Well hey
So me...yes...lots of writing recently, and that's awesome. Corri and I have six published pieces now. Two full productions and four pieces in various festivals. That's such a tremendous change for me, as writing scares the crud outta me. Blank page. Sitting there. With it's mocking...and as you write your brain is telling you that you've repeating the same crap that countless writers before you have thought of and probably written better. So that's fun.
I joined a writer's circle to force me to just write without internal edits. I've been trying to write a novel for a few years now, but I keep going away from it because of that very problem. I have the big picture, but the details I keep getting hung up on. So I say yes to other writing projects, where I can play back and forth with my bestie and have FUN writing. Where it's so fluid and easy and right.
I have to remember that the first time we did this it wasn't as fun. Yes, it was ridiculously fun coming up with our show and creating the characters and the eventually performing it every night, but at the beginning? Terror. For me anyway. Second guessing everything on the page as trite OR completely overwriting everything to make sure that there would be no confusion with any scene, or any character, or any damn thing. Wow. There was a lot of exposition. That we fought for. That we insisted we needed.
Until we realized that we didn't. We just had to trust ourselves to tell the story, find our collective voice, and have a great damn time.
We're going into rehearsals for Zombie Broads next Monday. A project that took over 3 years to complete. A project that I'm so much prouder of as writers than anything else we've done. Because, originally we were told 'no'. We submitted it and were rejected. That stung. Hard. Of course there's only three slots a year and competition is always fierce, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it sucked to not get picked. To not take it personally.
We waited six months to go back to the script and rework things before resubmitting again. There was a moment where I thought we wouldn't go back. That 'not getting picked' was a sign that we should shelf it. But, we promised to wait that 6 months to decide and I'm so glad we did. We realized so much about how to simplify overworked scenes without losing the heart. We learned how to not force characters into being leads when they're secondary at best. We learned how to breathe.
I've sat there hearing scores of fierce actors read for us, and then audition for us, and I still pinch myself at how lucky I am to have found this partnership. How much I still can't believe that we created this. Together.
Corri and I have made the choice this time to just be the writer(s) in the room. Wow, Sara. JUST. As if that's less than being in it. HA! Hilarious. It's everything to be able to be the writer in the room.To be able to focus on what is working and what can be tweaked as we go through the rehearsal process. I can't friggin wait. But I bring it up because it's also bittersweet for me. We've written most of our work to perform it. Together. To make each other laugh. In ORDER to make each other laugh. Or cry. Or punch the other one at being so friggin talented it's stupid.
Gonna be a weird ride!
Come see opening. Sept 25th y'all.
ZOMBIE BROADS!
