stuff

I have started to submit my play GoTo Country to various theatres throughout the country. I'm starting to write a one act play based upon experiences working on a fishing boat in Alaska. My bad job history is an asset in writing. I stopped trying to create short stories out of acts of my play. They are just so different and I'm just in playwriting mode and don't have the will to try to to as well as I should with writing a short story. There are a few places that accept plays for publication, so I have entitled acts in the play and submitted them.

plays

Maybe the best thing about trying to write plays is reading a lot of great plays. I just read Dead Man's Cell Phone and Gods of Carnage. I've also started plays by Donald Margules and Neil Labutte and another one entitled Copenhagen. I'm incredibly impressed by Sarah Ruhl...Amazing technique.

class

Went to my first playwriting class. It was a good experience and I look forward to more. I was running late from taking our new dog to the vet that we got from the dumb friend's league. We want to be a one car family and so every once in a while that causes some inconvenience. Brought my laptop-no need. We sit around a big table and talk, which I am very comfortable with being a grad student for so freaking long. Read a really excellent one act play. Seems like interesting people in the group and the teacher is really good-he can roll with just about any kind in input and sounds like theatre has been his life. My stuff is pretty raw, so reactions could be fun. I took about 2 weeks off from writing and feel renewed. I want to write and feel like I dont have enough time again. Tell you about a project I am working on besides the play next time or sometime.

things

My self-published book Fake Quotes False Attributions is now available on Amazon as a soft cover book and a Kindle electronic version. I have a couple of the printings and I think I will take them to the bookstores in my area and see if they will let me place them on their shelves. I put links to Kindle and Amazon and Punkin House Press on my facebook. I am also contacting the journals where I had poems published and they are included in the acknowledgments to let them know I have a book coming out with Punkin House. As expected, some publishers don't respond and others are very enthusisatic and everything in between.

I'm taking a bit of a writing break and working on promotion. I have a children's book called Alphabet Haiku that I wrote and illustrations by my friend Mike Garman that I am trying to find a publisher for and I am sending out one act portions of my play to various theatres. I start a playwright class in about a week and a half so I will go full bore on the play until the end of the class-6weeks. That's the plan.

writing group

I went to a meeting of my writing group the other day and we did something I have never done at a writing group meeting-write! I wrote an ending to my play that upon a reread feels a little tacked on, but I think I have a core I can work with. Good Meet...

class

I signed up for a playwrighting class and that is way to expensive, but my wife gave me a membership for Valentine's Day so a bit cheaper. I had to use the membership didn't I? The organizatiion is called Lighthouse which sounds to me like a halfway house, but the instructors seem very qualified and I don't have any formal training at all writing a play so this should help. I have a nearly complete play and it should be interesting if I need to make some minor adjustments or I am told to trash the whole thing or something close to it.

reading

Writing poetry was a great way to find out about poets. I get inspired by reading other works and I think I learn that way too. Right now I'm trying to write a play and I'm finding some excellent playwrights and plays. I loved Mamet and rereading and reading new stuff by him. Martin Mcdonagh is fantastic and so is Tracy Letts.

I am finding some common themes in plays. Madness seem to be a good item to toss into a play. An unlike film, a downbeat ending appears to be the way to go.