The Long Surrender is proving to be somewhat of a journey for myself - more than I intended it to be. While the individual 'plays' are coming out quite quickly (most are taking about an hour and a half to write), it feels like the concept has weighed heavily over the past couple of weeks - this past two weeks particularly - so the "Long" part feels like it's living up to its name. [though, really, I know this whole thing is going very fast, indeed]
And the process of writing a short scene every couple of days (though I've done 3 in the past 2 days) has become, out of necessity, a Surrender - where I can't linger on each play too long, I have to let one be done and move on (I'm not rewriting until I finish all 14). So, even if I don't feel completely satisfied with a play, I surrender it. And that's not so easy to do.
Just thinking back over the 7 plays I've written, there are already trends (I wouldn't necessarily call them repetitions). I would like to see something different come out during the other 7 plays, but I don't want to force something - all of a sudden one of these is a slapstick comedy or something. But a whole evening of somber scenes might be tough to make it through. But I still rely on the fact that there's a continuity to what I'm writing because there is a continuity in an album of music - not that the plays are exactly matching the songs point by point; but inspiration is inspiration.
Given the plan of how the evening of theatre is to work out, nothing is yet sticking out as an Opener or Closer - but hopefully that will become clearer after I have the set done.
The goal: finish 7 more plays/scenes by a week from today. A play a day. It may go faster, but it can't go slower. Why? I'm leaving for a family vacation - and during that time, a conference. The change of scenery/ venue has the chance to really change the tone of what I'm doing, and I don't want to let that happen.
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