Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

My current play is in re-write mode. Sometimes, for me–as I am always talking only about me-me-me and my process, the re-write is feeling painfully slow at the moment. Painful for me, the writer, who wants to be done with the play, so that it can be seen on its feet again in its new shoes. My characters feel differently, hanging on too tightly, refusing to let (me) go and be set free.

And so tomorrow I begin the week with a self-imposed deadline for these guys to pack their bags and move out. I love them, and it’s hard to say good-bye. And I know its time because there are new characters knocking at the door waiting to be let in…or out, depending on your perspective.

If you’ve got time to waste, you might as well waste it listening to people.

It is St. Paddy’s day, after all.

Okay, I’m going to quote Albee again. Well, paraphrase, anyway.

He has said playwrights must be very careful who we show our work to when we are developing it. First drafts are so easily crushed by the well-intentioned critic.

Many years ago, I found my first ‘master’ teacher. He was the first person I found, who would tell me clearly, unsentimentally, and directly what worked and what did not work in the plays I was writing. He was an aloof, almost cold guy. He was a brilliant teacher. If I’d met him ten years earlier, I would have been crushed by his clarity. Perhaps would not have written another word. Ever. As it was, I met him at the right time in my life, where I was open and ready and craving his kind of truth telling. He taught me everything he knew about playwriting. I found out, later, it was as much as anyone really knows, and those teachings, sometimes disgarded, sometimes employed, have served me well.

In my adventures in theatre, the people I found I could trust to tell me the truth have been few. Mind you, there are always people available who will step up to tell you what’s wrong with your work, and what they would have done instead. Or people who will complain about you. People who will rip you apart behind your back. People who say things to you and now matter how many words they use, or how many questions you ask, you stand there wondering, “What the fuck was that?” because they’ve said nothing in their attempt to be unoffensive.

Cheerleeders, too, are nice. Cheerleaders make you feel good about yourself. They lift your spirits. They get you over a slump. Cheerleaders do not help you write great plays.

It’s the true friends who will tell you, without relish, what works and what doesn’t who are to be cherished. One in particular, MBH, I met through the first master teacher. MBH has read every first draft of mine, stage or film script, for several years now. He is the one who will tell me that a line, an exchange, a scene, an act, a script, “is not up to your usual.” Of course, too, MBH cheers me when he thinks I’ve been particularly brilliant. We have watched each other grow as playwrights. We’ve read each other through our attempts at (oh how my Group, which MBH does not belong to, shudders at this) screenwriting. He will be a great screenwriter. On his way, I’ve no doubt. He is a beautiful playwright. A masterful re-writer. Totally different from me in style and focus. We have pledged to always challenge each other to be better than we are. So far we have kept that pledge.

There is an art to feedback. Real, constructive feedback. And it’s not me telling you how I would write your play.

Once MBH and I were part of a theatre group, founded by a handful of playwrights. I will never forget the day, we all answered the question, “What happens when you don’t write?” MBH said something like, “If I don’t write, I’m not happy. I become impossible to live with.” Writing akin to breathing. A brother afflicted, just like me. The other writers could write or not; no skin off their noses, as the saying goes. Writers who don’t care if they write? Are they aliens? There was at least one or two certainly with more innate talent than we; just without apparent ambition.

MBH and I are the only ones from that group still writing.

Just interesting to note. I try to note without judgment. Still it seeps through.

I’m appreciating MBH tonight. Every writer should have an MBH in her life.

It’s the third anniversary of another friend’s death. Another artist, a songwriter, performer, and eyeglass collector. One of those “Connectors” Malcom Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point. He was the only person I knew who understood what I meant, when I said, “Sometimes I’m afraid of my own power as an artist.”
Kevin McQuarrie,
Love you, guy.
Miss you.

P.S. Not afraid anymore.

Last night an actor in my playwrights’ group, exclaimed a familiar refrain: “I love the process.” Something so many of us have said, writers, actors, directors, whatever our theatrical role may be. We love the creation and the discovery of what we all bring to the play and beyond.

I am blessed to be in a regular workshop. The workshop meets weekly, with time off in the summer and for the year-end holidays. The originating idea of the workshop was for each playwright to bring in a maximum of ten pages a week of whatever project the writer was, uh, well, writing. Actors read the pages cold, so that we can hear if the dialogue, narrative, or lack thereof, are generally working. The workshop has been going on for around twenty years, with some of the originating members still participating.

Feedback by writers and actors alike ensues in between readings of a playwright’s pages. When a playwright has a complete draft, an evening is set aside for that play only. Again, there is little, if any, rehearsal. These evenings are for development, and while they are not “public” these evenings are not necessarily completely private. Actors, after all, love an audience. (Okay, we do too.) The point is, there is no pressure for the writer to perform for outsiders, per se. It’s our place to stumble, fall, create, revise, and ponder. There are other avenues for staged, AKA rehearsed, AKA public, readings. Our workshop is truly a home wherein we discover our plays.

The writers pay the rent for our meeting room, and we bring food for the actors. A writer’s membership is gained by some basic criteria: (1) You must have been produced. (2) You must attend a couple of meetings and ‘audition’ your pages. (3) The mystery of chemistry with the other playwrights. I have been a member of this workshop for a mere three years and counting. I was invited by a long standing member to attend with my ten pages of current material. “Hmmm…” they said, “why don’t you come again next week?” And so it went. And so it goes. Week after week, we all show up, writers and actors alike.

The group contains less than ten playwrights, and more than a dozen actors. I am the youngest playwright, and I do not mean young by age. I mean young in experience. My fellow writers have been at this process for a lot longer than I, and I have been writing plays for over ten years. Some of them with Off-Broadway credits; all of them with a preponderance of Regional credits. The group, for me, has been like playing tennis with great players. There is a quiet confidence these playwrights exude about their work. Within the workhshop, they are not competitive, vying for time and attention. Everyone gets their say; all pages are read. Feedback is to the point, truthful and uncallous. Playing with them week after week has made me a much better, and, yes, even confident playwright. The workshop is a great gift.

While the playwright sits alone to craft out the pages, plays are, ultimately, works which are brought to life by a collective of people. We have to hear our pages to know if the play is working. I have come to call our cold readings of entire plays a kind of “proof of concept” reading. It’s when I learn if what I have laid out works dramatically or not, in the plays entirety. Even in cold readings, the actors worry over their performances. They do not understand the ears we have developed for hearing if the play is working, regardless of the performance. We can afford, because of the private nature of the workshop, to suffer an “off” reading. We can hear when an actor elevates the material, and know the dialogue is not up to par. I cannot explain how this has happened to the playwrights in my group, or if it happens to all playwrights. I only know we have sat through hundreds and hundreds of cold readings, staged readings, rehearsals, good plays and bad, and somehow the ears are honed to hear the writing and not the trappings.

The trappings are great, mind you, and I do not mean to diminish them by even any means. For this moment, I am focused on the initial birthing of our plays into something whole. The trappings, the actors, directors, staging, the physical theatre, on and on, are the point, after all, down the line, and it’s the getting there that contains so much fun, joy and trepidation.

August Wilson said,

If you want to be a writer, you must own it.

For many of us, the process of writing is omnipresent. We are either writing, or thinking about what we’re writing about. (That’s why so many of us are, well, boring to the outside world, eh?) I have learned not to compare myself to other writers, anymore. We all do it slightly differently. How I write is only that; how I write. It may not work for you. Just as, how you write may not work for me. There have been only two writers’ processes I have identified with–Tony Hillerman (a mystery writer) and Edward Albee (if you’re reading this, do I have to note he is a playwright?). As different as two writers can be, aren’t they?

A friend gave me the book, Talking Mysteries: A Conversation with Tony Hillerman. Back in the days I read a lot of mysteries, I loved Hillerman’s. In answering the question of “when” do you write, Hillerman said the question is difficult to answer.

The way I put a book together, as a matter of fact, sounds on the surface like an argument for writing as a way of life….I write..while driving…during those endless committee meetings…at cocktail parties, at the cost of sometimes nodding at the wrong time…I write in bed…on an old sofa playing a solitaire game…Thus is absoutely impossible to tell whether I am writing or loafing.

Yes, indeed. Recently, as I sat in my neighborhood coffee house, my favorite Barista came up to me, as I stared out the window, and said, “You look bored out of your mind.” “Me? Oh no, I’m just working.” In fact, I was working quite intensely, while I sat there, to all appearances doing nothing.

Edward Albee has described his process of writing a play, as one which gestates for a very long time, sometimes years, in his mind before he ever puts a word on paper. By the time he begins to put his words down, the characters are alive in his mind; formed into people he can place in any situation. He does not feel he needs to rewrite, as he writes what he means to write.

My variation from Albee is that I feel re-writing is a fun part of the process. The first draft finds its way to a conclusion, and the foundation of my play has been built. The play is then resculpted, tweaked, stroked until I feel I can take no farther.

A play is never finished. It is only abandoned.

A key element for me, when a new play is forming, is I have an image or a feeling that becomes a strong focal point. Actually, it is often the end point; the last moment of the play. When I have a basic idea of how to get to that end point, that’s when I begin writing the play.

From that moment, when I begin putting the words down, I write every day. Weekends are optional, unless I’m on a deadline of some kind. My goal is five pages of dialogue. If I churn out more, ten or twenty, I certainly don’t stop myself. I know myself well enough to know I can always churn out five pages. They may not all make it into the play. Even so, no pages are ever wasted pages. I do not censor or edit during this period. Long gone are the days when I agonized over a single word, which could take all day, or weeks, to discover, and keep a draft from seeing completion.

Lately, I have taken to writing in long hand. Usually in the morning. Long hand feels more natural, and there is less staring out the window during a writing session. The PB is engaged when the story is coming too fast to maintain by long hand. And I will go back and forth between long hand and typing. In the afternoon, I do chores, errands, or type the long hand pages up in The PB. Some editing occurs as I type the into The PB. The heavy editing comes after the draft is completed.

I read a lot of plays, and see as much theatre as I can. I know there are writers who do not engage in the medium they write in. They don’t see plays, see films, read novels, whatevah. I don’t understand these kinds of writers. I learn as much from a bad play, as a good one. Remember, I said somewhere on this blog, I’m easily entertained. My mother used to call me a sponge. This is how it works for me. Period. Enough said. Feel free to expound on how it works for you, okay?

I’ve been asked to participate in a play development workshop. Lovely honor. Very competive. It’s for a One-Act play I’ve written. One-Act is fancy talk for a play twenty minutes or less. When I was growing up, the One-Act play was sixty minutes. Full length plays were two hours; now they’re ninety minutes.

I am happy about this honor. I am also ambivalent about it.

The ambivalence. More and more, playwrights are relegated to two different circults we fight for space in. First, there is the development circuit. Rare is the theatre committing to a new play on the play’s merits alone. Plays are endlessly workshopped and ‘developed.’ There’s a lot of grant money in workshopping, developing and staged readings. Developing implies there’s a place for the play to go (uh, like a production, folks?). Second, there’s the short play circuit. More and more theatres are putting up limited run “festivals” of short plays. (Or, oops, festivals of new works, that consist of staged readings!)

JC, a playwright friend, says short plays are calling cards. That’s how he looks at it. He makes an effort to write many of them. Another friend, EC-not-a-playwright, once told me short plays were akin to putting a full tank of gas in the car, and then, only riding around the block. Truth be told, I often feel that way, and I no longer write short plays unless they urgently come forward.

The happy. The folks involved in this development workshop have made me feel that I am a Great Discovery. They Love My Play. They Cannot Wait to Work With Me. I feel a little like the CC Bloom character in the film Beaches. You remember? When her friend, Hillary, takes CC to the Mall? CC is uplifted because she’s recognized and asked for autographs. Yes, I’m in need of a feel good moment about myself as a playwright. It’s been a bit of drought between gigs. And I’m estatic to go for a ride around the block.

My 12" Powerbook aka The PB: I can carry it everywhere! Macs are for artists. PCs are for our beloved worker bees.

Final Draft: It’s not just for screenwriting.

Note Taker: I create a separate notebook for each writing project. Each notebook holds random thoughts about the play, dialogue snippets, images, an outline for each Act. Stuff I don’t want to lose. Stuff I may not use. Stuff I want to make sure I follow through on.

Sticky Brain:  I use this to hold research material, quotations, receipts, the "whatnot" of my life that doesn’t necessarily relate to a writing project. Stuff I want to find quickly when I need it.

Merrian-Webster’s 3rd International Dictionary: I use the wonderfully big hardback edition, as well as the online edition.

When I don’t have my laptop, which is often, I always carry at least one pen, and a small notebook. ALWAYS. I write down any ideas I have, no matter where I am, or what I may, uh, be doing. Yep.

My standard pen is a Sharpie Ultra Fine Point. Not always practical, as it can bleed through thin paper. I like the boldness and the commitment writing with a Sharpie requires of me. And I like the colors. Green, Blue, Red, Black, Purple. When I’m not using a Sharpie, I use a Fisher Ballpoint Pen; the "astronaut" kind. They survive airplane rides without leaking.

Sharpie has a nice "Accent" highlighter I’ve been using. I used to use Zebra’s highlighter until I couldn’t find them anymore. I really only like the color yellow in highlighters. Can’t seem to branch out to the others.

In my writing studio, I use an erasable whiteboard. In between scripts, I jot down new play ideas as they come to me. During a specific play project, I use the whiteboard to hold important ideas, character names, and a list of events, or scenes I want to keep track of. The whiteboard is hanging in a prominent place near my desk. I can pace the floor, and scribble on it at will. Of course. Or sit and stare at it for a kind of meditation.

I also keep a private online journal, over at Live Journal. Private, yes, so that only I see it. It contains only ideas for my plays. It’s online so that I can access it from anywhere, even when I don’t have The PB with me.

I write to understand myself, my family, my friends, the strangers around me. I write to try to understand why I respond to the world the way I do. Equally importantly, why you respond the way you do. Thus far, I have to love all my characters I am writing about; even the evil ones. Because, ultimately, no matter how much you see ‘you’ in them, they are really all a part of me. Somehow, I believe, this love keeps me connected to my compassion, my humanity, and possibly brings me just a little humility/teachability.

Why I write plays is harder to explain. For years I wrote bad poetry. There was a story I wanted to tell, and I tried it as a novel, unsuccessfully, and then condensed as a short story. Also unsuccessfully. In the course of writing prose, I realized all that “came out” on paper was in dialogue form. And it was in that moment, playwriting became my writing home.

If you look into any play, you’re gonna see the playwright, in one disguise or another. The miracle of Shakespeare is that he had so many disguises.

Arthur Miller

There is some instant gratification involved in theatre, that is extremely potent. If you are fortunate enough to have some kind of audience for your work, actors to bring it to life, you feel the power in making an audience laugh, cry, and pay attention. It’s my drug.

I write to find wholeness, to earn my keep, to entertain, and maybe even edify, in some way, myself and you.

Afllicted. Yes. Arthur Miller said something like that too.

I don’t know why Mr. Miller is quoting today. He just is.