So I finished Act I yesterday! It's one of those weird, let-downy kind of things, because I had been feeling very very optimistic about things, thinking, "wow! this is really ticking along, for a first draft." Everything was developing quite well, there was some humor, a little bit of emotion, and, of necessity, I had been doing a LOT of editing as I went, trimming every syllable that wasn't absolutely necessary, so it had a lovely, astringent crispness to it that is really not typical of my writing, but which worked beautifully with the early '60s "look and feel" I was going for. But it was all going so well that I felt compelled to end the act on a really strong note, and I think I wanted that so badly that I kind of doomed myself to failure. Which is absolutely fine, obviously, because it's just a first draft, and everything else feels pretty tight, and of course I can fix it. But the main reason I was rushing to wrap it up was that I had promised pages to the composer ages ago and hadn't followed through, and I just didn't want to hold off anymore. And that means someone else is going to be reading it, and he's going to be seeing it in a state I'm not 100% happy with.
ANyway, I made this other decision recently that I want to have a director associated with the project even before we start to write songs, which sounds weird. But I want to do at least one or two readings of just the book before we start thinking about music and lyrics. The whole idea is to make sure the script is really working before proceeding to the next step (it's so much easier to cut/edit/revise dialogue than songs), and I think it makes sense to hear the script read in order to determine that. And I have been forceably restraining myself from e-mailing the director I hope will work with us on that, because I don't want to do anything prematurely.
On the other hand, I at least want to make sure her e-mail address is still good, since I haven't been in touch with her in over a year. So I think I'll wait until I hear back from Bob (the composer), at least acknowledging that he's got the script and hasn't changed his mind, and then e-mail the director and make sure I have the right contact info for her.
Oh, and look! I have updated this blog again, and it's less than four months since my last post!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
So ... anyway.
So, about four months ago I slapped up my first post on this thingerydoo, and haven't been back since.
Surprisingly, this is not actually the result of sloth on my part (or at least, not entirely). I have actually been working on the show, there just hasn't been too much to post about. It's true that about the only thing duller than listening to people talk about their dreams is listening to them talking about their work, and I guess I kind of instinctively don't want to put up blog posts about how today, I typed four new pages and had an interesting insight into one of my characters, because, well. Who cares?
However, there have been a couple of small, actual developments worth noting: First, the composer I wanted to work with has agreed to do it! There's the small drawback that he lives in California and I live in New York, but at this point, that's not even going to be an issue until it's time to do a sample CD, so I'm not exactly sweating that.
The second thing is that I've decided to do this: http://scriptfrenzy.org, and it's kind of lit a small fire under my ass. I've been working a little more dutifully, and am up to about 28 pages of what I hope will eventually be no more than about a 60-page script. That's 60 pages of book, before music and lyrics. The good news is that by that metric, I'm almost halfway done! The bad news is, I'm nowhere near the end of first act, and there really isn't anything that can be cut so far. Which is a little unnerving, and exactly what I was afraid would happen.
The third thing is that I've discovered that the author of one of the books I read as part of my research for this project has a website, and apparently accepts personal e-mail through the site. This may eventually prove very helpful, if she can point me in the direction of some more detailed information regarding a particular aspect of the story that I've been unclear about up to now (gosh, this is so mysterious, isn't it?).
Anyway, at this point I'm thinking I may start visiting this blog a bit more regularly. So, probably I'll be back again some time in June.
Surprisingly, this is not actually the result of sloth on my part (or at least, not entirely). I have actually been working on the show, there just hasn't been too much to post about. It's true that about the only thing duller than listening to people talk about their dreams is listening to them talking about their work, and I guess I kind of instinctively don't want to put up blog posts about how today, I typed four new pages and had an interesting insight into one of my characters, because, well. Who cares?
However, there have been a couple of small, actual developments worth noting: First, the composer I wanted to work with has agreed to do it! There's the small drawback that he lives in California and I live in New York, but at this point, that's not even going to be an issue until it's time to do a sample CD, so I'm not exactly sweating that.
The second thing is that I've decided to do this: http://scriptfrenzy.org, and it's kind of lit a small fire under my ass. I've been working a little more dutifully, and am up to about 28 pages of what I hope will eventually be no more than about a 60-page script. That's 60 pages of book, before music and lyrics. The good news is that by that metric, I'm almost halfway done! The bad news is, I'm nowhere near the end of first act, and there really isn't anything that can be cut so far. Which is a little unnerving, and exactly what I was afraid would happen.
The third thing is that I've discovered that the author of one of the books I read as part of my research for this project has a website, and apparently accepts personal e-mail through the site. This may eventually prove very helpful, if she can point me in the direction of some more detailed information regarding a particular aspect of the story that I've been unclear about up to now (gosh, this is so mysterious, isn't it?).
Anyway, at this point I'm thinking I may start visiting this blog a bit more regularly. So, probably I'll be back again some time in June.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
