Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A little free time is great

I haven't posted for a bit because my wife and I were busy planning and packing for our 30th wedding anniversary trip -- eight chiefly dry days in Ireland, including Dublin, Waterford, Galway and the Connemara peninsula. Fun trip, didn't hit anybody in the rental car, lots of pints of ale and a few good pub visits. Though Ireland has less by way of pubs and more that are like a pub but presented as a bar/restaurant.

And as I have found before, sometimes a few days away from a computer and other chores is good for the brain. By the time I got on the plane back from Dublin to Philadelphia (7.25 hours flight time), I had an idea for a 10-minute play, and by the time I got off the plane, the first draft was completed. It got typed in once back at home, and read/timed, and added to slightly. Now it is more or less finished. Love it when things go easily!

I had determined already that no script was doing me any good gathering dust -- and then once everything I had "finished" was sent out somewhere, I quickly decided that I needed MORE material to take advantage of the various contests/competitions out there in playwright world. So now working on getting that reading moving on "The Good Life," and have a new 10-minute script I can get in the works somewhere. It almost feels like progress!

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

And we move on

Well, as I've probably already stated, writing is a challenge in itself, and then there's the joy of trying to do something with it when it's done. Unfortunately, I received the news yesterday that the county Arts Council once again decided not to give me a grant to produce my first play. Too bad. I'm going to be interested in seeing who DID get the grants, after all the glad-talk that encouraged me to submit again and, in effect, put that script in limbo for another very long six months. If once again, there was no literary grant at all, I might just be, um, lightly perturbed. [Addendum: as it turns out, I was not the only literary grant request, but once again, the "panel" failed to give ANY support to a literary project.]

But if nothing else, it put me in action to research and continue pushing the finished scripts out the door to other potential readings/productions/reviews locations and gather from online sources additional possible future outlets. I had actually mailed "Conversations" to one new play contest several days ago, and "Faith" went in the mail to another location late last night. Even negative responses can, I guess, be a form of inspiration.

Meanwhile, I started working towards a private reading of "The Good Life" and maybe, after other work gets done, I'll be back to the new play as well. There seem to be a fair number of theater company new play-reading ops out there. Now I just need additional material if this concept is ever going to become a reality.