I'm in that horrible place.
It's muddy and dark.
You somehow find yourself there even though there is never a map. You somehow find yourself there but there is no map and so you can't find your way out.
I'm about two-thirds into this redraft and I'm starting to think that I'm fucking with what I had to start with. Fucking with what was alright and have now made it terrible instead of making it better. Making it good.
This is horrible, and I'm struggling hard to make it stop.
Had my last rehearsal today and no one seemed very concerned that I was not coming back – probably a good sign that it was time to leave. So leave I have and now my focus turns to getting the word out there. I've got about 200 postcards to get out there so getting out is what I will have to do this week and next in between doing the rewrite for Good World. God, it all seems so much and all I want to do is go to bed.
Finished at cash job and it looks like I'll be doing my real job next week which is quite an exciting prospect. So much so I had way too many glasses of wine last night and woke up this morning feeling like crap that had been fermented in a wine cask. AKA not pretty. Anyway I trudged up the road and got myself a plate of bacon and eggs and started a slow recovery.
Have been working feverishly on the new draft of Good World which I am hoping to get done and dusted in the next week. I am going to have to put the wine glass down in order to do it but people have made larger sacrifices in the name of art. In the new draft I haven't screwed with the structure too much but enough for it to be much cleaner and (hopefully shorter). I would like it to be around the 90 minute mark which is about 80 pages à in the current draft it's just over 100 pages. I have also got rid of one of the playing stages which was a bare space that served as various outside locations. I never liked it as it looked like a device I had just thrown in (which basically it was) so I've got rid of it and given the characters one space in which they don't leave until the end. That's all they get so they are just going to have to make do with that! I think it's going to give much more of a claustrophobic air to the whole thing which is exactly what it needs.
There's three characters in it - two sisters and a stranger. I'm going to keep the stranger outside for a lot longer – until the end of Act One. I think (hope) that it is going to build the tension of the whole piece.
So that's what I'm working on at the moment, as well as writing answers to email interview questions and baking brownies for my actors.
Am back at the day job for a few days with nothing much to do all day so working on all the admin stuff I need to do which is cumulating at an alarming rate. Emails here, lists there, blah, blah, blah. But a real office environment seems to suit this except when I have to suddenly shut it all down and do real work. Thankfully, that doesn't happen much.
Things are progressing nicely with the epic which opens in three weeks exactly. This is both an exciting and terrifying prospect. I think the time when we all muck around and try stuff in rehearsals is quickly about to be replaced with "Nice. Now do it like this. Exactly like this." I'm off to my last rehearsal on Sunday where all questions will be answered, the script will be locked down, and then I can go and you know, continue with the emails and the lists. I say this like I hate it. I don't. This is exciting. This is very, very exciting.
For some reason Blogger won't publish photos when I am writing this without signing in. Whatever. Let me tell you if you read the post about the postcard, trust me it is awesome. If you live in Melbourne, you will probably see them around. Come. Come and say hello. Come and buy me a drink. You know I want it, and perhaps even deserve it. Writing plays is hard.
I'm also reading this and feeling very unproductive. I'm off to buy some of her plays. If her blog is anything to go by, this is one woman than needs to be read, produced, loved and adored. And her kid is the cutest thing in the world.
In case you haven't got to it yet, you should all go out and read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It's one of my fave reads of this year.
