Week Three

Weekly update

Well, this week was tough. Tough with a capital T. In fact, TOUGH will all capitals. There, I said it. But I survived and I did everything on my dailly lists and weekly lists EXCEPT take photos. I'm reallly struggling with taking a photo every day.

The 'take a photo a day' thing came from the fact that I never owned a camera, HATED having my photo taken and generally broke out into hives whenever one came near me. I also developed this weird theory that if you spent all the time capturing the memory on film, then you wouldn't actully experience the memory. Or something like that. It sounded good when I was drunk. Then I went to New York last year and decided that I had to have a camera if I went to New York. What? I was going to come home and talk about how good Times Square was? I don't think so. Talk is cheap. A picture tells a thousand words. Pick your metaphor. Pictures are good. So I bought a camera and I took like a gazillion photos. I've barely looked at them since I got back but I like the fact that they are there. And more importantly, I liked taking photos. So I thought I would get back in the habit of taking photos. Maybe one a day was a bit ambitious. Are there really that many things I want to capture for posteriety? Maybe I need to change it to keep my camera with me at all times so that I can take a photo when I want to. A need to take photos would probably develop into an obsession and I really don't need another one of them. I remember thinking it was a really good idea when I put it on the list. Turns out it is not a good idea, and for the first couple of weeks, all I have done is take pictures of the birds in my backyard. BORING!

I'm going to have to rethink this one.

In brighter news, and trust me, there wasn't much of that this week, I did cross off my "get a play produced in another country" and I started a new day job which mean I will actually have money coming in while trying to pursue this dream of mine but the writing front hasn't exactly been lit by the muses so to speak. I played around with different times to work (early in the morning, at night) even though I know, I KNOW, that writing at night is a fool's errand and if I'm going to do this then I am going to have to get up at 4.00am every morning. EVERY MORNING! Except Sunday, because Dude, even God knew the effects of all work and no play.

I also started a short story which I thought would be a lot further on at this point than it is. But I started it. I wanted to stick it in a drawer and forget about it but I kept going. I'm experimenting with it. I'm putting words on paper. I coudl probably have put more words on the paper but there are words, and they are on paper. Are you getting my message about words and paper? I surely hope so.

So there was that.

I also started brainstorming a new short play that is due next Monday. It's on the theme of "Inns & Outs: Hotel Lobby" which gave me about 25,000 ideas of what to do with such an open theme and none of them came to anything. But I think I'm on the money now. I'm seem to be writing a lot of things where people aren't actually talking to each other. I don't know what that means.

I also 'finished' Act One of New Light Shine and when I say 'finished' I mean that I have put words on paper and they kind of, if you squint a lot and have no judgement, look like Act One of a play. It's going to need a lot of work when I put it together next month into something resembling a play. However, in the grand scheme of things, it actually is sounding a lot better than it did in any of the previous drafts, and there were a lot of previous drafts.

What else for this week?

I seemed to be constantly reading this week. I finished Shutter Island by Denis Lehane, who is surely the greatest crime writer we have. Surely! I don't even like crime fiction and I dig Denis Lehane. I also dig the movies made from his books and I'm sure I am going to love Shutter Island when it hits the big screen. I also read 7 plays and the highlight was rereading The Homecoming by Harold Pinter yesterday. I never used to like Pinter. He always seemed to leave me cold. HOW WRONG WAS I? The man was a genius. GENIUS. There is going to be a lot more Pinter on the menu this year. A lot more. I also read a great screenplay, Mixtape that is from this great website that talks about screenplays that are in development or in production or should be. I can't wait to see Mixtape. It's the kind of screenplay I am hoping to write this year.

That just about sums it up for this week just gone. It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either. Baby steps, baby steps.

Experiment

Well, there were some definite results for the little experiment to see if I could write at night and still get as much done as I did when I get up at the godawful time of 4.00 am.

And the answer is ... NO!

I don't know what happens at night but there is just no time. No time! And there are distractions. People call, the boyfriend wants to do unreasonable things like speak to me, and then he wants to eat. I mean, COME ON!

So, it is back to the 4.00 am starts. Which is going to be hell but I probably just have to harden the fuck up.

New plans

Well, now comes the real test on how to do everything on my gorgeously obese list and still remain relatively sane. I started a new job that will continue for mostly the first half of this year and while it will bring some much needed cash to my barely breathing bank account, it will take many important hours away from my day.

Yesterday, the first day, I woke up at 4.00 am and worked till about 7.00 am. I spent the rest of the day with toothpicks in my eyes to keep myself awake. But that's okay. At least something got done. I didn't get much else done when I got home last night as I watched the minutes tick by until I could reasonably declare stumps and head to bed.

I didn't wake up at 4.00 am this morning. Which may turn out to be folly and I will live to regret it but I thought I would try and see if I could write tonight and then compare notes on which is better. I would like to write at night because 4.00 am is just so awful it makes it all seem like work. Which it is, but it really shouldn't feel like it.

So that is the plan for today. Work tonight, see if what I do tonight is any better than what I did yesterday and then repeat until finished.

Cross, cross, tick

As of 5.00 am this morning, I get to cross another thing off my list.

82. Have a play produced in a country I haven’t had a play produced in

Done.

Just found out I am having a play produced in Toronto, Canada, which is the first time my words have hit the maple leaf country.

Excitement, excitement!

Time to break out the champagne and comply with

97. Celebrate all successes, no matter how small

and somehow also comply with

105. Limit my drinking

This is all very tough.

New items on the list

Yesterday, I added 5 new things to the list:

112. Rewrite short play
113. Rewrite short play
114. Rewrite short play
115. Rewrite short play
116. Rewrite short play

Alright, I put the same thing five times but if you saw the massive moutain of half-drafts of short plays that I have, you would have put it down 5 times as well.

Part of the aim of this year is to claear the decks this year, take all that wonderful writing I have done that now sits in folders somewhere and turn it into actual plays. Cause, dah, that's what my job is supposed to be ... isn't it?

Word of the Week

Number 48 (new word every week) was a touch hard this week. There was nothing in what I read that jumped out of me and said “You don’t know me” but in the general throw of things there were two words that caught my attention:

1. Invictus – which is the name of the new Clint Eastwood film that I CAN’T WAIT to go and see when it opens later this week. I should know this having studied Latin a long time ago. Well, at least I knew it was Latin. But a quick trip to the Latin dictionary solved the mystery.

Invictus – unbeaten, unconquerable.

2. Lackadaisical – this is a word I know but don’t know. I guess the word itself gives it away. Lacking something. But I heard a woman use it in the pub the other night and I thought ‘Is she using that correctly?’. Turns out she was, so kudos to her for being half-tanked and pulling out the big words.

Lackadaisical – unenthusiastic, listless, idle. 2. Feebly sentimental and affected.

Who said pubs were a waste of time?

Week Two Update

I had somewhat of a free pass as this week was nine days long. HOW WONDERFUL, I hear you all say. Where do we sign up for this marvellous invention that is a nine day week? Well, if I could figure that out, I’d be in the Bahamas by now with a young, virile man that didn’t speak a lot of English. But I digress. As the new year started on a Friday, the first week was Friday to Friday. But it’s easier for all concerned, namely me, to have the week run from Monday to Sunday, hence this week was nine days long. Lucky me.

However, I didn’t get much achieved on either Monday or Tuesday as there was a heatwave here in Melbourne and brain turned to mush, only computing things like ‘We need more icy poles’ and ‘God, I don’t think I have ever been hotter in my ENTIRE LIFE’. So there wasn’t much in the way of work achieved in those two days.
But here are some of the things that I achieved, or am working towards achieving:

11. Finish a full-length play
I have been hard, hard, hard at work on rewriting a full-length play of mine New Light Shine. This is about draft 948 but who’s counting? But I think this is the money draft, as we say in the playwriting business. Well, we don’t actually, or some might, but I do think I’m on the money with this. The copious drafts had only served to completely complicate what is actually a very simple story. So I’ve stripped it back as much as I can and begun from that point.

I’m trying to write and finish six full-length plays this year. I know. CRAZY. But that means that I need to finish a play every two months. January and February is New Light Shine.

25. Write a short story
Would you like to know how long it has been since I have written a short story? A LONG TIME! But this year I am going to write 5. CRAZY CRAZY! I started my first one last night. It’s about a young woman that mistakes sex for love and is trying to learn the meaning of both. It’s a first draft, so it’s best just to keep going with it and not talk too much about it until I actually get something onto a page.

80. Find a new day job
Because if I have to deal with many more lawyers I’m going to go postal on all of them. Seriously. Kickstarted the search on Friday with an application to work as a writer of sorts at state parliament.

2. Read 100 novels
I’m not quite sure when this became a good idea and made it’s way onto the list, even though it is a great idea. 100 novels. How wonderful. That means 2 novels a week, and while I’m a voracious reader, 2 novels a week on top of everything else is a huge ask. Anyway, as mentioned before, I started with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel which was not only long, but very, very dense. Don’t let that put you off though. It is quite marvellous. But I’m now onto number 4 and so catching up, catching up.

I get the feeling that a lot of this year is going to be catching up.

Back to Basics

So, it's been a tough couple of days. I'm blaming the heat on the lack of actual work down but maybe the heat is only partly to blame. Maybe it is just me, and my tendency to want to take the laziest path possible. And sitting on the couch watching 30 Rock seems like a much better option than sitting at my desk and doing some actual work. It sometimes just feels too hard. And while I sit on the couch, the voice of doubt starts to creep in, getting louder and louder until very very quickly, it all looks a bit hopeless. Actually quite a bit more than a bit. And then it all crumbles to pieces.

Thank god I started this list. It's a constant reminder that motivation and achievement are hard won battles that need constant attention.

So, the first two days of the week were pretty much a write-off except for the writer's residency application but I got back on the writing horse this morning and am working my little heart out on the enxt draft of a full-length play New Light Shine and am starting to make some real progress on it. I hope to keep working on it for the rest of the week and have a whole chunk of it done by the end of the week.

It looks like I'm going back to day job work next week so I need to get myself prepared before the majority of my hours is taken over by soul-sucking tasks. Oh, the humanity.

Back to the battle.

VICTORY

As I swelter here in the heatwave in Melbourne, I have put down the icy pole for a moment and managed to cross another thing off the list:

Number 69 Apply for a writers residence.

Just finished my application to go to a wonderful place in Connecticut for four weeks. Please, please, pick me.

3 down, 207 to go.

Back to the icy poles

Busy Woman

Busy Woman
Originally uploaded by Beachland Desolation

That is me. Busy, busy, busy.

My to-do list just for today is:

1. First draft of an application for a writer's residency.

2. First draft of an application for a new day job.

3. Scene Two of New Light Shine

4. First draft of a short story.

5. Blogging.

Blink twice and you'll miss me today. I'm THAT busy.