Saturday, August 9, 2008

This is Hard to Write,

but I said I'd report on the progress of my play. So here it goes: I've read the play with my husband, read it with an actor Douglas Kenning, and now have gotten it critiqued by my assistant, and they all confirmed this tiny but insistent voice inside of me about certain parts of my play. It needs to be rewritten. I didn't want to cop to it. I wanted to cut to the chase, get it up... But I noticed that all these different points of view often corollated with a slightly nauseous pulling sensation I'd feel inside when I'd read certain sections. So tag I'm it and I have to rewrite. I also realize that part of my reluctance was my nervousness about whether or not I could do it. The play came through me in two weeks. It was a gift. How could I go back and find the inner threads to reweave places where the fabric was stretched too thin? How could I cut some of the imagery without destroying the integrity? Now I know I can do it. I was writing so fast that I skipped stuff. And my listening wasn't quite as acute on some days.

One of the scary parts of being an artist is sometimes you've got to break some eggs and the risk is sometimes you can't put it back together if you don't like it. It's scary, but as the egg breaks I'm going to try and let in the excitement too.

So my plan is to spend the next while listening to my play in as many different ways as I can so I can feel the core and let the core tell me what to write. I find myself taking a deep breath.

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