It feels like I’ve been working on this fucking play forever.  I don’t remember when I started actually writing it.  It’s only been maybe a few months now, not that long really, but that doesn’t change how it feels.  I don’t know.  I’m pretty sure people think I’m lying about writing a play because nobody but Ashley has seen any of it, and even she has seen only bits and pieces, much of which I’ve probably destroyed since then.  Maybe it’s because I was thinking about it for so long before I ever committed words to paper that it seems like it’s been such a goddamn eternity.  I don’t mean it like this is the play that I was born to write and once I’ve written it I’ll be able to leave this life with a smile on my face, it’s not like that.  Fuck that.  If I ever write that play, my god.  But this one’s not that one.  It’s a pretty simple play really.  The story, the situations, the people, nothing about it is all that grand or epic or complex, but goddam, not one step of it has been at all easy.  Nothing effortless about it.  So much thinking and analyzing and agonizing and maybe if I just put on a different CD or do I want coffee or a glass of wine and then maybe I can finish a scene.  Maybe.  There are times, wonderful moments where the act of writing comes with zero effort.  It just goddam happens, like the devil is whispering the words into your ear at just the right pace for you to keep up and get them down without too many typos and always know what the next few words are and what’s going to happen next and after that and after that.  But not with this play, not very often.  It seems like it should be like that all the time, or at least most of the time, and when it’s not like that is when you just wanna toss the whole thing in the shitter.  I’m almost 80 pages in, even after throwing out twice that amount, and I think maybe there will be a first draft sometime soon.  And then…then…well, I don’t know.  Part of me wants to shut this thing down and leave it sitting in a folder on my laptop never to be seen again and just move on to something else.  But I don’t think I’ll do that.  I’ve done that too many times with too many ideas.  I think I’m gonna keep pushing this one on, coughing and sputtering its way to some sort of state of “completion.”  Whatever that means.  Fuck.

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Comments

Julie

2004-03-25T21:49:01.000Z

Really, that sounds horribly, horribly frustrating and I would have given up long ago, and so would most people.  But that makes you a giver-upper.  That’s the thing that makes you a playwright:  finishing.  Okay, that and writing.  And we all know plenty of people who talk about writing and never do.  But you do.  That’s why you are the coolest.  So keep your chin up and keep hacking at it and you’ll finish.  You can do it!  And then we’ll rip it out of your bleeding, blistered hands and put it on stage:)