Writing Process: A New 10 Min Play

I'm no Mark Harvey Levine. He's had over 700 productions worldwide of his 10-15 minute plays. I haven't seen or read any of them, but I'm guessing he is a master storyteller. If you think writing a full-length play is hard, wait until you try writing a good short play. My play "The Bobbsey Twins Go to Hell," was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and also won a production the same year. It has also been adapted as a short film and is in post-production.
Now that I'm using the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet as structure for my full-length plays, I decided that I would adapt the beat sheet for ten-minute plays. First I tried adapting it by number of lines, but that was just too specific, so now I have it by number of pages, just like for the *big* plays. Then I tried the beat sheet out against "The Bobbsey Twins" and found that my play fit the beat sheet structure very well. No wonder that play works, where others have not.
I can begin to create my cast of characters and their back stories now. I know the two main characters already. But who will be my third? Maybe I'll work on creating the back stories for the first two today, and see what that stirs up. There will be more dynamics with a third character, but sometimes the third character is not a person. It can be a city, for example. We'll see where we are tomorrow.

Wrapping that baby up: First Draft Asylum No More

I said I'd finish the last scene today and I did! Look, it's barely noon and I just wrote those magic words: The End. 100 pages. Ten short of what I thought it would take, but actually that's good. That's a good amount of pages. I can still add if I need to, or cut if I need to. Ninety minutes made a full evening and can be run without an intermission. Or if I need to add, we can have an intermission. Either way it's all good. I did this one so it can be rated PG. You could perform this one in Middle Schools. Although it's an adult drama, I'm just sayin'. It could be performed in churches. Maybe. There are a few hells and damns.
There is conflict, both inner and outer. There is soul-searching and there is character arc. There is social change going on. I'm not saying this is a perfect first draft. I'm saying this might be a good play after I get some feedback. It has potential. It has a table read coming up, and it has a staged reading scheduled for Fertile Ground in January. Now to send her out into the world so other readers can lay their eyes on her. Bye bye baby!

Getting a crush when you're a grandmother

Getting a crush on someone not your own age, when you're as old as I am is a bummer. Let me rephrase that. I have a crush on a young woman and it's a bummer. I know it will pass, because this is one of those crushes that a person gets on a celebrity, or in my case a performer. I don't know her. If I did I wouldn't have a crush because it would be totally inappropriate. Men don't feel this way, apparently. Look at all the May/December relationships. But I am not into that. No way no how. I feel brave owning up to this temporary crush, let alone writing about it in a public blog. The thing is, I feel pretty sure I am not the only woman this happens to. If I am, so be it. I know I'm queer in a lot of ways. This is one of them.
Last night I went to a concert of Edna Vazquez and the Mariachi Band Los Palmeros with whom she's been playing for 12 years. She has the most amazing voice. I first saw her at an event at Latina Gay Pride. A friend of mine invited me to go as she was playing piano that night. I was blown away by Edna's voice, so when I saw her name on the calendar I knew I was going to go see her. But when I saw her last night, I suddenly got a crush. While I was watching her sing, I kept wishing I was 30 or 35 years younger so I could ask her out. I thought about how I was when I was 30 and 35 years younger. I would have asked her out back then. Of course, she probably wasn't born back then. So you see how ridiculous this is. But it is a fantasy.
In real life, I do enjoy her singing so much. I tried to order a CD from her website, but as far as I can tell, it consists of nothing but videos of her singing. (And I'm complaining?) I am going to take my two grandchildren with me to her concert on Sunday. Both are singers and I want them to see and hear her. For one thing I want my grandson to hear a woman who can sing as loud as he can. And for my granddaughter to see a woman sing and play the guitar in person who is not her former teacher, not Taylor Swift, etc.
My crush will go away. Probably by the time I publish this post. If not, it will evaporate in its own time. It's one of those strange things that happens to you as you age that you don't expect to happen -- like pimples. What the hell? You have skin tags AND pimples? How is that fare? I certainly don't expect myself to feel like a schoolgirl about someone who is young enough to be my daughter or maybe even my granddaughter. That feels wrong. Then I remind myself it is just a feeling, nothing I have to act on. And it will dissipate as feelings do. Anger doesn't last. Even grief which is perhaps the longest lasting feeling one can have, doesn't last forever. A crush is nothing compared to grief. In fact, it is rather pleasant.
If you're old enough to be a grandmother, and you have or have had a crush lately, I surely would like to know I have some company if you're brave enough to share. :)

Dark night of the soul -- hers, or mine?

Yesterday the pages flew by ... I described them as a river. Today: a trickle. After I'd been writing for hours, the page count was ... four. Four pages. To be fair, today's pages are mostly monologue, rather than dialogue, so they add up to more minutes than the usual four pages, but still. Difficult to get those words down today. It seems that writing the dark night of the soul is not so easy as I thought it would be. Oh, I so blithely tossed it off yesterday as I forecast today's writing. Oh yes, today I would put my protagonist through hell. Ha. Methinks it was the other way 'round. I am literally sweating today as I write. I realized as I wrote that I am sitting here with the windows closed, even though it has warmed back up to 80 degrees. So, I got up and opened the windows. Doh. Much better. Still, I did feel as though I were pushing the words through a sieve to get them out of my head and onto the computer. I'm hoping the rewrites will be easier.
Tomorrow I'll add to this scene, then on to the next where she will arrive at the solution.

Asylum No More ... Dark Night of the Soul tomorrow

I can't believe I wrote the entire Bad Guys Close In section today. It flowed like a river. I feel so bad for my protagonist! Of course I know how strong she is. I also know what lies ahead. But right now she is devastated. Every thing that could go wrong has gone wrong. As she goes to bed tonight, even her mother is having chest pain and trouble breathing. She seems to live for work and family and her extended family has pulled away from her -- again -- her mother is ill, and she just got laid off from work. Worse than that, her cousin whom she promised to help free from prison is now lying in the violent ward of the State asylum, with no hope whatsoever of being freed and in danger of being lobotomized. Oh things are very bad indeed.
Tomorrow she has to realize that she is beaten. Hope is gone. Then and only then will she realize that she has the solution and think of it. Of course the risks are unbelievably high, but then so are the stakes. Once she thinks of it, she will have to put it into place, start overcoming obstacles, and so on. Stay tuned.

Asylum No More ... halfway point

Writing plays has changed for me since I discovered "Save the Cat!" by Blake Snyder. Yes, it's a handbook for screenwriting, but really it's about structure a story. Once I've spent the necessary time setting up the foundation and framework, the rest is like painting the walls, decorating the house, getting ready to welcome the guests. Today I passed the midpoint, I finished page 56. Tee has reached her false peak, where everything seems to have come together. Starting tomorrow the bad guys are going to close in. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. By the time I get through with her, she will be reduced to a pile of wrung out snot. She will be hopeless, clueless, maybe drunk, possibly stupid. She will be ready to jump off a cliff. But she won't. Because while freedom is worth any sacrifice (the theme of this play), it isn't going to require her to sacrifice her actual life. She will somehow find a way out of this mess using her last best efforts to beat the bad guys. Well, we hope that's what is going to happen. Stay tuned.

Wanting to be a good person

My friend Jenny is doing her Mussar year. This is a year of doing something she has never done every single day. But it is so much more than that. She is also doing something called Mussar practice (see http://www.mussarleadership.org/), telling her readers about that as she goes along, how the practice relates to whatever new thing she has done that day.
I am following along, day by day. And I have been changed by Jenny's writings. I have been led to deep thinking about my own life, my own practices, my experiences. I have written about several of them here. And after today's entry by Jenny, I sought out the Mussar website and read about the practice because I wondered whether it was restricted to Jewish people. I see that it was developed for people of the Jewish faith, but I don't see why a person couldn't adopt these practices in order to become a better person. One would have to read the Torah. I've never read the Torah. I am a Buddhist, I guess I'm actually an agnostic. I believe we are all one in the sense that we are all made of the same materials, we all exist in oneness. I believe in the collective unconscious. I believe in reincarnation or parallel lives or something like it because I know for a fact that as a child I had memories of prior lives as an adult. That came from somewhere. So, I'm not looking to convert to Judaism, because I'm not looking for religion of any sort.
I do believe in morals, ethics, being good to my fellow beings, to the world. And in being thoughtful. Jenny's Mussar practice seems to me to be a practice of deep thinking, one of creating balance in one's life. I don't know whether it is for me. Certain aspects of it have been for me as I have followed her blog this year. Have you checked it out yet? Her post today is one I highly recommend for anyone. It is about all those thoughts that run through our brains when something unexpected happens -- and how she dealt with them, given her practice. Truly something to think about.