my arts high school. Oh, and try to pay back my parents for this London trip- even though it’s part of my schooling, I know it’s expensive.

Name one weakness of yours.
I am the jealous type. I never, ever take it out on the person of whom I am jealous, but I get very jealous very easily, and I wish I didn’t. I’m also a workaholic when it comes to my acting, sometimes blindingly so. I gave up seeing my family over most of my Thanksgiving break this year so I could do a play two hours away from my home, and I felt bad about that.

If you could live anywhere at all (and take your loved ones with you), where would you go?
After living in London for two months now, with four more to go, I have to say, right here. I love London, and England, so, so much. Second to that, New York City.

Strange talent? Can you juggle basketballs, put your legs behind your head or perform some other strange feat?
Hm… I don’t think I have any, to be honest. Oh! I can be verbally fed long strings of numbers and letters and then recite them back from memory from smallest to biggest number and then in alphabetical order perfectly. I found this out when I was getting IQ tests done a few years ago. I think it comes from memorizing scripts and book passages from a pretty young age.

What’s something your consider yourself to be good at? (Don’t worry, it’s not bragging. It’s acknowledging a God-given gift.)
Well, I guess I consider myself to be good at acting and writing, though I know I have definite room for improvement in both. I think I take all right pictures, too... I hate questions like this.

What is one of your favorite things to catch a whiff of?
Freshly mown grass- the country girl in me coming out! Also, books. I love the smell of bookstores, new or used.

When you leave a social gathering, do you wish you would have talked more or talked less?
Always the former. I don’t talk much in social gatherings unless I know everyone really well. I’m very shy around anyone new.

If money wasn’t a factor, what stores would you shop in?
Anthropologie- their dresses are adorable, but their prices make me cringe. However, I’d still most likely spend most of my money in Target!

What is your greatest fear?
I guess… not achieving my dreams. I was going to say failure, but if I fail along the way to achieving my dream, that’s fine. But I really don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t do what I want with my life.

What is your greatest accomplishment?
My workaholic-ness coming out, but I’m really proud of my acting resume. I’ve worked really hard for the past eight years to get the credits I have, and it’s gotten me into some very exclusive auditions that people my age don’t usually have access to.

What are your favorite animals?
Otters!

Are you a hopeless romantic?
Absolutely. Although I don’t believe in love at first sight- does that take away that title?

What movie or book character can you most relate to?
Gemma Doyle from the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. So, so much.




Starting tomorrow, I'll be back with a vengence!

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 :)

Failure? Maybe, Maybe Not

So I did something in December that, until right now, only six people knew about, including me. I've mentioned my PP play on this blog numerous times, obsessed over it, finished it, and handed it in. I was very proud of it. I am very proud of it. However, when my professor suggested that I submit it for my school's theatre season, I was a little hesitant. I don't show a lot of people my writing. Besides doing WIP Wednesdays on this blog, there are really only two people to whom I regularly show my writing, and I've talked about them in an old blog post about writing buddies. I find it hard to part with my babies, though I'm getting much better due to writing classes and workshops.
I also didn't know if I wanted to submit it because when I spoke about it with my advisor (who has a great hand in choosing the season, if not the whole hand), he told me that I needed to get it in very fast, as they usually announce the next season in the first week of January. The completed script was due for class on December seventeenth. I had a copy to my advisor by the fifteenth. And while I did hand him a completed script... it was a first draft. Not all of the scenes- some of them were nearly a year old. But others had been completed just hours before. I knew it wasn't ready, but because I had been encouraged to do so, I had enough nerve to turn it in.

I wasn't ashamed of my advisor reading it- I think it's an okay play. But it's not great, not yet. Besides the fact that some of the plot can be fleshed out much further, it would also be a challenge for my school's theatre space in regards to stage size, cast size (we hardly have any boys at my school, and my play would need all of them), and stunt ability (there's not a lot, but it is Peter Pan and since the Spiderman debacle, people are pretty leery about the whole flying thing, no matter how brief.) I didn't know what to expect in ways of reaction. They've set precedent in working with student playwrights after they choose the student's show, and I wasn't sure if that might happen to me. When I would have exchanges about the next season with my advisor, he would be cryptic. I got an e-mail response from him this week telling me that he thought I would be very happy with the next season.

It was announced last night. My play is not on it.

Am I sad? No. Not at all. The part of me that really wanted to have a play I love produced this soon is a little disappointed. But I don't feel cheated or gyped or disrespected or overlooked. I'm not relieved, but it does take a good deal of pressure off of the rewrites I'm doing now, which I would have embarked on either way. I do want to publish this play one day, but it needs a lot of work.

So I don't consider this a failure. I won't lie- there was a moment or two when I thought, "If he hates the play, does that make me an awful writer? What does this mean?" But the fact is, I don't know if he hated the play. He might- we have different tastes in plays and I wrote a play I would want to see. But he might not hate it. There is a myriad of reasons why my play wasn't chosen; dislike could be one reason, but even if it is, there's probably something else too (like the casting of non-existent boys.) Also... the season is freaking awesome. I felt nothing but excitement when I read it.

So no failure here. Not success either, really, but it doesn't lessen my passion for the play and it hasn't slowed my rewrites. I just sent a fresh draft, complete with two brand-new scenes, off to one of my trusty writing partners last night. Hopefully with his edits, I can make it even better and hope to one day see it mounted on a stage.

Shame

Even though I promised myself that I would wait until my readers' edits came back to look at The Other Side of Light again, I keep opening the document and looking it over. Partially it's because I'm still very invested in the story, which is good, but partially it's because I'm avoiding editing my play, which is bad.

In any case, as I edit, I am ashamed at the amount of formatting and tiny plot mistakes there are. I can't believe I sent it off like this! It's not completely my fault- I compiled all of the different sections in Scrivener and either it's a fault in the beta or a fault in my brain, but the formatting wasn't perfect. Some lines will be combined with others, a bigger-than-normal space the only indication that I might have meant something different than appears there.

But worse are the moments where I discover the tiny little pieces of an old plot point lurking in a new place in the novel. For example, Lyddie, the main character, goes to a dance at one point because I needed to get her out of the house for other reasons. Until mid-November, Lyddie and her sister had fought before Lyddie left. But once I realised that Lyddie needed another relationship to raise the stakes, the dance served the purpose of not getting her out of the house, but dangling her crush in front of her and yanking him away (she does get together with him later.) I moved the fight scene to much, much later (more than 31, 500 words later) and had her sister willingly offer to do Lyddie's job while Lyddie went to the dance.

It all worked out, plot-wise, but I've been discovering tiny little things that I overlooked. For example, even though Lyddie left the house in good terms with her sister, when her phone rings and it's her sister, Lyddie thinks of how annoyed she still is with her. Oops... And while it might not seem like a huge deal (perhaps it's not), the poor people who are reading this novel are going to be confused. I can just see the comments now: "Where did this plot point come from? Why would she be angry at her sister?" *sigh* It's not the end of the world, but it does disturb my perfectionist's mind. I get embarrassed when I make a mistake in a Facebook status. To make so many in a novel is, to me, tragic.

But then, I'm a bit of a drama queen.

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!

In Which I Recognize That I Am a Baby

I mentioned a few blog posts back that I got some great, helpful feedback from my playwrighting professor on my adaptation. I am excited to apply them... but I am also being a complete baby about it. I enjoy editing, and I feel very accomplished when I've completed a lot of little changes. For example, in my fiction, I have the tendency to just use "says" and "asks" rather than more vivid verbs. This was one of my frend's biggest comments on Remembrance. So I went through The Other Side of Light and highlighted every single one, then took a few days to go back and "vivify" them. It took a long time, but I know my novel's better for it.

But the changes that need to be made on Straight on 'Til Morning are not small. It's almost like an overall rewrite is due- my scenes and dialogue are fine, but it's so all-talk, no-action that I pretty much need to rework every scene in some little way, as well as add one or two more that are more swashbuckling.

When I bring up my document and face the title page, however, my brain just throws a tantrum. I'm not quite sure how to make a lot of these changes, as all-talk, no-action is my weakness in all writing... and possibly my life :p I want to make them because this play will not sit in my desk drawer for the rest of my life... but it's definitely going to be hard.

This weekend's a writing weekend, though- I have to finish up three shorter papers and then I'll turn my attention to the scritpt. We'll see how this goes.

In non-whiny, cool news, the First Novels Club is holding an awesome contest! Check it out!