A Writer's Notebook, Day Four-Hundred-And-Forty-Three

I have finished a full draft of my play, and it currently is sitting at ten pages, though I have to do some formatting and see what results from that.  I think it is likely to get a bit longer, but I don't see it getting crazy, and I think it may be easy to fix if it gets a bit too long.  I don't really know, exactly, what the format I should use is, and their is not a specific word count, so I am going to see what I can do.  Certainly, it should be shorter than my monologue last year, at least the version that ultimately was read, as it is far less dialogue heavy.  A monologue is all one person speaking, so it is easy to make it fairly dense.  Here, a lot of the dialogue is quite simple and short.  There are a few minor speeches, but even those are not so long.  Of course, I should not be obsessing about the length.  It is a fairly minor issue, and I am in the right zone, most assuredly.

Of course, the work itself is a bit strange, but I hope that will not be a detriment to it.  I believe that Theatre Lab will appreciate it,  even if they do not ultimately choose it, as I have seen many works their that veer from the traditional ideas of social realism in drama.  I believe in the work itself, and I feel it is certainly a far more ambitious play than the one I wrote last year.  I don't know for certain, but I do have faith that the writing itself is likely to be more developed and stronger than much of the other work that might be submitted.

I want to work on the piece a bit more tomorrow, before I submit it, but I think it is in good shape, and I am proud to have written it while still keeping up with my poetry as well.  I believe I am at a point where I can do a great deal more work of a wider variety and keep going, but I am not yet ready to push for that as a constant.  It may be that I will have an idea for a second play soon, and I am quite open to that, but I do not plan to force that to happen.  Similarly, I would enjoy working on a new novel, but have not pushed myself into that maelstrom at this point.  I am feeling rather good working on my poetry, most of the time, at least in terms of what I am discovering as a writer, if not in my responses (yes, another rejection arrived today...  Perhaps that helps to explain my concerns about sending in my play to Theatre Lab).  I think I am developing as a writer through this process, and I believe my play is a product of that entire process.  I don't wish to go off in a new direction entirely, but I am going to trust that I will find my way to work besides poetry more organically.

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