This has been such a busy week, and it’s only Wednesday. In my last entry, I mentioned how stressed out I was about having a ten-minute play due Tuesday as well as a completed draft of my full-length due tomorrow. My mid-week mindset is much calmer than how I felt last Friday, when I wasn’t sure how I’d get everything done plus deal with what turned out to be a particularly busy week at work. To make matters worse, I developed a migraine sometime on Friday, and it literally lasted until late-afternoon on Sunday. This happens to me every once in awhile, and it’s probably at least partially triggered by stress. So needless to say, I got no writing done all day Saturday or Sunday morning/afternoon. Luckily, I finally started to feel functional again Sunday around dinnertime, and coffee plus a burst of productivity led me to write twenty pages that night. The downside—I missed the entire Superbowl. But the writing had to get done. And then I wrote another ten pages on Monday night for my ten-minute play. Thirty pages in 24 hours, plus a ten-hour work day.
Tuesday in class I finally got to show my “overheard conversation” exercise, which was the first time something of mine had been read in either class this semester, unless you count the short “play you’ve been avoiding writing” exercise we did on the first day. We’ve been seeing a couple of people’s scenes in class every week since they were due, but we didn’t get to mine until yesterday. I was nervous because I hadn’t looked at it since I printed it out weeks ago. The conversation I had overheard was a brief exchange about a girl who was working on Disney websites, and one thing she mentioned was that her boss kept telling her that the websites needed more “magic.” So for the dramatization, I did this ridiculously over-the-top satire of a Disney boss and his young eager employee whom he feels does not incorporate enough “magic” into her web designs. Complete with a talking Mickey Mouse stuffed animal. It was just something silly I did in an attempt to try out a new style, and I was afraid it would be too “fluffy” of a piece, but the class really liked it. And I got some good ideas on how to take it even further and strengthen the ending. It was funny though, because my professor had been starting off the discussion on every piece by saying, “Well, what was strong about this one?” and, even though I knew she’d been saying that each time, I was so nervous that I actually heard, “Well, what was wrong about this one?” and had this initial moment of “oh no, this one didn’t work out at all.” I felt so much better once I realized I’d misheard her. We didn’t get to all of the ten-minute plays that were due that day, so I’ll be showing that one during our next class.
That positive experience in Tuesday’s class is giving me some encouragement about tomorrow. I’m still really nervous, but it’s nice to have that boost of confidence before heading into my full-length workshop. I spent last night reading through what I’ve written so far on my full-length and making some minor adjustments, and tonight I need to write an ending scene. We’re in the middle of a snowstorm today, so I’m trying to gear myself up for a long night of writing by romanticizing the “curled up on the couch with blankets and a cup of cocoa” angle of it. I’ll write again later this week with an update on how my workshop goes.