Playwriting

I am on vacation (have been since Thursday--yippy!), and that means I have been moving into "writing mode." (Repeat: yippy!)

I admit, after a hard semester of teaching, it may take me several days of lying around and doing nothing before I can enter such a mode. I am also visiting a friend in Kansas, and we have discovered that we have vastly different ways of writing--she at a desk, I reclined; she with the television, I in utter silence (or with very soft music playing in the background). Right now, though, she is exhausted, finally relaxing after months of utter stress, so while she snores (softly) in the background, I can get some work done.

Nice.

You see, I don't write for the money. I don't dream about being a famous writer while I'm drifting off to sleep at night. I don't dream of quitting my day job once I sell something. I just love the act--the feel--of writing. I like it better than a hot shower, as much as a cool breeze. It eases headaches, relaxes my shoulders, and draws me in better than a movie in a dark theatre. Writing is simply a fantastic exercise. Rather like painting.

Playwriting is the best, too, for it includes not only this ecstasy of writing, but also promises another treat in the future: getting my writing read by actors. I'm part of the Seattle Playwrights Collective, and the play I'm swimming in now is set to get a dramatic reading in May. That means, very soon, I will hear my play's words spoken by real, talented actors. I'll hear where the elements falter, where the plot doesn't thicken fast enough, and I'll have the privilege of hearing the parts that work as well.

I feel more lucky than I can say. I may never get one of my novels published, and no play of mine might make it to Broadway, but the act of writing and honing them is the best part.

Not Laughing

I believe, deep down, I have no sense of humor. 

Or at least, if I do have a sense of humor, it's vacuous and superficial, willing to laugh at a comedian, but not willing to dig deeply into what makes something funny, or to care about anything that brings a smile to my face. 

Don't get me wrong. By my very nature, I am overtly cheerful. I resemble Pollyanna more than any other person I know, despite my tendency to seek and tell truth. I'm a glass-half-full kind of person, living a life with little angst (and what angst I do have I put here). But my characteristics don't lead to a corresponding taste in literature. Certainly, I don't gravitate to the violent, or the sex-crazed star-crossed lovers sort of thing, but I also don't gravitate towards humor.

I'm reading through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince again (how many times has it been?), and I am struck by how little I value the humor of it the umpteenth time through. What do I love? The emotional impact. The seriousness of certain situations. Even in the film, the scene that left me coldest was the one in the Weasely twins' shop... and in the whole set of books, my favorite scenes are the serious ones... especially the dementor attack in Book #5. 

It isn't just Harry. It's every book I've ever read. I am drawn to the pathos, the weeping. I saw Gladiator three times in the theater--I even saw Titanic five times, and though the romance between Rose and Jack left me completely cold, I found the other "real" characters mesmerizing: the old couple snuggling together on their bed; the mother reading to her children below deck, knowing they would all die because she wasn't allowed to leave; the carpenter staring at the clock on the mantle, aware that it was all his fault the ship was sinking. The same events that make it certain my husband will never watch a film again are what drives me to see it. 

Maybe those films provide me with what I don't have in my real life. I have laughter. I have romance. I have all sorts of joy. I don't want real tragedy in my life, so I just enjoy it vicariously through film and books. I live through Harry, grateful that I don't have to live a life like his, yet fascinated by the trauma all the same. My writing does the same thing: it creates extraordinary events for me to involve myself in, fantasies that I would never want in real life but that are compelling for me (and hopefully, someday, for readers). 

What's missing in your life? What do you read/write for?

Hacking at Body Parts

I have been revising a play of mine recently--a kitchen sink drama, in reality, about a young woman who is trying to care for an elderly mother with dementia--and the first act was easy. Honestly, I was captivated by scene two--a scene which has been staged on its own, with a full production, in Kansas. But then Act 2 began, and I realized that what had been brilliant in the first act (okay, so maybe not brilliant, but pretty damned entertaining) had gone terribly wrong in every way imaginable. 

And I mean wrong. It wasn't a few bad lines. Characters did things they would never do. Situations were resolved through unrealistic means. Everything turned into a sit com. It was almost unreadable, and my stomach turned as I read the last few lines of the play and realized the whole act had to go.

I shut my computer and went upstairs to try to eat a bag of chips. After a handful, I realized that eating myself into oblivion was not going to change the fact that the whole second act was utter trash. If I tried to leave the scenes intact, but change what happened, I'd only steer awry again. I had no other choice but to get rid of everything. 

I trudged back to my computer, saved the play as "revised," and deleted all but the first three pages of Act Two--some 40 pages or so of play. Yes, they are still on the first draft, but the only way I will ever resurrect them is if someone steals my play and I have to produce proof that I wrote it years ago and even revised it significantly. Those scenes no longer belong to my play. I have cut them out for good.

Hopefully my description shows how difficult it is to cut out what doesn't work. I would think it might get easier over the years, but it doesn't (yes, I've scrapped huge chunks of work before--I even threw out the first two attempts at novel #3--changing the point of view, and then changing the main character--deleting 68 pages the first time, and over 150 the second). I felt, as I highlighted the offending scenes in this play, as if I were taking a hatchet to my legs, chopping them off right above the thigh bone. Would I be able to stop the bleeding? Would I end up infecting the whole thing--and thus destroying it? Would I ever be able to finish the play now? Would I figure out how to fix it so that it finally works? Would the cancer just grow back?

I don't know the answers. But now I have a much cleaner slate, and I'll know soon enough. Without the past words sitting in front of me, perhaps my cleared state of mind will show me where the characters need to go. I sure hope I figure it out. I hope it was worth the pain.