Finishing

Is it harder to finish a writing project or begin a writing project?

This may be one of those chicken-and-egg questions, or sheerly a matter of temperament; but today fellow River Writer Andrew Kaplan and I were discussing this issue, and we both came down heavily on the hell-of-finishing side of the debate.

How many of us have half-written stories, novels, poems, screenplays, scripts, and songs hanging around? (Why, I believe I have at least one of each - well, I'm not sure I ever got past a treatment on the screenplay front.) Some members of River Writers still fondly recall my unfinished somewhat reptilian fantasy swashbuckler that has yet to get past page 50. There are at least seven short stories in various states of completion - or incompletion - and then there is my current musical theater project, which is having a little trouble getting through the second act.

It's not that I can't ever finish things. I've finished short stories that got published, opera and music theater pieces that got produced, articles, reviews, etc. etc. But. But. Sometimes it doesn't happen; sometimes work gets lost or dropped or put aside. And sometimes - as yesterday - it suddenly occurs to me that I am more than two-thirds of the way through my new project - my novel - and a wave of - terror is too big a word for it - I suppose anxiety will have to do - a wave, or at least a current, of anxiety hits me. Finishing the novel seems too final, too scary, and not nearly as far off as it was 200 pages ago. And so my writing hours get postponed from morning to evening, and suddenly it is now or a whole day will be lost, and I force myself to sit down at the computer and promise I will let myself get up after a paragraph if I really, really can't do it.

But - because the Muses were full of mercy yesterday - I didn't get up after a paragraph, time disappeared as soon I got got back into the story, and several hours passed quickly. A few more pages made their appearance, bringing me closer to The End. And I once more learned the lesson we all know, really, that nothing happens unless you sit down and allow it to happen. But only a writer or another artist knows how great the distance is between standing and staring down at your desk, and actually sitting down to create. You could drive from New York to Miami, and it would seem short compared to the time it takes to get from the edge of your desk to sitting yourself firmly in that chair.

We all have to make that long-distance journey, every time we sit down to write. It's the distance between dreaming and doing, and no one can make it easy for us. But if we're sure to pack plenty of coffee and water, and check in with friends along the way, we can usually manage the trip, no matter how protracted it becomes. And when we get there, our characters will be waiting to greet us. They may complain a little about how long we've been away, but in the end they're as happy to see us as we are to see them.

Artist and Writers Collaboration - IAF Auction

Interfictions Auction – Call to Artists

We thought you might like to know that The Interstitial Arts Foundation has just announced the 2009 Interfictions Auction to benefit the IAF and the Interfictions anthology series of new interstitial fiction.

They are inviting artists, crafters, jewelers, musicians, designers, in fact anyone who loves to create art to come and be inspired by the stories of Interfictions, and bringing your creativity, your boundary-breaking creations, and your really cool stuff!

They are inviting artists to create unique portable and wearable art, based on short stories from the exciting new anthology, Interfictions 2 , or from the first volume. It’s a unique opportunity for artists to get a sneak peek at the forthcoming anthology and to put their talent to good use for this year’s fundraiser, which will go live concurrent with the publication of Interfictions 2 in November, 2009.

The only limitation is that donated pieces must be easily worn or carried: it could be jewelry, bags, scarves, small paintings, clothing, calligraphy . . . even songs! The key is to think small and/or portable. Each piece of art must be directly inspired by an Interfictions story. Check out the Interfictions 2 Auctions FAQ for more ideas and information.

This is a chance for a unique collaboration between writers and artists, a platform for a dialogue between creators in different mediums, meeting at the conjunction of words and art - and bringing together a community of people who refuse to be categorized. Please help us to fund another year of art and words in the interstices of vision, ranging outside the narrow limits of genre limitation to create something new for all.

To learn more about the auction, how you can help to contribute your art, and to find a story from Interfictions 2 to inspire you, please go to the Interfictions Auction Call to Artists web page.

When's your next play being produced?

Playwrights dread being asked when our next play is being produced--because, although most of the factors leading to an actual production of one of our plays are beyond our control, we feel like a failure if we admit the truth. On the other hand, lying isn't really an option--unless you're from the trying-to-pass-off-fiction-as memoir school of writing. So we usually mumble something along the lines of the following--"Oh, I'm working on several things at the moment and I've been sending them around, so you never know, heh, heh." Unfortunately, that kind of vagueness makes it sound like we're not really much of a writer--like maybe we've given it up--or maybe it's never been much more than a hobby anyway. Yet the truth is usually so much richer than people may realize--but they probably don't want to hear the details anyway.

So with that as an introductory apologia of sorts, here's what in fact I've been up to with my writing lately. At the moment I'm actively working on four plays and one story. I should first of all mention (which I haven't yet mentioned in this journal), that I was recently accepted into the Turtle Shell Productions Playwrights' Platform. This is a playwrights' group affiliated with a theater troupe. The main activity of the group is to have the playwrights' work read aloud by the actors and then critiqued by the other playwrights and the actors. We meet twice a month. So far, I've attended three meetings and have presented excerpts from my unproduced full-length play, All in the Faculty. The fourth of these excerpts will be presented at the next meeting, leaving just one more excerpt before the entire play will have been presented. (This play is a tale of academia, based very, very loosely on my experiences as a professor at a liberal arts college in upstate New York many years ago. The play is based on an unpublished novel I wrote in 2001 called, The Academy.) It turns out that participation in this group requires a tremendous amount of work, because in addition to having to round up actors for each session, you find yourself working furiously on revisions reflecting input you received from the previous session in time for the next meeting. And the very good news is that, so far, I've found this process to be a great boon to my writing. This play, which has been sitting ignored in my computer for some time (not counting the occasional rejection letter it generates--if it generates any response at all--when I send it someplace) is being transformed into a much better play right before my eyes. And I think this is the secret to playwriting. You can't just do it in isolation, like fiction writing. It HAS to be SEEN in some guise or other and reacted to. That's the only way you can know what works and what doesn't. Anyway, so that should be enough good news for anyone who wonders what I've been up to.

But wait, there's more. The other 3 plays I mentioned include Miss Peddy and Her Charge--a play in two scenes for one actor. I'm writing this for a friend who is looking for a one-woman play to perform. I've read most of it to my writers group--The River Writers of Manhattan--and their input has been very helpful. I don't know if my friend will end up using it or not, but at least I'll have a one-woman script ready to offer up if anyone ever asks me for one. I'm also working on Museum Piece--a 3-character play (in a somewhat experimental format)--about different people's experience visiting an art museum one afternoon. Finally, I'm also working on Table Manners, a full-length play I described in my last journal entry which was inspired by my recent trip to Buenos Aires. (The title is the same as that of one of my short plays--but I intend to incorporate that play into this new, longer one.)

But wait, there's still more. On the fiction front, I finished and have begun submitting a short story called, The Church. This was my third crack (with the help of the River Writers) at this tale of healthy agnosticism. I hope I got it right this time. And I've recently begun a story that is a short story, not a play, but experiments with a dialogue format similar to the one used by Manuel Puig in his novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman.

So the next time someone asks me what's being produced, I can either admit that there are no productions on the horizon at the moment, confess that nothing whatsoever has in fact been produced or even read publicly since last June (when Couple of the Century was presented at DUTF at the Cherry Lane), and then break down and cry. Or launch into the long answer I've presented above. Most likely, however, I'll simply mumble something like, "Well I'm working on several things and sending plays around, so you never know..."

Spring at Last

Spring really did come to River Writers last Friday. Everyone had new work - it's been a while since we were all so productive in one week - and it was all good work. Bill had the second act of his new play, a one woman show which will delight actresses of a certain age, who very seldom get such fabulous roles. Andrew had a new installment of a story which has been in progress for some time, in which he explored the emerging identity mystery at its center. Claudia had a first draft of a meaty new poem which took a very unique point of view. Hilary responded to the workshop's demand for more with another installment of her memoir. And I actually managed to produce five new pages of my own short story.

Sometimes it does seem like the stars fall into alignment, and maybe we shouldn't ask why. But of course, being writers, it's our job to ask why, all of a sudden, following a month in which we hadn't had any particularly extensive contact, we all suddenly produced new work. Maybe we all just needed a little more sunshine. But it might be an interesting trail to follow - do we always write more in the spring? Are January and February just universally depressing? Is there such a thing as Seasonal Writing Disorder? If we all moved to Cancun for the winter would our word totals rise? And, most importantly, are there any generous billionaires out there who would care to subsidize the experiment?

Table Manners in Buenos Aires

Trips can be a wonderful source of inspiration for a playwright. Out of my trip to Mexico City last year came my play, The Best Place I’ve Ever Lived. My trip to Argentina last month inspired me a little differently. Sitting at a cafe (or perhaps more of a lunch restaurant) in Buenos Aires during a rainstorm one afternoon, I couldn’t help watching an older woman having a cup of coffee with a much younger, but bored, woman--her daughter, perhaps? I don't know why the woman fascinated me--her glasses? her old-fashioned hairdo? her judgmental expressions? -- but she did. As I continued to stare at them, I couldn’t help wondering about--and composing--their back story. Who were these people? Why were they here, and what were they doing? What made them the way they appeared to be? I felt compelled to write something about them--especially the older woman. 

Then I remembered that I came up with the idea for my short play, Table Manners, in the same way--staring at some oddly-behaving people in a restaurant in Manhattan. Throughout my stay in Buenos Aires, I kept seeing people in restaurants whose back stories I wondered about. Before you knew it, I had come up with ideas for several such short plays or vignettes and eventually tied them all together into the idea of a play consisting of a series of such stories--in cities around the world. I still like the name Table Manners and think that’s what this longer, episodic play should be called, too. I’ll just have to consider how to avoid confusion with the shorter play with the same title.

Six Days Until Spring

It's been a long, cold, snowy winter, and I can't say it's been quite as productive creatively as I wish it had been. For some reason, I haven't been finishing the stories I've started, which is a bit of a relapse back to an earlier mindset of almost a decade ago, when most of my stories sat around half-finished. I was on a short story tear for about five years, getting most of them done and published. Then I began a novel, now I'm 2/3 of the way through the novel and suddenly I've produced the first five pages of three short stories.

This may be all back to fear of finishing the novel, or it may be that spring is coming and ideas are bubbling up, and I'll get back to the stories and/or the novel during the (rapidly approaching) warmer months. Or, hey, it could be the collapse of the Dow (but wait, isn't that rising again?) or the impending mayoral elections (although, who am I kidding? I'm voting for Bloomberg).

Or more likely it's all the energy I've been putting into my nonfiction lately. Although I would vigorously scold any of my coaching clients who said so of their own work, I probably don't think of my nonfiction as requiring the same creativity as my fiction. There must be some unacknowledged scale in the back of my mind, with fiction, drama, and the odd libretto or song lyric on one end and nonfiction of all kinds on the other. This probably requires some rigorous examination and revisiting - but I'm much too tired after this weary winter to take it up right now. As soon as I see a daffodil somewhere, maybe I can start thinking about it.

44 Days Until Spring

On my Google Home Page, I have a countdown to Spring. I started this a few years ago, and, to my amusement, found when I checked this year that I always start it around the same day: January 23rd. I suppose that is the moment when the true desolation of January has really set in. After weeks of horribly cold weather, after surviving the holidays and New Year Celebrations, after the nice brief break of Martin Luther King Day, the truth must finally be faced: it's cold. It's dark. The nights are still way too long. And, inevitably, sitting down to write is a struggle amidst all this darkness and gloom.

I'm always of two minds about this. Is it better to just give in, and spent the worst parts of winter reading more than writing? Or perhaps sleeping, gathering strength for the longer days that must be coming? Or should writers Buckle Down, force themselves to honor their schedule, write against their mood and their inclination?

This month, I've taken a novel approach. I can't make myself write much, when I sit down, but I am for some reason suddenly able to submit. And for some even more obscure reason, I seem to be submitting across the board: short stories, plays, nonfiction - things that hadn't ever left my computer or desk are suddenly seeking the light of day - or at least the flourescent light in the office of an agent or editor or dramaturge. I just submitted a play I read at River Writers three years ago (at least!) for the very first time. I just sent a story off to an editor who hasn't heard from me in two years.

I think it must be the equivalent of spring cleaning (something which I am REALLY not ready for yet. ) But I think I'm hoping it is a kind of mental preparation for new growing green things that will come, perhaps, when those 44 days are up. I can but hope.