Day One

Well, the great 31plays31days challenge has begun! And while it got off to a rocky start for your favourite fearless playwright … Fine, I'm not so fearless, but … No, I have nothing. Anyway, first play is written! It doesn't have a title and it's eight pages long and most of it was written in a notebook that I bought yesterday, because you can't write 31 plays in 31 days with the millions of notebooks that you already own. No. This requires a new notebook. There are rules, people.

So, it's a short play that has a beginning, middle and also an end and is based on a news article I read yesterday about a man that lured a woman into a car by telling her that a man was following her. And she believed him. And then he sexually assaulted her. I wanted to riff on what he must have said to get in the car, and I did, and now we have a play.

On to day two!

The brave/stupid continuum

I've come to the conclusion in the last few years that you never really know. I always thought that I would get to the point as a writer and probably more as a person where I could instinctively tell the good choices from the bad. I was wrong about that. I was so wrong about that I want someone to invent a time machine so I can go back to my 17 year old self who was trying to recover from a broken heart, broken by a terrible, terrible man and trying to tell herself that one day she will instinctively know the good from the bad and just hug her. My 17 year old self really needed a hug. In fact, I always need a hug. Hug me next time you see me. But you don't know. It's all up for grabs and it's all just a little bit of luck.

So, in an effort to just do things and see where they go, I'm doing this next month. Yes. I really am. You are all welcome to come to my house on 1 September 2012 and hug me or slap me, depending on whether it turns out to be a good choice or a bad choice. Or, you can come and join me and make some choices of your own.

Same old, same old

Oh, the slackness. Just when I think I have this blogging thing under control and I'm all in the groove and whatnot, I stop having useful things to say. Or I get so freaking busy that the thought of writing one more sentence sends me lunging for the wine bottle … Even though I talk a lot about drinking, I'm really not an alcoholic. Or I'm only partially one. Or I'm a really high-functioning one, which, by the by, I once heard Janeane Garofalo say on stage was her biggest regret. God bless Janeane Janeane Garofalo. She also instructed us all that if you find yourself as the object of an intervention, start crying and don't stop until it's over. She should really write a book. Anyway, the main reason I have been absent is due to writing a screenplay. Now, I've contemplated some stupid enterprises in my time but OH MY GOD! Writing a screenplay is really hard. Even when you are a playwright. So many scenes. So many characters. So many rules. So many story threads to try and hang yourself with. But it's done. Or a draft of it is done. So now I have to write many more drafts, write other documents to explain the document I have just written and fill out lots of forms in the hope that someone somewhere will give me some money to do some more of this. God bless this writing life.

Muse

So, I was walking to work this morning in the freezing freaking cold (It's not even May Melbourne. Why don't you just calm the frack down!) and I had an idea for a play. This is not great news. In fact, it's not even good news. Because that is what I need more of. Ideas for plays. Yes. Who actually needs plays when you can just come up with ideas for plays? Because plays, compared to ideas for plays, are awful, awful things. You should see the face I'm pulling right now just thinking about plays. It's not a pretty sight. I hear children screaming and they’re aren't even any children around me. Plays are nothing but the messy aftermath of beautiful, pink, pristine ideas that seep gloriousness from every pore. Ideas for plays sparkle and stand out from the crowd. They whisper genius to you and you believe them. Plays, on the other hand, are black, stinking messes of things that whimper in the corner, refusing to show their ugly bruised faces to the world. They are like those girls that keep going back to the boys that hit them. And they smell. Plays smell like prawn shells left in the bin on hot days. Rancid seafood. That is the smell of plays. Tell me I'm wrong people. Tell me I'm wrong. So the idea for the play was exciting, but not as exciting as this. I got the idea for the play at the exact same spot I got the idea for New Light Shine. SHUT. UP. You know what this means right? Yes, Virginia, there is a muse. And it's an ugly-ass brown sculpture that makes no discernible sense as a piece of art and probably cost the GDP of a not-so-small African nature to commission. But it's mine and forevermore it's going to be the well from which I dip from. Seriously, I'm filling out petitions and contacting badly named government agencies so we can get this thing rubber-stamped as a national treasure. After that, I want guards protecting it around the clock from the uncreative riff-raff (read: lawyers) who put their stinking bodies all over it as they wile away their 10 minute lunch breaks talking about incomprehensible things like stock portfolios. And truffle oil. Also, please do not be alarmed if you happen to walk past the corner of Burke and William Street in Melbourne and you see a playwright hugging an ugly-ass brown sculpture and pleading with it to give her the ideas. No. Just keep walking …

New Light Shine

So, many moons ago, I sat down and wrote a play. Then I rewrote it. Then I rewrote it again. And again. And a bit more after that. Then I sent it off to the other side of the world. Eight months later, early on a Tuesday morning I got a phone call from John Donatich telling me that my little play had won the Yale Drama Series Award. That was enough. They didn't have to fly me to New York, rehearse my play, throw me a party, make John Guare hug me (he may have done that by himself) and then publish my play. That's right. It's getting published. In September. I know. So long to wait. What are you going to do? Oh wait, I have the answer. You can go here and pre-order me. You only have 152 days to wait. I suggest you use this time to write your own play and get it into the Yale Drama Series Award by August 15^th.

Website

After flaffing around for a year and a day on all things not necessary to being a playwright, like writing plays, I've finally got my website up and running. I know. Could you be more excited? Could you? Shut up. No one wants to hear the 6.000 ways you could be more excited. Rude.

Anyway, here it is … www.shannonmurdoch.com.au

And look, I'm smiling in it. How can you not love me? Really, I don't want to hear.

Still here

Good god, has it really been this long since I've blogged? I know. You are all used to it by now. I'm fickle. Sometimes I love you, at least a couple of times a week and then I'm all, no, don't want you, don't care, sure, you're dying on my doorstep but I'm trying to finish this scene and actually I think it's quite rude that you are dying in my writing time. I admire those people that can find something interesting to post about every day. They are all like 'Look at this juice I just bought!' and I do and I think 'Self, drink more juice'. But then I make more coffee in my 'Keep calm and stop carrying on' mug and get on with staring out the window. Maybe I should do a series of 'What I thought when I stared out the window today'. Hey … GENIUS!