Edward Albee Article

The New York Times is running an article about Edward Albee that every writer should read. I know he's a playwright and all, but there are some writers that transcend mediums. He's one of them.

One Step Forward...

The New York Times had an awesome article in the Sunday Arts section about the new Broadway production, The Pirate Queen. It dealt with how the producers had to basically revamp the entire show after it got destroyed in a trial run in Chicago before arriving for its opening in New York...only to get...well, killed is too harsh, but perhaps mutilated by the critics works. I mean, let's face it, when words like uninspired and banal are used, in some cases in the same sentence, you may have a problem.

However, I bring all this up because the article focused on the producers and how they coped with having to make drastic changes to the show. Without giving away too much about the screenplay I'm currently working on, it would be fair to say that my premise is almost exactly that, only mine has the added flair that would, you know, make it worth being a movie.

The article was incredibly informative, and as I'm a graduate of the "only do as much research as you need to write a first draft, then do more later if you need to" school, reading it gave me some great things to consider and even a few ideas to immediately address some of my script's issues. Yay!

And yet there's that pesky task, which seems to have dragged out for at least the last month, of finishing my friggin rough draft. I'd been stuck over the weekend, and as most writers know, when you can't move forward, it's because your problem lies behind you. Needless to say, I wrote negative five pages yesterday. At this rate, I should be back to zero by mid-May.

(I'm frustrated. So there.)

Anyway, in tying up a few loose ends, there have been a few Spider-Man 3 reviews popping up here and there, most of them saying the same thing: the plot is stretched incredibly thin, the film seems to drag in places, many of the characters are hardly fleshed out, and yet the action sequences are incredible and at the end, everything is tied up and you feel...satisfied.

Given how ass-tastic X-Men 3 was, I suppose that's better than nothing.

(Of course, rumor has it that Spidey 3 cost almost 300 million dollars! 300 million?? Really? But then again, I saw figures that Sony stockpiled almost $1.6 billion on the first two films, so I guess they can do whatever the hell they want.)

Hopefully we'll have a short comic up by Friday. Expect part 3 of And So It Begins sometime next week.

Happy writing...

Best Scenes From "The Wicker Man"

Because everyone needs to understand that a man in a bear suit punching a woman is never, in any circumstance, anything but downright hilarious.

Happy Birthday Cake Man

It's belated, but we try our best...

Addendum

To piggy-back off DOA's recent post, while the employment opportunities offered by the sites below are a great way to pick up extra cash and work on ever-valuable coverage skills, The League does not recommend actually paying money for feedback. Writer's groups and good screenwriting classes are the best way to get reliable, constructive feedback that is specific, helps you address the things you're struggling with, and that ultimately aids in the process of writing a script.

Hypocritical as it may be, this is still a great find, and writers with any experience writing coverage and giving formal feedback should definitely apply.

Write on...

Page by Page, Final Product

Earlier this week I had a dream I could fly. It was pretty awesome because it was so authentic - I had very little control over it, and would fly up and down way too quickly, all accompanied by my fear of heights. The "controls," if you will, reminded me of the Peter Pan level in Kingdom Hearts, but still....it was one of the best dreams ever.

My girlfriend has proposed that it could be some sort of sign and that I should go running down the street and jumping to see if I can, in fact, fly, but I've yet to do so. If anything superhuman develops, I'll be sure to let you know.

Needless to say, the rest of that day was completely shot - I spent most of the day thinking about the dream and, ultimately, wishing that it was a little (or a lot) more than just that.

I tend to get this way when an ideal situation, or one at least more interesting than a current set of circumstances, comes into light. This affects me in practical and impractical ways, but in regards to my writing, I've noticed that I'm looking forward to a day down the line when rough draft becomes fourth draft becomes the next project because...I don't know what.

I've heard people use a phrase that drives me insane: that they hate writing but love having written. To me, that's the dumbest thing in the world. If you hate writing, then why the hell are you doing it? I bring it up because I want to emphasize that I'm not in that group. I actually really enjoy the physical act of writing. It can be frustrating if what you're producing isn't any good, but in general, it's something I enjoy doing. Hence, that's why I actually, you know, do it.

However, there must be a relationship that purists and sell-outs alike acknowledge but don't ever talk about: that being the relationship between the work and the product. I imagine you don't hear much about it because it's something that has more layers than an onion. I've always found writing to be refreshing because it's always something you can be doing, as opposed to say, acting, where if you're not actively involved in a project well...then you can do some monologues...by yourself...in your room. Anyway.

Being something that takes so much time and, ultimately, so much effort, it seems ridiculous to write anything that you're either not planning on sharing with others, or not trying to sell. I feel like the moment that thought goes through my head, the joy of writing itself diminishes a bit, and yet, I'm not naive enough to think that the finished product...*sigh*...a.k.a. having written, isn't a gigantic part of the process that I am so dearly fond of.

Spinning around in circles, getting way too far ahead of myself, I ultimately come back to the task at hand - that act of writing and all the collaboration involved in rewriting (what else would you call sifting through all those notes but collaboration? Oh, hell? That too.) Progress is slow but steady, and unless they uncover some evidence to the contrary, Rome (to sound far too much like my father) wasn't built in a day.

But I bet if the Romans could fly...I bet they might have gotten close.

My Own Version of the Same Story

*While there is so little to be said about the tragic events at Virginia Tech, my heartfelt prayers and wishes go out to the families and friends of the victims, and the entire VT community.*

(And since there's no way to not awkwardly transition...)


Hey Cake Man, nice title on your last post. Really...gripping.

I would like to give my own take on some of the themes that Cake Man brought up in his last post, namely motivation and discipline. Having been out of school for almost a year and a half more than him, I think I can offer a slightly different perspective and a bit of (probably meaningless) advice.

I double majored at NYU. I came in as a theater (acting, specifically) major, and after the first two years of the program, I suspected that I needed some kind of change seeing as I a). hit the largest wall in the history of man, b). was really, really sick of actors, and c). was really, really sick of acting. I'd taken a playwriting class with Daniel Goldfarb the spring of my second year, and, go figure, I really enjoyed it. I'd never written before that, but I found that I had moderate talent, and when I did the math, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to be paying as much money as I was for a degree with only one major. I took a shot and applied to double major, and I got it. Wee!

Deciding that graduating on time was a high priority, I loaded up in the summers and completed the dramatic writing program in two years. I waver in deciding if this was the best choice. I only skimmed the surface of what the department had to offer (Cake Man, for example, and everyone else in The League at the moment, did the program in the ideal four years), and the truth is that all that work in such a short amount of time left me horribly, horribly burnt out.

While Cake Man mentions that he hasn't written for months, it took me over a year to start writing again following graduation. I was half-heartedly pursuing acting during that time, but I wasn't even remotely motivated to write a thing. Was it just burn out? Did I seriously just need a break? Did I need time to forget everything the department taught me? Had I lost all my confidence?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Because of all of these factors and an overwhelming desire to just experience life for a while instead of trying to create it, I had no stories to tell. This can't be emphasized enough: laziness never came into play. There was just never a moment when I cared to write. It wasn't writer's block because there was nothing to be blocked. The well was dry. The jar was empty. The metaphors were used up.

But by late May of last year, a friend of mine sent me the first bit of a story he wanted to take turns writing, and so I wrote the next few paragraphs...then the next few, then the next few. Before it was all over, he wrote one more tiny paragraph of a story that ended up being almost sixty-five pages long. The story itself was simply awful, but it sparked the creative urge that led me to start writing again.

I don't suspect there was any rhyme or reason to it. The first bit he sent me did play to a lot of themes that were present in all my previous endeavors , so I found it easy to get lost in, but I think that writers have an innate inner clock that will eventually release an urge that can't be ignored.

If one believes this, however, then it's hard to call that motivation. Is it motivation when you're being forced to do something, even if only by some mystical force? Motivation itself is something incredibly personal. The reasons people write, create, make art, tell stories, shoot films are all different and vary from the tangible (money) to the mysterious (an odd mix of love and obligation). I'm no scholar of philosophy or anything, but it would seem that motivation, especially in the context of creating works of art, is closely connected to the ever-changing circumstances in one's life. Sitting on the couch playing video games will probably not beget motivation; however, my Saturday afternoons are not the issue here. On the other hand, my self-mockery seems to have illustrated my point fittingly.

If we piggy-back off the action-begets-motivation corollary, then stimulating those mystic urges to write would, in theory, be closely linked to actually writing. In other words, it demands a sense of discipline. A teacher of mine once said that if you do nothing else, write a page a day. If you do that (assuming you stay on one project), you can finish three screenplays, three plays, or a novel. In a year. It's a trap, too, because there are going to be days when you write more than one page. There will be days when you write 20. The key is forcing yourself to do it, and the key to that is to set the time aside.

In order to snap out of my current state of brain-fog, I've found that setting aside a specific 30 minutes every day to write - no matter how awful the pages turn out - has helped tremendously. It's hard working on computers because they're all connected to the internet and there is SO MUCH GARBAGE out there that seems so interesting, but once the web browser is closed and you actually begin writing, knowing that there is nothing you have to do for that half-hour, suddenly you're turning out half-decent pages that don't make you want to vomit, and suddenly 30 minutes turns to 45, turns into an hour.

And like magic, motivation just happens. As I've lamented, I've become very frustrated with my current script, but after setting aside this time for a week, I've found my motivation. I actually want to write.

The bottom line is that it's all deeply personal. If you feel like you need the time off, then you have to take it. But if you want to avoid it, but can't seem to find yourself to be motivated, set the time aside, and make yourself work. Remove your distractions. If the internet is too appealing, use pen and paper. If people are driving you nuts, go outside and be alone. Once the discipline begets the motivation, the distractions will go away on their own because, frankly, you won't care about anything else.

(So, with a great deal of sincerity...)

Write on...