If you don’t know already, I began this blog a year ago intending to foster my writing career (the only thing close to a career I have at the moment). Intending to be committed to the only thing I really know how to do, I proposed that I would write more and make it available in this public forum—specifically, by writing and posting a new play every week for a year. I had hoped the plays would be topical in nature and written in response to the current state of the world or, failing that, my life. At the crux of the plan: a method by which I would write more—opting for quantity over quality. If you care to delve into the archives of this blog, you will discover the ancient ruins of this project—with its artifacts preserved forever in the depths of the Internet.
Failing that, I revamped the blog this past fall with a different mission statement (that is, no mission statement), but the same purpose: to write more. With no limits, except my own interests and time to write, I should have had no trouble meeting this goal. What resulted was me bragging about hanging out in New York City every day, showing off the awesome food I make, or going on about bands you’ve never heard of—you know, the kinds of pretentious crap that make people hate personal blogs. Now, I do not mourn the death of blogging, just this one. Just as I feel a writer is an active noun, I feel a blog must also be active—dormancy suits neither. So, I’m writing this to satisfy both.
Now, my uncle has a
blog (and freakin’ new
website!) about his artistic and professional efforts as a children’s book author/illustrator. Since he spends most of his day drawing at a desk, he has lots of time to think. Too much. And every week or so, he spews out hundreds of words concerning his process, or the direction of his latest project, or new ways of distracting himself from that project. He has work to do, time to think, and thus something to say about that work on his blog. Reminding me that I had not posted anything on my blog over a month, he suggested that I discuss my writing process, since I am currently writing a play—and since playwriting was the original intent of the blog. As I recall, I dismissed him and his idea with a hearty, condescending guffaw and then stumbled to my room drunk on homemade limoncello only to fall asleep across my bed with a guitar on my chest, and a blank Word document on my laptop. Does that provide any insight into my process? Or, at the very least, the glamorous life of the writer? No? I’m not surprised. Let’s see if I can’t actually put a word or two on that screen.
The dilemma with this project, besides my perpetual battle with sitting down and actually writing it, is that I’m trying to graft on the conclusion to a play I began a year ago. Thus I’m trying to inject it with a different sense of theme and meaning, from the perspective of a me with a year’s worth of experience since I began. Actually, now that I see it written out here, that’s a pretty lame excuse, and not even a very truthful one. Because, really, what have I experienced over the last year that would actually impact me to the extent that it would leave an impression on my writing? Everything, one might say—a lit professor who didn’t know me that well, for instance. Or nothing, as a cynical observer of my life would say. The truth, obviously, lies between those extremes. And it’s my job to explore that region through writing, since that is the only productive way I know how. And if I actually keep positive and focused long enough, that exploration might just result in a finished work.
