By the end of National Playwriting Month, I will hate myself, the tattered remains of The Aladdin Play, and everyone involved in this effort.
PS: No Norwegians tonight! As if you couldn’t guess. Happy Halloween!
Hey kids! What playwriting goal will Mike fail to fulfill this month?
In this case, it’s the completion of Norwegians! A second draft, almost entirely rewritten, contains much more pep than the first. I may not be embarrassed to show it to you.
And if possible, I’d like to show it to you by the end of the month. Yeah, October! That means marathon writing for yours truly. At least by my standards.
I’m also dividing my efforts. My computer writing time (AKA my time constantly refreshing Bloglines) is dedicated to Norwegians, while my notebook writing on the train is dedicated to The Aladdin Play. This new play is exciting so far: dueling genies! The King of Israel! It’s too bad these characters suffer from my inability to have them say anything other than what they mean. I was brought up in a family that uses nothing but flat, direct declarations. It’s hard to break that habit.
In the long run, I would like to have a new draft of The Egypt Play up on the site by the end of the year. This should require less rewriting than Norwegians, but I’ll have to work for it.
Longtime readers, if I have any, should be suprised just to see me do any writing at all.
Look what happened! It took more than thirteen months, but I finally dragged my hand across paper enough times to completed a first draft of The Egypt Play. Congratulations to me!
As expected, the draft is complete garbage. It’s barely an hour and fifteen minutes of tepid, mannered conversation and minor variations on the same joke. It is internally inconsistent and may end up like It Takes A Nation of Norwegians To Hold Us Back!, which has spent nine months languishing unrevised.
But I may be able to save the Egypt Play through the use of a MacGuffin! Right now, characters squabble over duty and fidelity—boring! Why not come to blows over some loot? One simple trinket may be enough to make this play exciting, rather than mildly amusing.