rewrite

Finally realizing what should be incredibly elemental-Rewrite!  I bought a playwrighting for dummies book and the craft element is emphasized.    I like the idea of  a practical element.  I usually thirst for doing something creative, but all the creativity (writing words on a page) makes me crave something practical.  I started reading a science book for laymen just because I want some facts that are interesting.  And I hope to find something I can toss into a story.

February

Few things going on.  Unfortunately, none involve an acceptance.  My friend Mike is considering reworking some of the illustrations for our children's book.  He sounds reinvigorated and says he has learned a few tricks since the last batch.  I took over a writer's groups for playwrights, even though to say my experience is limited would be an exaggeration.  I want to keep it going and I will attempt to facilitate.  My other writing group that meets at this cool coffee place near my house gave me some great ideas for rewriting the sample play I gave them.  I felt like a real playwright.  Rewrighting and everything.  The other day I listened to an interview with David Lindsay-Abaire and he says that he is a writing group for many reasons so I'm going to stick with them.

 10 minutes is tough to get a story into and I have read many successful 10 minute plays that appear conflictless.  Oh well.  I'm going to try to rewrite my subway play before the deadline of midnight easter for NYC Playwrights. 

Getting a few rejections lately that have me a little down.  My short play that was accepted I wrote and then a call for submissions came up that fit the play.  The other submissions are happening the other way around.  I am writing to match the specific topic.  I think it is good for me to write this way, but it's different from poetry where I could send out the same poem to 20 different places and someone would publish it.  I should write another long play.  I have learned from my limited experience a few of the things that I did wrong.  Persistence.

Mini success.  Stage Left in Chicago requested my full script after reading the sample of my play GoTo Country.  Up to 6 months to hear back.

The bios are up and tickets available for Pulp Diction/Pulp Sampler in Portland Oregon.  It will be in January of next year and I hope to make the trip.  Looks like a cool theatre.  Linkage below.


http://thepulpstage.weebly.com/pulp-sampler1.html

LinkedIn

I am part  of LinkedIn, although I wasn't sure why.  Today I was sent an email to join a LinkedIn group called book authors and agents.  You have to request to join.  So that's what I did and then I brushed up my profile to include the book publication here at Punkin House Press, my poety journal publications, play that will be on stage for Pulp Diction next January and I forgot to add my pending children's book.  Probably won't go anywhere, but it's a nice idea and you never know. 

Kid's book

I have a children's book that I am trying to find a published for.  It's called Alphabet Haiku.  The book has a haiku for every letter of the alphabet and an illustration.  The illustrations are done by my friend and political cartoonist Mike Garman.  His political cartoonist style makes for some unique and interesting interpretation.  I think they are great. 

We printed up a packet of 40 booklets sample and are starting to send them out.  It's a crowded market because I think that almost every parent that reads a children's book says to themselves, "I could do this."  But I think we have something different and hopefully it will stand out.

I think I like writing groups.  Its always great to be around people that are interested in the same things that you are.  I'm in a couple groups right now that I recently joined.  One meets at this nice coffee shop that is near me in an area I really like. Liked the group, but they do group writing projects for the purpose of developing writing skills.  I'm all for it, except I only have time to write for myself at this point in my life so I don't want to spend any time working on things that I'm not trying to publish or a specific goal for me.

The other group just started and they are a theatre writing group so exactly what I want.  They have only met once and still decidind upon a place and time to meet.  I offered the above place.  That would be a great start.

I have been focusing on 10 minute plays that are specifically targeted at contests that provided a theme.  Which is great since it gives me a theme.  Its also nice to be able to finish a play while I work on a full length play.  My problem, as silly as it seems is a lack of proof reading before I send in the play. I am so happy to have it completed I am shipping it off with errors that I find a couple of days later.  On the bright side I know what I have to correct.

Cover for 5 Tool Poet

Idea by : Paul Handley
Illustrations and layout by : Stephen A. Colyer
Courtesy of Punkin House, www.punkinhouse.com

Play

Some play success.  I will have a reading of my short play entitled "Best Son" at Pulp Diction III in Portland, Oregon in January 2012.  Very exciting.

My friend finished up his drawings for the alphabet haiku book we are putting together.  We have decided to make booklets out of it (I forget the name of the site we are using) and this is less expensive than printing out each color page and then submitting.  I have a list of submission places for children's books so we should be visiting the PO soon.

Back to work

I finished my 10 minute comedy play and I'm fairly happy with it. I now have 5 short plays and 1 long play circulating for acceptance. I received another email stating that a monologue I have submitted is still under consideration. I choose to view this news positively.

Good new. I have started my 2nd full length play and I am pleased with set up elements. Themes include racism and mental health. Fun, fun.

this/that

Still working on my 10 minute comedy play. Hearing lots about pods lately and how it is being iinundated with comedians. Also had the fringe festival here in boulder which has lots of monologes (monolinguists?). I am interested in possbile putting together a monologue and seeing where it goes. I reading swimming to cambodia right now and have it on my netflix list so I will see if it seems to be a good thing for me or just a diversion when I should focus on the plays.

revived

2 vacations later I feel revived and ready to write. I submitted my technophobe play on the sponsor's site. They have previously stated that once I signed up I would get mucho reminders and I didn't receive any, which makes me suspect somehow their email isn't getting by my span filter. That will be my excuse if I don't hear from them about this submission.

I'm working on a another 10 minute play that is fun to do. Its suppose to be comedy and I like the way its coming together so far.

hey

My first postive response to GoTo Country. A NY theatre liked my sample and asked for the entire manuscript. Makes me feel a little better since I thought my sample was failry representative of the whole thing.

I'm getting close to finishing with my 10 pager about technophobes that is due 7/31/11. Later.

this that

I received a response to my book proposal entitled Fake Quotes, Falsely Attributed. This was about the 4th or 5th from an editor that really liked the idea, but for whatever reason wouldn't publish. He suggested a blog akin to Shit My Father Said, which my wife had suggested. I don't know.

I'm going on vacation tomorrow. I'm a little burned out, but I still want to write. It's more the body shutting down on me.

more GoTo

I just finished extending my play GoTo Country to 60 pages which seems about the minimum for what can be considered a full length play. I will probably work on editing it some more and wait at least a couple of weeks to make the play 75 pages. I'm burnt out on it now and am considering taking chucks of my unpublishable book about military school and translating to a play.

play format

I'm working on expanding my longish play. I was at 43 pages including title page and character/scene page. I think I have to a have at least 60 pages to submit to a lot of places that want a full length play. Apparently a page is supposed to equal a minute. There is a lot of conflicting format info out there. Some of it talk about indenting the left side so that it can be bound, others the speaker should be listed in the middle of the page or the side, etc... . I have looked at many plays and their is mucho variation. I'm also having trouble have the page number start at 1 where the dialogue starts. When I figured that out I had to split the doc into 2 sections and now I can't figure out how to eliminate the pagination on the first couple of pages.

more stuff

I recently finished a monologue called Best Son about a father-son con men team. There are a couple of sites that collect monologues and then people can peruse the site and pay a fee to use it.

I was thinking that my next project should be full length play, but I have opted to write to the specs of reqeusted submissions. I would like to get a track record of some readings and performances and the theory is that if there is a greater likelihood of an acceptance if you are giving somebody exactly what they want.