How do bloggers blog?

I started this blog with the best of intentions to chronicle my journey as a playwright.  But the darn thing is that I'm a lazy bugger and I sometimes find it challenging enough just to get in my quota for writing, let alone writing about my writing! 

Even when I just kept a journal, I found it difficult to make the time to write about things when I was in the midst of them.  If you go through my journals -- and I don't recommend it, they're filled with lots of "man, I should really write more" -- you will notice that I rarely have written about stuff when it is happening.  It's usually just afterwards or weeks later.

I had intended to write about my experience preparing for my show Cast Away.  Well, I opened it two days ago.  Checking back, I only wrote six blogs about it and four of them were before I really got started.  You know, I think if I had kept up the blogs, I might have gotten the script done sooner.  Which would have allowed me more time to tinker with it and given me more time to learn the lines.  But I won't go there.  In this post, anyway.  ;-)

Fall down seven times, get up eight times.  So, this is me dusting myself off and getting up.  I will try to be better writing blogs.  It was reading Nancy Kenny's blog that inspired me get back on the blog-wagon.  I recommend checking out Nancy's blog.  People only see our projects up on stage and it's helpful to see what it takes to get them to that place.  And what do we do when we're between projects.

Blog on!

Be Careful What You Wish For

I just finished writing my sixth play.  Yay!  But I was troubled by a previous wish.

I have been wanting to write a full length play since the beginning.  Unfortunately, my plays only seem to want to be one act plays.  50 minutes or less.  It's not a bad length for a Fringe show, but if you want to get your work looked at by a big theatre, they want a full length play.

My current play, Cast Away, tried to fulfill my wish.  When I didn't want it to.  I had submitted a proposal for The Pearl Company Canadian Theatre Festival and it got accepted.  Uh-oh.  How long was my play?  Uh... 50 minutes?  Like most of my other plays...

Well, when I started writing it, the play didn't want to be 50 minutes.  It wanted to be twice as long as that!  But I had already confirmed that it WAS 50 minutes!!  D-oh!

I finished the first draft and then I had to cut.  Mercilessly.  I cut and cut and it was still longer than 50 minutes.  I cut my darlings.  I slashed anything that could be taken out without being missed.  When I couldn't look at it any more, I sent it to my friend and he suggested more cuts.  And it refuses to shrink.  :-( 

It's a one man show, so I'm rehearsing it now and whittling a sentence here or a line there.  But I keep thinking to myself.  Next time I'll write it first before submitting the idea.  Or be careful for what I wish for...