Writing plans for July and August
I have so many writing projects that I need to accomplish in the near future, and I find it helpful to lay out a plan and prioritize so I know what to focus on. So here’s what I’m thinking, at least for the next two months or so.
I have plunged into draft 4 of the new musical, Puzzle House Blues. I am making the last round of edits to the text before I arrange a second reading. Troy has made excellent progress on the composition of music and lyrics for the songs, for which I am providing some editorial input. I expect all of that to get finished in the next few weeks. Then we’ll have to make rough song recordings so we can play them to our readers, to enable them to get the full narrative effect.
The other major thing I have to work on immediately is my new screenplay, intended to enter into this year’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest. I made it into the top ten percent of all entries last year with The Tailor at Loring’s End, so I want to have something to enter this year as well. I have yet to talk about that piece here on the blog, but now’s a good a time to introduce it as any. It’s a little tough to explain, but it’s a sort of a feminist creative experiment. I wanted to take a set of gendered tropes, roles, and power dynamics and fill them with members of a different gender than the ones we’re conditioned to expect. The aim is to highlight the existence of those tropes by taking them out of the gender contexts we’re accustomed to so that familiarity does not permit us to ignore them. Basically, it’s an epic set in an alternate history with a matriarchal Ancient Rome, where an exalted female general challenges the empire when she falls in love with a beautiful male slave-turned-gladiator. I am calling it Adonis, and it will involve certain things that I’m not used to writing about, but I think it has the potential to be a really powerful story. The draft’s about thirty percent done at this point, and needs to be ready for a submission deadline at the end of July.
Lastly, when August comes around again, I would like to again participate in 31 Plays in 31 Days, where you write a play of at least one page in length for every day of the month of August. It has done wonders for my productivity in the past, giving me lots of great short pieces and even chunks of larger scripts that I otherwise would not have written. So I’m excited to do it again. Last year, I mostly produced the latter, many of which would later become the meat of Vivat Regina, the second Mrs. Hawking story. I would love to get a start on the as-yet-untitled third installment the same way, although any new writing I produce during that time would be welcome.
I have plunged into draft 4 of the new musical, Puzzle House Blues. I am making the last round of edits to the text before I arrange a second reading. Troy has made excellent progress on the composition of music and lyrics for the songs, for which I am providing some editorial input. I expect all of that to get finished in the next few weeks. Then we’ll have to make rough song recordings so we can play them to our readers, to enable them to get the full narrative effect.
The other major thing I have to work on immediately is my new screenplay, intended to enter into this year’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest. I made it into the top ten percent of all entries last year with The Tailor at Loring’s End, so I want to have something to enter this year as well. I have yet to talk about that piece here on the blog, but now’s a good a time to introduce it as any. It’s a little tough to explain, but it’s a sort of a feminist creative experiment. I wanted to take a set of gendered tropes, roles, and power dynamics and fill them with members of a different gender than the ones we’re conditioned to expect. The aim is to highlight the existence of those tropes by taking them out of the gender contexts we’re accustomed to so that familiarity does not permit us to ignore them. Basically, it’s an epic set in an alternate history with a matriarchal Ancient Rome, where an exalted female general challenges the empire when she falls in love with a beautiful male slave-turned-gladiator. I am calling it Adonis, and it will involve certain things that I’m not used to writing about, but I think it has the potential to be a really powerful story. The draft’s about thirty percent done at this point, and needs to be ready for a submission deadline at the end of July.
Lastly, when August comes around again, I would like to again participate in 31 Plays in 31 Days, where you write a play of at least one page in length for every day of the month of August. It has done wonders for my productivity in the past, giving me lots of great short pieces and even chunks of larger scripts that I otherwise would not have written. So I’m excited to do it again. Last year, I mostly produced the latter, many of which would later become the meat of Vivat Regina, the second Mrs. Hawking story. I would love to get a start on the as-yet-untitled third installment the same way, although any new writing I produce during that time would be welcome.