This brings us to the end of yet another 31 Plays in 31 Days. That makes twelve years I’ve done this, 2012 to 2023. Despite it feeling variably useful to my creative process in recent years, I always feel satisfied having done it, and very much enjoy looking over the stuff I made each year. It turned out to be pretty useful this time around, as it often does when I have a planned project I need to complete.
I was not in a great headspace for much of this August. I’d been feeling foggy and depressed for most of it. While I was still able to do creative work, and even some good stuff if I may say so myself, I felt completely incapable of certain brain-intensive tasks. Like, for example, I wasn’t up to any plot structuring at all, which is something I’ve always found very, very demanding. So pretty much anything that would require building out of what was happening was basically out of the question.
( Here are the projects I worked on this year: )( And here are the characters I wrote about: )I think that inability to do intensive structuring work is evident when you look at the sort of stuff I worked on this year. Mostly a script that was already totally blocked out (except for the one scene that I got VERY VERY STUCK ON), a piece that is intentionally meant to be unplanned, plus schticky stuff that’s entirely one joke at a time. It also meant no Dream Machine or Adonis, as I’m at that point with the current installments of those pieces. I thought I’d do more work on my non-Texts Captain America fanfic, but I only managed to build out one scene that was mostly planned already anyway. (That did help me complete the actual chapter in that story, so definitely worth it!)
I did find, however, that the approach I took was not that burdensome, even not feeling particularly sharp. It was only until the last week or so of the challenge that I found myself really struggling for material, which is probably the latest that’s ever set in for me. Maybe it was because I focused mostly on a pre-outlined piece (Mrs. Hawking part 7) and humorous shorts (Little Monsters, Texts from Avengers Tower), it made it much easier to draft stuff than it sometimes is. I also very often went in like, “Okay, just write some bullshit, doesn’t have to be good, edit later,” and then actually really liking what I came up with.
One thing I noticed this year is that I ran shorter more frequently than I think I ever have in previous years. Part of that was the nature of the projects I worked on— I let myself count Texts from Avengers Tower, which I didn’t before, and also did several Little Monsters bits which are also quick. I’m just drawn to humorous shorts lately. It meant I often broke one of the rules of the original challenge— each piece was supposed to be at least one page in length. While I admit to feeling weird about it, like I slacked off or something, I actually don’t believe that length is an appropriate measure of a piece’s completeness. Drama, all writing really, should be as long as it needs to be, no more and no less! So despite my ingrained fear of laziness, I am okay with that part of things.
What are my favorite pieces? Honestly, I thought was work this year was generally pretty good, if in need of fleshing out. Many scenes of Mrs. Hawking part 7 are looking promising, if still very rough and nowhere near good enough yet. I particularly like the parts where Mary is trying to figure out how to fit everything that’s important to her in her life, and realizing she’s not going to find a perfect balance, like in
#13 - Doing it All, and in
#19 - My Life As It Is Now. I think the joke in
#17 - Get In, Loser is pretty damn funny, and I’m fond of
#28 - The Cool Kids’ Table for being something I thought I’d just whack together and ended up really liking. I actually like all the Little Monsters bits, even if the joke IS basically just cannibalism every time!
My favorite lines? When Miranda Barrymore asks if Mrs. Hawking was Mrs. Frost’s friend, or if Mrs. Frost hurt her too in
#26 - Something That Made it All Right, Mrs. Hawking’s answer of “I was her friend. And she did.” I crack up at Frankie’s capper in
the self-titled scene, “Oh, my God. I’m at the cool kids’ table!” Even though I didn’t come up with it, I feel like I made good use of
#12 - So Damn Lucky’s “Forever’s a long time, kiddo. And I was married to your grandma… forever.” And as much as I struggled with getting
#31 - Marginalia down on paper, I love when Beatrice asks if there are many men like Pride and Prejudice’s George Wickham, Mrs. Hawking says, “If there were not, my dear, I might have become a ballet dancer.”
Now, on to editing up part 7. And figuring out a title for it. I’ve made it this far, but drafting is, as always, just the beginning of the journey. Next year in Play-rusalem! Or something.
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