Keeping the Magic Alive

Whoo hoo!  I’m on Day 6 of WAPAD.  And I did my writing quota today and it’s a Saturday.  However, even though I was only a page and a bit into my project (a musical adaptation of a one of my short stories), I have moved on to another project.  Why?  The other story excites me more.

There is a contradiction of motivations in writing.  If you are serious about writing, you must do it consistently; hence, my urge to develop my WAPAD (writing a page a day) habit.  Conversely, a project needs to excite you in some way for you to stick with it to the end.  Consistency and passion drive most works of expression.

Although, I find my musical project exciting, I’ve never written a musical.  I’ve seen a few musicals and I have an intuition that this story could work better as a musical than a straight play.  But…  There’s a lot of work involved to get this story to the musical version.  And some of those steps have been nagging away at me and robbing me of some of my enthusiasm.

Also, I want to have a play ready for the Hamilton Fringe Festival Playwriting Contest.  The contest opens December 1, 2010 and is open until February 25, 2011.  I would like to be able to submit a second or third draft of my script before the deadline closes.  Usually, I’m frantically trying to get my first draft in on the final day of the deadline.  L

So, what happened?  There are always a few ideas bouncing around my head.  I have one idea that I have been trying to formulate into a story.  And last week, as I was riding the train home, an element popped into my head which will be the catalyst to pushing the idea into a play.  I apologize for being a bit oblique in talking about the things that I am working on, but I will discuss that tomorrow. 

Apparently Isaac Asimov worked on multiple projects at the same time.  He would have a bunch typewriters set up in his writing room; one for each project.  When he got tired of a project, he would get up, go to another typewriter and start writing on that project.  How did that work for him?   Isaac Asimov wrote about 500 books.

So, for me to keep passionate about writing a page a day, I need to be working on a story that excites me.  I may run out of steam on this second story, too; but, then I will go back to the musical or start working on another story idea.  WAPAD is the goal, so I need to make sure that the things I am working on will excite me enough to come back to the blank page each day.