One of my current writing projects
Feb. 13th, 2019 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11I have been good about getting writing done lately.
I have a zillion projects, of course, that I am or could be working on at any given time. Some are more pressing than others, and some are pretty well backburnered. For example, I know I will be writing part 6 of the Mrs. Hawking series this year, but it doesn't need to be finished until we're ready to rehearse it in the fall, so I'm using the time gap to focus on other things for now. But I do noodle on it when the mood strikes me, which is not infrequent.
Right now I'm working on two things most actively. The first is an audio drama, suggested by the charming and talented Jeremy Holstein. He's the artist in residence for the Post Meridian Radio Players, and does adaptations of many classic stories for the group to perform. Among in my opinion his best work are his Sherlock Holmes adaptations, of which he does one for a mystery story program every summer. They're extremely good, and one year we collaborated on an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" for the program, which I also directed. That was a lot of fun, and I was really honored that he asked me to work on it.
This year, Jeremy has a pitch for a program that includes his adaptation of the Holmes story "The Empty House," and an original piece we're referring to as "Mrs. Hudson Investigates." It's sort of "fan fiction" type piece, where Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson goes on an adventure during Holmes's absence and solves the mystery on her own. Again I am flattered that he's asked me to work on it. God knows I love writing Victorian drama, and I have developed a bit of perspective on writing detective-y women in the period.
The concept I'm going for is not that Mrs. Hudson really knows that much about crime-solving, or that she's particularly brilliant in any way. But she knows her own province, the small details involved in keeping a house that she uses in the course of her job, and because of that she's able to notice what's going on with things related to that which most people aren't. Because these skills and perspective are traditionally "women's work," their value is often dismissed, and knowledge of them is considered unnecessary. So she's the only one who can solve this case, because she's the only one with the insight to see what's really important to it. This is something I learned from Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles," which I love and was really helpful to me for contextualizing how to depict the struggles of women.
Bernie and I have been banging away at it for a little while now, using my preferred method of plotting it out and outlining everything to happen in the story. Since Arisia's over, I've been drafting it in earnest, and I almost have a completed version one. It's still very rough yet, since I prefer the vomit drafting method, where I just bang out whatever I can think of to make the script technically complete. It serves me pretty well, though, as I find you can always improve something that exists, but can't do much with a blank page. It's got solid bones even though it needs a lot of polishing. At the rate I'm going, I expect to complete the first draft by the end of this week.
As for the second one, I'm not quite ready to talk about it. Not in this entry, anyway. Maybe in one soon. But it's a bit more delicate to me.
I have a zillion projects, of course, that I am or could be working on at any given time. Some are more pressing than others, and some are pretty well backburnered. For example, I know I will be writing part 6 of the Mrs. Hawking series this year, but it doesn't need to be finished until we're ready to rehearse it in the fall, so I'm using the time gap to focus on other things for now. But I do noodle on it when the mood strikes me, which is not infrequent.
Right now I'm working on two things most actively. The first is an audio drama, suggested by the charming and talented Jeremy Holstein. He's the artist in residence for the Post Meridian Radio Players, and does adaptations of many classic stories for the group to perform. Among in my opinion his best work are his Sherlock Holmes adaptations, of which he does one for a mystery story program every summer. They're extremely good, and one year we collaborated on an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" for the program, which I also directed. That was a lot of fun, and I was really honored that he asked me to work on it.
This year, Jeremy has a pitch for a program that includes his adaptation of the Holmes story "The Empty House," and an original piece we're referring to as "Mrs. Hudson Investigates." It's sort of "fan fiction" type piece, where Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson goes on an adventure during Holmes's absence and solves the mystery on her own. Again I am flattered that he's asked me to work on it. God knows I love writing Victorian drama, and I have developed a bit of perspective on writing detective-y women in the period.
The concept I'm going for is not that Mrs. Hudson really knows that much about crime-solving, or that she's particularly brilliant in any way. But she knows her own province, the small details involved in keeping a house that she uses in the course of her job, and because of that she's able to notice what's going on with things related to that which most people aren't. Because these skills and perspective are traditionally "women's work," their value is often dismissed, and knowledge of them is considered unnecessary. So she's the only one who can solve this case, because she's the only one with the insight to see what's really important to it. This is something I learned from Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles," which I love and was really helpful to me for contextualizing how to depict the struggles of women.
Bernie and I have been banging away at it for a little while now, using my preferred method of plotting it out and outlining everything to happen in the story. Since Arisia's over, I've been drafting it in earnest, and I almost have a completed version one. It's still very rough yet, since I prefer the vomit drafting method, where I just bang out whatever I can think of to make the script technically complete. It serves me pretty well, though, as I find you can always improve something that exists, but can't do much with a blank page. It's got solid bones even though it needs a lot of polishing. At the rate I'm going, I expect to complete the first draft by the end of this week.
As for the second one, I'm not quite ready to talk about it. Not in this entry, anyway. Maybe in one soon. But it's a bit more delicate to me.
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