"Miss" Act One

So, here on April 23, I've reached the intermission of MISS, a new full length play.  During the 30 Day Challenge, I didn't actually write for about two weeks as I wrapped up the school year - which included finals and the Belhaven Theatre Festival (during which I had readings of two different works).

Miss has been an interesting process, taking much more time than I'd wanted to.  I had hopes of repeating my feat of writing a first draft very quickly - Anathema's first draft was done in just over a week (with many rewrites to come afterward).  This one has been much slower in developing, and still, though I've reached half-way, there's a lot I don't know about what's going to happen later in the play.

But so far, I think there's something interesting in this play that I can continue to mine.  Sometimes, I can get 15-20 pages out and then I'm no longer interested in these people.

Now that work has lightened up, the hope is that I can get back to writing every day, and perhaps reach the end of this story soon (at least before the end of April...).  With so many other projects on the burners for this summer, it would be ideal to at least get this off my plate ASAP.  Then it can sit in a drawer for a while.

The Glen

So, I'm attending a playwriting workshop this week at The Glen - East, hosted by Image Journal.  Arlene Hutton is our instructor.  Instead of our session being to get feedback on completed or in-process works (which most Glen sessions seem to be about), we are planning to focus on creating and developing new ideas for plays.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this all works - I've never done a week long workshop like this.

We are at Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts - a beautiful campus with lots of New England charm.  Meeting a lot of new people, and have already had some very interesting and compelling late-into-the-evening-hours conversations.

Not sure how much time I'll have to scratch out thoughts for a blog this week, but maybe some insights or even some writing might get posted.

I did get a chance while traveling to read through the first draft of Long Surrender - some things turned out better than I'd remembered, and some need work.  Hopefully sometime soon I can get back to working on that.