Last night, I had a deadline.
More accurately, last Monday I had a deadline.
Now, here’s how I generally work on plays:
-IdeaIDEAidea, wouldn’t this be fun? (Four months.)
-Plot Out The Things What Happen. Bonus- Add some dialogue which, while not truly belonging anywhere, is wicked funny. (One month.)
-Freak out about character development and scrap the whole thing. (One month.)
-Realize I am left with nothin’. Bring some people/dialogue back. Write more appropriate-to-nothing funny dialogue. (One month, minus two days.)
-Pull two all-nighters and agree that- yes- some semblance of a story can be handed in/comprehended.
(-Extra credit: Do not work on a play for a full calendar year.)
I didn’t say that this was the best method, just the one that frequently happens.
But the show for which I’m currently poking out my eyes was due last Monday. (And twasn’t presentable. But man, if there wasn’t hilarious, out-of-place dialogue for miles!) And this is my fourth rewrite of a full draft since the end of this summer. And I want this play to be awesome, because the company is awesome and the [tolerant/no, don’t worry, I won’t get used to anything I’m currently seeing in this play] cast is awesome.
And after the latest series of readings, I realized that elements of my storyline weren’t awesome. And some character development left me cold. So this month I scrapped a [frightening] amount of the play and determined to piece new plot and reworked old plot and meld it into some sort of refreshing RoboPlay.
Except.
I have two wicked little kids/an elusive muse/way too late of a bedtime/infrequent bursts of time in which to pen the gloriousness which is my opus. Whine, whine, whine.
So. This weekend. I knew the play was [over]due and that the play needed to be in the hands of the actors sitting in a room on Monday. Whether or not I had showered since the previous Wednesday was immaterial. So I began the process of ramrodding my eyeballs into my laptop, and my ever-exceptional husband P.J. took the majority of kid/house/explosiveness that constitutes a normal weekend.
And it worked. Until it stopped, right around Sunday night. And it wouldn’t come back. The story, that is. Right around cup nine of coffee, the scenes stopped making sense. The characters wouldn’t talk. And it got ugly. Specifically with my tears. Ugly Cry tears. And I got frustrated. Because I had barely touched my children the entire weekend and missed things like movies and snuggles and Good God, they’re going to college in like five minutes and I have nothing to show for an an overcaffeinated face and legs that haven’t moved in hours and may never work again- I hate this chair, who bought this stupid chair?
It got real. Because there were two scenes left to rework and it seemed like something that should be within my reach. And I felt my heart punch out of my chest and I sobbed to P.J. that they’d all have to mime the play, I was an abject failure, I just needed to see my children, and theatre sucks.
P.J. removed my coffee cup from the premises.
And, without giving away too much of his magic, he Keely-Whisperered me. Patiently. He walked me through plot points and even formatting some of my wonky typing “styles.” He gently reminded me that- no, no that isn’t something a normal person would say…could we perhaps have something happen here, instead of the abject nothingness that’s been going down for two pages…let’s add something funny to this comedy, yeah?
This went down for hours. Eventually he went to bed. ‘Cause I couldn’t handle the a.m. carnage that would be two parents with an hour of rest. And I stayed up a little longer because somehow he had freed the plot and the dialogue and things zipped. I wrote like I was being filmed in a montage. And passed out in a fluttery bundle of exhilarated nerves at 3am.
So long story not that much shorter, it worked. Kinda.
Let you know after tonight’s reading.
After I give my husband a three hour-long massage.
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