Notes from Shakespeare's Writing Group

Hey Bill,

Caught Hamlet in the park last night for the sixth time. (Critter had been playing Osric.) Still love the play, but I think there is room for some improvement. Thought you might appreciate some comments:

• The play could use some clarification as to why young Hamlet is not crowned king upon his father's death. Having the king's brother take the thrown in preference to the adult son is peculiar (although not entirely without precedent). A line or two (or, as is the case in this play, a long soliloquy) about the royal ascension practices of Denmark might be helpful.
• It felt really odd that the two men who fight to the death at the end of the play don't actually have a scene together until Act 5. Instead people just talk about how much Hamlet admires Laertes. Consider adding some interaction between the two characters in the first act, before Laertes heads off to France. Remember the old saw: "Show, don't tell"!
  
• Now, the play is already long (I mean really, really long!), so I can understand your resistance to adding the above material. However there is room to cut a few things to make room. For example, that whole bit with Polonius sending Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in Paris does absolutely nothing to advance the plot. Just drop it.
  
• It's really the little things, though, that will streamline the play. The characters are constantly spouting obvious information. For example, you really don't need lines like "Oh, I am slain!" and "Oh, I die..." and "I am poison'd." Just let the actors die. The audience will figure it out.
• One final note. There are a few phrases that sound a bit awkward, and which might be improved by slight rearrangement. For example dangling the verb at the end of "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" sounds clunky. Have you considered "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"?

All in all, a terrific play, though. Keep up the good work!

Notes on Notes on Camp

I saw a fantastic one act play this past weekend. It is called "Leni Riefenstahl vs. the Twentieth Century", and it just debuted at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre's Rhubarb Festival (a Toronto fringe theater festival). In the play Susan Sontag and Leni Riefenstahl discuss politics, cinema, and body fascism while playing chess in Purgatory. The show is punctuated by perfectly executed cabaret musical numbers performed by a four-part male chorus. Following the climax of the show, Susan Sontag plays electric guitar while singing a song based on "Notes on 'Camp'". It's the most brilliant thing I've seen in years...

Here's the blurb for the piece, which really doesn't do it justice:

LENI RIEFENSTAHL VS THE 20TH CENTURY
9:45pm, The Chamber
An Ecce Homo Production
Written and Directed by Alistair Newton
Performed by Kaitlyn Regehr, Evalyn Parry, Noah Henne, Bryce Kulak, Chy Ryan Spain and Matthew Eger
Nazi propagandist and cinematic genius Leni Riefenstahl takes on superstar New York intellectual Susan Sontag in an ideological battle of the wills. It's fascinating fascism vs cultural camp as Ecce Homo looks cock-eyed into the icy stare of the fascist aesthetic; an expressionist cabaret on big themes for troubled times.

*****

I've been fighting this gnawing self-doubt about spending so much time writing a novel that might just turn out to be complete crap. I realized, though, that the amazing power of being the author is that I can actually jump ahead and peek at the ending. I just have to write it first. If it actually is crap, then I have a legitimate reason to quite all this nonsense.

So that's what I've been doing the past week... writing the end of the novel. Funny thing, though... so far it's not crap... or at least not complete crap.

So there. That's my writing advice for the day. Take it for what it's worth.

Really Writing for Real

I've been doing real writing on my novel every day since my PMS rant a few days back. I allow myself to edit the previous days writing for just 15 minutes, and then I move forward with 500 words of new stuff. That pace feels slow, but I've noticed that by limiting how much I write every day to 500 words, the stuff that I'm planning to write simmers in the back of my mind all day long. That makes it easier to face the computer every morning, because I already have an inkling of what I want to write next. I also let myself write whatever comes to mind, with the knowledge that I can cross it out tomorrow if it sounds awful upon rereading it. That has led to some interesting rabbit trails.

One thing that remains intimidating is the sheer scope of this project. So far I have written about 2,100 words, and that represents less than one sentence of my revised plot summary. At that rate I'm looking at roughly a 200,000 word novel. I think that's a gross over-estimate, because the opening chapter is naturally a bit dense with explanatory material. Still, even if I'm off by a factor of two, it's going to take most of a year of writing every single day to get my "second first draft" finished.

Best not to think about it.

(Yeah, I know it's silly, but, yes, I've taken to calling this my second first draft. I have my original draft printed out next to me, and I do use it as a writing prompt, but I'm rewriting everything from scratch.)

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Today's writing totals:
Novel: 500 words
Blog: 275 words
DAILY TOTAL: 775 words

JANUARY RUNNING TOTAL: 12,822/15,500 words = 82% of monthly goal

Morning Word

For the past few days I have been writing first thing in the morning. I have noticed two advantages. First, getting up to write lessens my morning-dread. (Good GOD! how I hate getting up in the morning.) Second, I write rather than poke around on the Internet. Hooray productivity!

Speaking of productivity, I have been testing out WriteRoom, the über-minimalist word processor that BC-S recommended a few postings ago. It truly is a terrific focusing tool, and I fully endorse it. For those who need a sharper kick in the pants, though, check out Dr. Wicked's Write or Die in "kamikaze" mode.)

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Today's writing totals:
Novel: 467 words
Blog: 105 words
DAILY TOTAL: 572 words

DECEMBER RUNNING TOTAL: 2,055/15,500 words

The Beauty of Frankenstein

Today's enormous word count may be considered a bit of a cheat, but it's a productivity trick I figured out during graduate school. What I did was gather all of the plot and character summaries that I have already written and then cut-and-pasted them into a text-heavy outline. I call these things my "Frankenstein" drafts, because they are a monstrous hodge-podge of text from different sources. Technically I wrote almost no new stuff, BUT by taking all of the stuff that I have written and pulling it together in one spot, I get a very rewarding view of how much work I have actually done. Furthermore, when I already know that the draft is ugly, I feel no qualms about visciously editing.

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Today's writing totals:
Novel: 1,752 words
Blog: 126 words
DAILY TOTAL: 1,878 words

NOVEMBER RUNNING TOTAL: 12,804/15,000 words